The arrival of spring! This weekend has really ramped up the workload around the old rancheroo, though.
Among the projects in our household right now:
- Finishing up a visual theme in the master bedroom. We decided to theme it as an art studio. (What goes on in there approaches “art” [sleeping, lol, perv!].
- That led to getting some drawings put up on the wall and making sure everything flowed together. Nearly done, but waiting on parts.
Out in the shop: There are boxes of projects demanding attention.
- A number of these involve ham radio antennas, but…
- One involves a CNC machine project. SainSmart has come out with a modification to upsize their smaller Genmitsu 3018 – Pro series CNC machine. Resized to 300 mm x 400 mm, it gets to be a useful size.
- Another project is setting up aadditional 3D printers for a ham radio parts micro-company idea.
- One of the problems of 3D printing in a dusty shop is keeping freshly printed parts clean. The way around this is to (order some inexpensive clear plastic sheet and…) make a large box like cage. Clear — so you can see the prints. There is an additional benefit to such an enclosure: you can run the prints with smaller temperature variations which will… over time… Result in higher quality. Again, waiting on parts.
- A number of boxes are labeled “SORTING.” Which gets us to…
The Art of Sorting
I came up with the idea while – talking to Oilman2 – to take all of those loose nuts and bolts that accumulate in the shop and sort them into reusable product. OM2 does his sorting while watching television. I think his approach is just a simple board with a couple of rails so things don’t spill into the couch.
Ure, naturally, had to over-design and print some ideas. One that didn’t work well?
I mean, looks purdy and all. But it doesn’t have the capacity of Sorter Box V 2.0:
I have a little different take than OM2 on TV time: I figure if the TV is on, I better be watching it or it’s wasting my time. In which case, I should really leave the room and focus on something meaningful. Dollar store bowls, by the way.
Still unresolved it the machine or system to separate the M2, M2 and M3+from the 8-32, 6-32, and 10-32’s. If you could just sketch that up for me and tell me how to fab it for under $50, we could all get filthy rich…
[Some people are just blessed with an ability to multitask. I’d get into a long discussion, we do not have time for because he could drag out for weeks. I like to be totally immersed in whatever is at hand. Reading and a drink is about the limit of multi-tasking for Ure.]
Pre-Construction
Outside, I started to move some of the concrete blocks around that will eventually result in that lean-to on the north side of the shop/office building. More for shade in summer than rain shelter. I hadn’t realized how much time I was waiting for the rain to quit or for the Sun to drop low enough to offer shade.
Electric welding – or plasma cutting – standing in the rain does not seem like an especially bright idea. The lean-to might get done this week – we’ll see which crises arrive in the meantime. Taxes loom….
Gardeneering
With the arrival of the new moon last weekend, a number of plants were added in the greenhouse.
Some of these will turn out to be good eating at the dinner table. But as usual, in East Texas, you never really know how much will go for humans and how much will go to the various predators. The deer, of course love to jump the fence. There are tomato bugs. The size of your thumb and larger. And then there are the fire ants. Damn those fire ants!
Fired Up
One of the tricks being tried this year, to reduce the labor input on things and not be as daily routine intensive as hydroponics, is we put a bunch of cardboard on the ground last year, along with a bunch of worms ordered online (Jim’s?). Mulch keeps down weeds.
Over the winter, the idea is the worms should have turned the cardboard and soil around it into something nutritious. And now, the 3 inch thick (and deeper!) worth of left over mulch from our logging operation last year, may become a low-weed garden.
Unfortunately, not all of the weeds have been kept at bay. Some of these are stubborn(like democrats) and come back. Despite the nearly 0° temperatures during the Texas blizzard this winter, or voting machines.
There are two ways to approach the problem: one is on your knees while the other is standing up with something to squirt napalm=like at your fingertips.
I chose the latter: fire is a lot more fun to play with than gloves and sticker bushes on the knees. There is also the opportunity for vengeance on the fire ants.
Burning out a garden is an art. Starts with a controlled border around the outside perimeter.
