So! How's it going? ~ 2 comments.
A beautiful winter day today, mid-60s for a high, and mid-40s for a low, just about perfect for a winter day in the desert.
Now that the sun is out all day like it's supposed to be, my batteries are getting charged to 14.4 volts, which is a full charge for lithium iron batteries, by around noon for the last three days in a row. And the only thing I'm doing differently now is I don't leave my inverter on all night, and I point the front of the truck West so the solar panels are mostly facing South. This seems to be keeping some of the shadows off the roof-mounted panels.
So my solar system works just fine under normal conditions, but because of the weeks of cloudy weather, the panels just couldn't get enough sunshine to provide much of any charging. Now I still don't know how many days of clouds I can deal with since I didn't keep up with it that closely, and it wasn't just cloudy weather that caused the problems, because I get charging even on cloudy days, but this time the clouds were so thick that a lot of days I would get no charging whatsoever and that's been very rare for me to see in the desert.
I'm hoping the new panels will save me from ever having to deal with that electrical crisis again, because I've learned that even with my 500 watts of roof panels lying flat, and getting shaded for parts of the day, I was still able to get fully charged with half a day of usable sunshine. So with the new panels facing the sun, and without being shaded, even though there are only 300 watts, I'm pretty sure they will be producing as much or maybe even a little more than the 500 watts on the roof.
Theboondork
Sunrise picture of a boondocking neighbor.
The BLM boondocking area I'm at. It's crowded because it's a popular spot in Lake Havasu.
Looks like one of my neighbors is from Colorado. One of the many things I like about boondocking is that everyone is welcome, folks in tents, folks in cars, folks in million-dollar motorhomes, and everything in between, all sharing and enjoying the freedom of the boondocking lifestyle.
The old boondork, even when it's crowded, I still manage to find a little spot of my own so I don't have to be scrunched up with other folks.
The signpost in front of my truck is announcing to folks that they are now in a BLM 14-day stay boondocking area.