Wow, did I get lost in FACEBOOK or what?

I have not posted in a while after signing up with Facebook. I really miss the personal setting of the BLOG. Social Media sites are so cool but not as personal. I have some stuff to post here soon, boy does time fly. TAP, TAP is this thing still on?

NY Vacation for Jim & Alex

Alex and I drove up to NY for a the week of 8/7 to 8/17 for a bit of R&R.  I visited with dad and my Brother, we had BBQ on the grill every day consisting of Sausages, hamburgs, hotdogs, peppers, onions and fresh NY sweet corn.  The first two days were cold and stormy with rain & thunderstorms rolling through every hour.  The days following were nothing short of spectacular, days in the mid 80’s and nights in the 60’s, blue skies and bright sunshine.

We spent the last 5 days going to Sheldrake Point on Cayuga Lake everyday for BBQ, Beers and boating with some “tube-ing”.  Alex had a blast.  I rode the tube once and my brother could not resist flipping me off into the chilly lake water. No pics of that tho but I can still taste the lake water…

Help Stop the National Energy Tax!

The Obama Democrats’ Cap and Trade bill will raise taxes on American families by nearly $3,100 a year and is the height of irresponsibility in the middle of a recession. Republicans can stop this massive tax hike, but we need the support of every Republican grassroots leader to do it. Please help Republicans stop this job-killing, bigger government, higher taxes legislation by making a contribution of $25, $50, $100, $500 or $1,000 to the RNC today. Thank you.

PHEV Prius gets a new POWER SOURCE

I finally have Prototype 1.0 of my DC-2-DC converter installed.  This converters runs off 12VDC nominal which allows use of conventional battery charging with inexpensive off-the-shelf chargers.  It’s a basic, simple 1000 watt converter I came up with using inexpensive parts.  The most expensive part is the 1000 watt Toroidal Transformer seen in the picture.  So far testing is going well, the converter only supplies 4-5 amps into the OEM Traction Battery so it does not function the same as the setup I had using 20 small 20Ah Pb batteries. The main thing is it IS transferring power from the added battery pack to the car assisting the ICE using electricity which is the main reason for the PHEV conversion.

I still have some more tweaking but it works using the CAN-View system that was installed with the 20 battery setup.  For testing I’m using two DEKA 55Ah AGM batteries.  The final setup will have six of these.

LG Fridge repaired but still a big POS

The LG repairman that finally came out to fix our melted light housing, he said the LG “Legal Department” sent him out.  All he did was to replace the melted lamp holder with a new one that has a thermo-switch on it.  The lights are working with the door switch again.  I’m thinking what happened is the lights are controlled by a Microprocessor and it got hung up and kept the lights on until someone discovered everything melted.  Power-cycling the unit, i.e. unplugging it probably resets the MPU.  With our house totally solar powered and the LG fridge on the solar inverter setup the power never gets removed from it.  I put two Lights of America “40” LED lamps in it, they use 1.5 watts each and run cool but they too are disappointing as they are quickly falling into my POS basket.

Back to Ground Gardening with raised rows…

I couldn’t keep the “Yard Chickens” from eating the young plants we grew in the raised “Bucket Garden” so I decided to go back to raised rows with a fence around the garden to keep those veggie destroyers out.  I ’tilled in a generous amount of chicken & goose manure that I scooped off the ground around the chicken coops.  For years, to keep the mud down I would layer the leaves I raked up on the grounds around the coops.  The geese would stomp it, the chickens would dig in it, the rain would wet it, repeat. This made a nice, rich soil mixture.  The plants seem to love it!

The Assortment includes:

Radishes, 30 ft row of Green Beans, Red & Yellow onions, Carrots, Brussel Sprouts, Cucumbers, Roma Tomatoes, Better Boy Tomatoes, Romain Lettuce, Lima Bean (one plant), Asparagus, Horseradish root, Blueberries, Red Raspberries, Black Berries, Concord Grapes and the trees in the far back are Mulberry.

Solar Tracker #4 is now complete…

I installed the last six KC-130’s on Tracker #4 this past Saturday in 40+ mph winds, boy was that hairy but I got’er done.

I setup a temporary ground rack to hold the now orphaned Siemans SR90’s that just feed some power into an old Advanced Energy GC-1000.  I’ll be moving the GC-1000 to a tracking trailer mount I’m putting together with eight old Photowatt 90 watt panels I have.

 

I have installed Nema-3 rain tite disconnects on post near all my trackers.  The tracker assemblies are connected to the system through Multicontact MC-4 latching quick connectors. I’m calling the posts with disconnects “Renewable Energy Access Points”.  I had to separate the tracking mounts from the “Inspect-able Electric System” due to the fact if the tracking assemblies were “Permanent Installations” my building department would require very expensive “Engineered, Signed, Stamped, Sealed Blueprints” with wind-loading of over 120 MPH.  Not really do-able for home-built mounts. I don’t plan on leaving a single PV panel out in the Hurricane if one does hit anyhow. I did pick them up and spread them farther apart as I discovered this past winter they were a bit too close with some shadow overlapping.

   

Tracker #4 almost finished

I’m waiting on six more KC-130’s to finish off Tracker #4

Then I will move the four SR-90’s to another temporary tracker with the GC-1000 Grid-tie Inverter.

 

UPDATE:  The six brand new KC-130’s have arrived and will be mounted on Tracker #4 when I get back from a brief trip to New York next week.

GMAC BANK says, SORRY, we don’t need your money…

SMART?  SIMPLE?  SAFE?  What the hell does that mean?

My 19 yr old son, in his 2nd semester of college, working tword an engineering degree, was just told by GMAC bank “you can’t open a Money Market account with us”.  He worked over the summer and saved up almost $1000. They called him and told him he didn’t have any credit so they would have to decline his request for an account with them.

They did offer him a “safe deposit” box to hold his cash.

As of today, we are pulling all our money out of GMAC bank.  Every last dime. HOW DOES THAT WORK FOR YOU GMAC BANK??

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

What a FARCE, seems GMAC BANK has all the money they need now, TAX PAYER’S MONEY!

Solar Pathfinder Report…

I received my Solar Pathfinder site analyses tool last week.  I opted for the cool software for an additional $129 that has a simple to read report.

Here is my Tracking Array #3, which is my NE most tracker.  It’s in the back.

     

         #1                    #2                    #3                    #4

The first is a simple summary, the second is where in relation to the Array was the Solar Pathfinder setup.  A top-down picture is taken over the Solar Pathfinder then imported into the software where you trace the reflections of all obstacles.  The software then creates the digital shading data picture. You can see at the 12N position on report #3 the tracker that is directly to the south of this one.

The system was entered as a two-axis system, which means in this case East to West tracking and seasonal tilting.

Kinda cool.  Most fixed roof arrays give 4-6 “solar hours” per day, trackers kick that up to 7 to 8+ solar hours per day.  The solar hours are listed on the bottom of report #4 as “Sun Hrs.”