A day or two after a good rain. If you do not do this, the fire can get away from you. Out here, a forest fire or range fire is serious business. Liability and life savings come to mind as issues to be thought through carefully.
Pick a relatively calm day. With a judicious amount of flame being applied you can run a pretty good line down the fence and within a foot of a building – depending on your appetite for risk and what’s the foundation made of?
On the outside of the fence, there are some leaves but under those it was wet enough so the fire didn’t really take off. The main risk is wind; if it comes up you can get in trouble fast. So to prevent difficulties, a longer than you need water hose – charged, long range nozzle – at the ready.
You can see how the mulch is still mostly in place. Piles of pine straw and a few leaves left over from winter had blown in. Strangely, not on the lawn (where they are naturally attracted, at least previously).
Self-Fertilizing Starters?
Picked up a new product from Amazon recently (CowPots 3″ Round Cow Pot Planter (12 Pack), 175mL) that may improve our gardening success. The company is making small starter pots for vegetables and plants out of compressed cow manure. I know it sounds kinda grody, and they don’t smell like a gardenia when you hold it up to your nose…But in theory, the roots will grow right through the manure adding finding nutrition along the way. A shake of fertilizer and such pots will be planted in that nicely mulched and burned garden area.
Every Car Green in East Texas
This is the time of the year when the tall pines of East Texas start blowing yellow pollen all over the place. Because of the cold snap this year, there is an abnormal number of pine needles coming down as well.
We’re not sure what will happen in the front yard. The good news is that the pine needles themselves eventually will turn to mulch. But, is that before or after killing off the grass? A pass with the flame thrower may be in order.
Deer Proof Flowers
Another project that was done this week. It was the planning of deer – proof flower seeds. You can find these on Amazon, too.
We picked up a pound or so and wildly over-planted. We should have a pretty good display around the garden, near a power line pole brace line in the front yard and around our front security light.
Motivation is to increase the number of hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators so the tomatoes will not have to be manually handled with an electric toothbrush or a paintbrush. That was one of the major drawbacks I found to doing the hydroponic gardening last year. That and the greenhouse getting too hot to set fruit most of the summer.
Lean-Toward?
Still kicking around a fully-enclosed lean-to on the side of the house up against the studio wall. We have the space, it is a semi-shaded area (late sun), and with a spare swamp cooler, we should be able to grow lettuces and other greenery inside that with good output.
Do not know if you have ever driven through coastal areas of California. But the area is great for lettuce growing; not particularly hot. 85F as a high is plenty for table greens.
I tried a few of the lettuces that are designed/hybridized for hot weather. There are some coming out of Israel ( a variety of kibbutz romaine) that looked pretty good on paper but didn’t produce well here. If I had to survive on the output, I would be about 200 pounds lighter.
Power for the swamp cooler is easy: Should just be taking additional output from the solar panels and setting up a separate inverter so that the swamp cooler runs all on its own. Without getting involved with the grid-tie system.
If we stick additional loads on the grid-tie part of our solar system, I would have to get new inverters because I can only really generate about 2 ½ to 3 kW of grid-tie sell mode, even under ideal conditions of no load at home.
The problem is 3 kw (ea.) grid-tie sine-waves that stack aren’t free this week.
Try $2.500 bucks a throw and up. Even if you shop around.
If we expand on the grid-tie side, it means more inspections from the power company (and fees) and them coming out to do a new signoff. And a new Co-gen agreement. It just spirals from there.
Anymore, it does not make as much economic sense to add to an existing G-T system. The local utility co-op has bumped us down to just over five cents a kilowatt hour because they are no longer buying back at the rate we pay. Instead they make up an “avoided cost rate” which is a stab through the heart of renewable, but gee, who’s surprised?
Right now, we pay about 10 ½ cents per kilowatt hour for energy coming from the power company. But when they’re buying power back from us we get paid only about 5 ½ cents.
The song and dance was amusing. No, I do not buy it at all. It is just a way for the power monopoly to slow down the onrush of solar. By adding additional inspections and layers of cost and lots of bureaucrazy, it’s as anti-climate as you can find. Lots of small would-be solar operators will be squeezed out or just turn off the “sell-back to grid” option on their system menu. I almost did….
