…of letting you know that, in that dog’s opinion, you’ve been motionless in that chair quite long enough.
Funny how often it involves just staring, with zero consideration for personal space.
I was going to blow him off and go back to my book when it occurred to me that in light of his earlier mild gastric distress he might be trying to tell me something important, so I suited up and we went for a brief unscheduled walkie. But no, apparently he was just bored.
It’s the second very cloudy day in a row at the darkest part of the year, the batteries are all but flat so I have everything turned off – I’m actually thinking of turning the inverter off, I’d still have essential lights – there’s nothing to do but sit here and read this book and that’s just what I’m going to do with the rest of the afternoon whether he likes it or not. Because Tobie is not the boss of me.
“Because Tobie is not the boss of me.”
Did he tell you that?
How big is the inverter’s parasitic (idle) load? Just curious.
Yah, you just keep believing that.
What you’re seeing is just the outer manifestation of him willing you to do something with every fiber of his being. Once you’ve figured that someone can be reasoned with – might as well go for broke! Kinda’ the dog version of the Vulcan mind meld.
Merry Christmas, too – to the two of you.
Do you get enough wind there for possibly a small wind generator to cover for the low batteries for times like these, dark and cloudy?
I don’t know how to measure that – it’s not much, but it routinely drops the indicated voltage two or three tenths overnight.
Wind generators have gone completely out of style here since I moved in; they’re undependable and a big failure point. You have to raise them up or position them strategically to avoid the ground clutter. Most commonly the wind doesn’t blow at all at night anyway, so they can’t fill in for the dark hours. They attract lightning. And they have a very disconcerting habit of coming apart like bombs when the wind gets gusty. One of the nice things about solar is no moving parts.
Tobie may not be the boss of you, but he’s pretty dependent on you to carry the thumbs and operate then as appropriate.
I’ve got a few solar systems (power ain’t always reliable in rural Oregon), and looked at a couple of my inverters. The 12V system uses a Morningstar 300W sinewave inverter, and its parasitic load is .3 amps, so about 4 watts. That inverter doesn’t have a fan or many features.
The big-ass Outback Power system (48V, runs the pumphouse with enough to share with the house if need be) is a 3600W monster, with extra features. That one takes 50 watts at idle. I have a smaller system (2400W inverter) that should be similar.