Monday 13 Apr, CY day 30: After breakfast it’s back to trouble shooting the solar electrical issue.
By mid morning the sun is powering up the panels and I’m happy to see both are pumping in the power OK, with each array’s wires physically separated. So it looks like problem is manifested when wires from both arrays are run in close proximity to each other.
And to complete the trouble shooting I want to again replicate what happened yesterday. So with the wiring back to yesterday’s configuration, I head back to the controllers expecting to see the obvious. But shock-horror (or rather: shock-delight) both arrays are still working perfectly! So, what on earth was happening yesterday I really don’t know. Maybe cycling the power on the controller last evening, reset things and corrected an error? Having been on the frontend of electronic engineering in the oilfield (even though I’m a geologist!) such fickle failures with electronics don’t surprise me. Anyway, I’m very happy not to have to re-run the wires. But, out of pure superstition, I don’t ty-wrap anything in place till it’s been running OK for at least 24hrs. Ty-wraps seem to have a habit of jinxing things – making me cut them all off again!
2 hours later I’m even more elated. In the midday sun, the solar is pumping 25amps into the batteries. This is 90% of the total panel rating. Pretty impressive and quite something to see the battery charge steadily creeping up a % at a time. By 5pm it’s 80%, up from 55% at midday. This is way above my expectations. Tomorrow will be day-4 without running the generator and the batteries are almost full still! Good result.
Meanwhile, Oana is buried in the saloon hiding from the sun with her books. I thinks she’s a bit fed up with my intense focus on this solar project the last few days. Once into project mode or maintenance mode, I do tend to go on a focus-frenzie, without realizing it. I’ll have to change tack tomorrow and get my focus back on my first love!
And we go to bed with the same severe rolling and stern lapping as yesterday, if not worse.