Yesterday was gloomy all day. Overnight rain, a little morning rain but the clouds never went away. I spent most of the day in the sittin’ and readin’ chair and Tobie…
…after several attempts to get me up and throwing his Kong for him, huffily gave up and joined me for most of it.
Anyway – Most of the year “gloomy all day” is very rare. Less so in winter. In previous years I’d have just cocooned through it with minimal electricity use – I do have a lot of books, and the curtains do pull back – but about a year ago Big Brother sent me the one element I needed for an alternate means of charging batteries. This morning when I woke to this…
…I was pretty much determined I’d have to use it. The batteries are over four years old now, still working fine but probably less inclined to shrug off abuse and the last thing I need right now is more battery trouble. Besides, I really want to bake bread today and the oven lighting element needs lots of juice.
Then when the sky finally got light enough for me to see out, I saw that this had started apparently right after we came in from Tobie’s First Pee…
Hmph. Okay. So the solar panels will be covered with snow. I have a tool for that. I also have a tool for the constant war against cobwebs inside the Lair…
Trouble is they both use the same pole. The tools were cheap: The pole was expensive, but happily both snow and cobwebs are largely seasonal. So: Take the brush off the pole and install the squeegee…
Then clean off the panels on the ground mount…
Ignoring the two panels on the roof for now, because it’s still snowing…
Come inside to warm my hands, and…
Not a lot of help there. It’s still really gloomy.
I expected that. Before I even started moving things around I lit up the Jeep to let the powertrain warm up so it could climb the driveway grade. This alerted Tobie that the game was afoot. Or rather, it was about to go for a Jeep ride. Determined not to let me face the peril alone…
He planted himself in position to guard the door. Since I’m mostly a creature of habit he knows the difference between “Uncle Joel’s going away and there’s no point arguing” and “I might get a Jeep ride out of this.” He correctly judged that this was that second kind of thing.
So anyway: I have a generator courtesy of a Generous Reader and I have a (really) heavy-duty battery charger courtesy of Big Brother. The charger is bolted to the powershed wall beside the batteries but the generator, alas, is over at Ian’s Cave. So let the Jeep warm up, clean off the snow, and bounce up the grade and over to the Cave. Put the Honda in the Jeep and bounce back. The trip is kind of a pain but the consolation is that the Cave is still nice and warm inside, which means the Honda starts with a single pull.
Quick as a wink their powers combine…
And there you go.
Now I can sit my lazy ass down and pick up my reading where I left off yesterday. Or I can get to work baking. Probably do that second thing, there’s plenty of time for reading.
Out of curiosity, would additional panels allow you to meet your power needs even in the gloomy times?
Also, those panels could not have been cheap or cast-offs…is there an interesting story about how the frugal hermit acquired them?
Those panels on the ground mount are cast-offs and so is the racking. They’re very old but still work well enough for my needs. In 2016 Landlady completely upgraded her power system and I got these for helping. Nice thing about living here – everybody uses solar and speaks the language, and so solar components can sometimes be scrounged.
Additional panels would allow me to run a bigger battery bank but wouldn’t be much help in charging the bank I have. Gloomy is gloomy no matter how many panels you have, which is why everybody (except me, till relatively recently) also has a generator.
This could also be about “The Economics of Winter “. You probably burned more gas warming up the Jeep than your generator consumed charging your battery.
“the oven lighting element needs lots of juice.”
Still flabbergasted at that bit of technological nonsense.
It’s a good thing OSHA wasn’t around to dictate the process for rubbing two sticks together or homo sapiens would never have developed.
Yeah but it’s not all bad. The old oven pilot used a lot of propane over time even when it wasn’t in use. My gas usage has dropped measurably.
Could you use a camp oven on top of the wood stove? Coleman has one that folds flat, though I don’t know how good it is. I think you can also bake in a Dutch oven. I don’t know much about baking bread – I’ve tried and failed numerous times.
Not nearly enough heat. If I stoked the woodstove hot enough to run an oven on top it would drive me out of the cabin.