I didn’t take any Before pictures, alas…
But the electrical system’s entrails are now its extrails…
The original solar panel tower is now just an iron pole…
I have greedily looted Landlady’s old solar panels…
And had my revenge on that battery shelf that I’ve hated so very, very much once a month for so very long…
The batteries now lie disconnected on the powershed floor…
…while S gets busy with his alchemy using all new – and hopefully easy to use and adequate to Landlady’s needs – hardware.
It seems a pity to have to so completely and expensively replace a very expensive system that was never properly specced or constructed in the first place. But I guess that’s life. The old expensive inverter did do her one big favor, should she have been suffering buyer’s remorse: It completely failed last week for no apparent reason, proving that it needed to be replaced.
Now after lunch I need to go back and start cleaning up the mess.
Joel, have you tested your new hand-me-down panels?
S has, and says they’re all good for about a hundred watts each.
Excellent! As you know, that will seldom (if ever) translate into an extra 400 watts flowing into your batteries. But it should still give you a striking improvement in power generation and thus a major upgrade for the Lair.
Being one of the more expensive elements of a solar system, I’m so grateful that our 2 20 year old Trace inverters keep chugging along just fine. It’s a shame that Landlady’s quit because you could have probably used it quite nicely in your system.