The answer for us is to simply use additional solar panels which are cheap and split the system. Making your own subsystem is a matter of a hundred dollar charge controller and just tying into the same battery bank.
Two things happen this way. First, your battery bank fills up a little more quickly from the additional source, and secondly, you do not have to buy new inverters, go through new signoff, and additional inspections. Because, at least technically, the additional solar panels are not touching the grid-tied gear.
The grid system uses sophisticated charge controllers for regulating how much is generated and so forth.
This is enough of a ramble for this morning… busy as all heck out here.
Maybe next weekend I will walk you through the steps of putting in Mr. Ure’s hundred dollar emergency lighting system. I think you will get a kick out of it. It involves 3D design and printers plus some cheap emergency lights from Amazon. But more on that next weekend.
Off to snag some chow and then work on antennas and projects without end, Amen. You cannot have 30 acres of big trees and have blocks of spare time, simultaneously. No idea how our neighbors out here had time to raise children.
Oh…wait! Out here, they still help….why, children with utility value – imagine!
Write when you get rich.
Fire ants. Ouch! When I lived in the ‘flood plains’ of Florida we sprinkled soap, not detergent, powder on and around the ant nest and then waited for the rain or sprinkled if necessary. The ants moved or died. Ended up with an ant free border of 20/30 feet around the house. Also was good for the grass.
Cheers
Qu9ick what brand of soap – fels?
We used what ever was cheaper. Dollar Store? Might take a couple of applications depending on the size of the ant house and rain.
That’s Fels Naptha to you, Cousin.
Dawn .. 1 tsp or glurp to a pint bottle of water.. hot sauce to..
dear deer…stay out
https://chainlinkfittings.com/store/chain-link-fitting-finder/barbed-wire-arms.html?barb_arm_type=520
dear ant…stay away
“Dry molasses isn’t dried molasses. It’s a grain residue carrier, such as bits of soy meal, that is sprayed and covered with liquid molasses. It’s an excellent carbon source that stimulates beneficial microorganisms. And, it repels fire ants.”
https://www.dirtdoctor.com/garden/Dry-Molasses_vq1884.htm
dear cow…keep your sh%$
“It’s a serious, persistent, long-term herbicide that is taken up in plant material and can be consumed by animals, passed through in their manure, then still be toxic to gardens even after months or possibly years of composting.
It is evil. It is nasty. It is here and if you put manure on your gardens without knowing 100% that it’s not contaminated with this crap, you are running a very high risk of losing your plants.”
https://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/dealing-with-grazon-contamination/#:~:text=It's%20a%20serious%2C%20persistent%2C%20long,It%20is%20nasty.
So George, do you donate blood, and if so, do people that receive it, say someone in their eighties suddenly decide to go get a college degree or something ?? I am thinking that there is a compulsion to jump up, run outside, and mow the lawn in two and a half minutes for no apparent reason .
There’s always a reason. Latent unrecognized desire for a putting green comes to mind.
LOL
“take all of those loose nuts and bolts that accumulate in the shop and sort them into reusable product. ”
as a master procrastinator.. I always say I am going to sort the stuff out My SO always suggests that that would be a good idea…. then when I need something it will be right there at my fingertips… but.. I always seem to go back to the same old ice cream buckets and start digging LOL LOL LOL….
The greatest part of an adventure is the quest for that small part needed.
-Unknown Philosopher
I have six of ’em – just can remember where I put them
…multiple Danish cookie tins.
Crude sort — little stuff, VERY little stuff, metal chunks — brackets, “Ls”, other misc bits ‘n pieces in another, interesting plastic bits in another… I got one just for old, dull, drill bits too crappy for new, nice work, but fine for “suicide drilling” of some crude nasty-ass quickie dingbat project not worth wasting a GOOD drill bit on because the drill bit will probably be wrecked.
Not about to wreck one of the very FINE high-speed titanium 100-members “by sixty-fourths of an inch” drillset in the Official Red Steel Case, all in carefully numbered holes. Nossir. Them’s is precious. Set-aside for “save-the-Galaxy” grade work where ultra-precision in the key to success…
Rummaging with Hope through the Junque Tins is half the fun.
