Project: Tom Waits

  I've not done a whole lot with Tom in recent history. He's been fairly stable all-told, just requiring the occasional test-and-replace of old batteries as their zombified second-lives wind down. I've been quite relyably getting ~0.5-0.6kWh of out the rig when I need to, and my little meter indicated that I had used 26kWh over 2 or so months ($6.50 worth of juice!). The problem was that apart from recharging mobile devices and po wer banks, it's quite difficult to actually use the power because the messy, leaky batteries really need to be outside, and running cables to the rig just wasn't going to be worth the cost and fuss. Anything else was going to cost money which is entirely contrary to what Project Tom Waits is all about. I had to find a way to make anything else I did cost-neutral. During my convalescence I've had some time to go through a lot of the salvage that's been tucked away, including a couple of old UPS units I'd snagged and refurbished....

  After adding the extra 4 panels to my Grid system I did some casual monitoring to get an idea for how much of a difference it was making. It's difficult to judge at the best of times, and harder still when you have no software that will read the history off your bargain-basement inverter (I should have sprung for one of the BT or Wifi units, but I didn't figure on needing it too badly and it was a lot more expensive back   then). Still, comparing to my memory of last year, and the week or two before I flicked the switch, I was generating an extra ~15-20% which was honestly more than I had expected. This caused a rethink of my general strategy, followed by some shuffling around to swap panels with the ones I had reserved for Project Harry Hart. Long-story-short, the extra 4 panels have now got 2 extra friends, bringing that string up to 1.5kW. There are now no longer any panels cluttering up my car port as every panel I own is now on the roof, one way or the other. This has l...

  I discovered that my grid-connected system had a second tracker I hadn't been told about when it was installed, so I put my bargain-hunter hat on and picked up a full 1.5kW system on Gumtree. 2 of the panels are going into Project Harry Hart, the other 4 are going to give me an extra fee hours of generation in the morning. It's taken 2 afternoons of solo effort to get this far (not counting collecting the rails and working out the layout that I couldn't have done without the help of  David Madskills ). Probably another afternoon mounting panels before I can run the wiring. And yes, I'll get that bit checked and connected by a proper sparky. I might be mildly bonkers, but I'm not completely nuts!