…for once. I heard something about a tropical storm down south of here, didn’t pay any attention at the time but it might explain the sudden spasm of wet weather. It rained all night, night before last, and a couple of times hard yesterday morning. Apparently one of those cells was over the big plateau to the east of here, which drains into the canyons at the headwaters of the wash, because the wash ran some yesterday after the second hard rain and I don’t remember it ever doing that in October.
But, you know, it’s like that place up north where all the children are above average. Unusual weather is pretty normal around here.
I installed two pretty nice new 240 amp/hour batteries in February and could probably get away with sailing through two or three overcast days not changing my routine at all, but instead I treat them like they’re my geriatric grandmother with a bad hip. So I was off the ‘pooter, which is my biggest draw, all yesterday and most of the day before. When it became clear that we’d get some sun this morning I checked the charge just before full sun and it was 11.97V which is as low as I’ve ever seen them and really a pretty good charge considering that they probably haven’t hit float since the first part of the week. According to this chart I’ve got right here that would be a 40% state of charge if the batteries were disconnected and not running anything, which they’re not. With the inverter on there’s always a fairly substantial parasitic draw. So maybe more like 50%. You can’t hurt a battery that’s in good condition by running it down fifty percent occasionally.
If the remote on the inverter worked, which it doesn’t, it would be a simple matter to shut the whole thing down at night. I’ve done that during times when I was having battery troubles, but normally it’s really not worth the bother of traipsing to and from the powershed twice in the cold dark. So mostly I don’t do that.
I’m gonna let things charge up now. Don’t know if the clouds are coming back. More later, maybe.
If you love your batteries and wish to make the same set last you year after year, 40% is a nice minimum charge level.
Why doesn’t the remote work?
No idea why the remote doesn’t work, only that it doesn’t. I have the manual for the inverter, and it seems the remote is quite a sophisticated piece of non-working gear. They want upwards of $500 for a replacement. And it does a whole lot of things I’d actually pay for it not to do, so I don’t really care. The only things I’d want it to do is turn on/off and give me a voltage readout, but I can walk the twenty feet to the powershed for that, when I need it.