Sunday, December 11, 2011

CLOUDY!

It was so cloudy yesterday that the solar panels did little good and the same for today. The batteries were just barely high enough in charge this morning to keep the inverter running so it was time to crank up the generator to run the electric battery charger. Trouble with that is that its just a 10 AMP charger and charges the battery bank very slowly.
This is what's left of my old gas powered charger I built shortly after moving here. The engine I had on it broke down so it was basically worthless. I traded that motor to Ring for a running 6.5 horsepower motor, but will have to find a smaller pulley for it before I can rebuild the charger. I tried to find the pulley I need in Alpine with no luck so will have to wait until I go to Odessa next time and I should be able to find one there. The difference between using the gas powered charger and running the generator to run the electric charger is this. If using the gas powered charger it will charge the battery bank from inverter cut out to full charge in 20 minutes where running the electric charger takes several hours (If it even does it at that)

This photo was taken the other day and you can't even see this mountain now.
Red Bluff
Now the next 6 days forecast calls for cloudy to partly cloudy. Looks like I'll be running the generator a lot for a while. :(
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8 comments:

  1. TROUBLEnTXDecember 11, 2011 at 1:17 PM

    Don't you ever order online, brought to your front door?,,Looked everywhere for a drain for a pedestal sink i found at a yard sale,,now i know why. Only way i finally found one was online,,Was a weird size. Anyway, just asking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tffnguyDecember 11, 2011 at 5:05 PM

    TnT, Haven't thought of that so may try it. Problem would be whether it was sent via UPS or Fedex. If sent by the later then I'd probably never get it.

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  3. DaniDecember 11, 2011 at 10:45 PM

    tffn - We have the same problem with cloudy weather - and THAT is why we need a wind turbine RMan!

    Stay warm.

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  4. MsBelindaDecember 12, 2011 at 1:10 AM

    Hope the clouds disperse soon.

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  5. tffnguyDecember 12, 2011 at 9:18 AM

    Dani, for now it doesn't do any good to have a wind generator because there hasn't been any wind to speak of for days. My neighbor just got his new 1600 watt max charger up a couple of weeks ago and lately (days now) he hasn't gotten any help from it at all. He's running his generator now just like I am. I ran it for three hours yesterday and have had it running 1 hour and 15 minutes so far this morning and the batteries are still low.

    MsB, it doesn't look like any help for at least the next 6 days. There is a 50% chance of rain toward the end of the week I think. Just cloudy the rest of the time.

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  6. BudweiserkidDecember 12, 2011 at 11:42 AM

    Damn it's nice to be back in civilization.

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  7. tffnguyDecember 12, 2011 at 2:46 PM

    Bkid, If ya don't have solar and ya don't have wind and ya ain't on the grid then you're screwed. If you ain't on the grid, but ya have the rest then you're still screwed if there ain't no wind or solar. If ya got a generator and no gas you're screwed.

    I wonder how long before most everyone in the US will be screwed?

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  8. BudweiserkidDecember 13, 2011 at 8:19 PM

    Not long, but if you don't have any water you're screwed from the start.

    ReplyDelete

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