73
It also (when combined with “waiting on parts” accounts for 90% of the effort/time on many projects!
Ah, yes, I have one of those carefully guarded drill bit sets! I’m not a tool slut like George, but my greatest tool investment (I almost wrote ‘infestment’… freudian?) has been a good Ryobi drill press. Tired of damaging things with the hand drills.
“Ah, yes, I have one of those carefully guarded drill bit sets! ”
I have a cute story about CAREFULLY GUARDED DRILL BIT SETS Hank……LOL LOL… years ago one of my grandsons was in shop class.. ( they have now eliminated those.. auto and wood shop ) and he was going to make a dresser.. I got a frantic call from the daughter asking.. your boy wants to build a dresser.. twelve feet long three feet deep and eight feet high.. will that work.. my answer was absolutely.. but you will need a crane to lift it in and have to knock out a wall .. LOL she said.. that is what I thought.. will you have a talk with him.. sure.. so grandma and I talked and she said.. why not take him out to the garage and show him how.. so a saturday morning was set aside and he comes out.. I tell him.. ok.. grandma and I decided .. you and I are going to build a dresser.. this morning.. so I had a few one by twos for the frame and some panels.. and I started telling him about what is it he would like.. then showed him the standard heights and depths.. you know the basic stuff.. got out the shaper to run some dado’s and getting ready to set it up.. asked him to run over and grab the router bits needed..
He goes over and grabs the good set.. ( I had this extremely expensive set.. I mean not for the most of you but for me it was a lot…) he brings it over.. and I said.. OH NO HONEY THAT IS THE GOOD SET.. I have another one in a tote up on the shelf that I use..( THIS one is a cheaper set.. and has been used for decades..) To my surprise we are dadoing the rails and styles and he gets a puzzled look.. I asked.. questions.. he said yes.. “WHO ARE YOU SAVING THE GOOD SET FOR” LOL LOL now for the average.. that isn’t a big question.. but for myself it was profound.. exactly.. why have it if you are only going to look at it.. a picture is cheaper LOL… Needless to say it is used as often as I can think.. he has since moved on and became a construction engineer.. LOL LOL and my tools are all to be given to the grandkids rather than be sold.. seems the few bucks I would get out of them at a sale would not give me the pleasure as much as watching them create something with them…they are things and why in the heck do I want to give it all to some medical facility. in the end we all end up with a couple of boxes of assorted crap.. a few photos and the memories of what we stood for…
I still have to give him or one of the kids.. my cabinet bible.. so far only one that wants to build cabinets is the little one LOL…on to bigger and better things.. two of my kids graduate this year and move on to medical school which makes me so proud..
Had someone ask me a question on marijuana and its affect in treatment of antibiotic resistant strains of viruses and bacteria.. ( oops I have read thousands of pages of research done with the plant but missed that oneI was caught off guard…LOL so this past week I was reading that stuff.. interesting and they were being pretty thorough about it…. and they are moving on to clinicals.. which is pretty awesome.. I actually know someone with antibiotic resistant MRSA nasty stuff)
George
“you do not have to buy new inverters, go through new signoff, and additional inspections”
That’s why I decided to go completely off grid and avoid those Imperial Entanglements!
Lately I have been having problems with batteries. I was using the Walmart deep cycle marine batteries with good success. 3 -4 years with very heavy usage at $100 a battery. Walmart changed their battery design and now your lucky to get a year out of them. I have switched over to Dura Cell AGM’s. A bit pricey but a lot more quality. One thing to be careful with AGM batteries is that you must disable the Equalizing function on your charge controller or you can damage those batteries. Yea, I know I should have been using this brand of battery or that brand of battery. Well you use what the budget and circumstance dictate. Unlike others I have the integrity to try something and let you know if it works or not! I also see that trait in Mr. Ure.
I appreciate that.
Old fellow I knew in the early sailing days – for get his name, but worked for Dyno Battery Mfg. in Seattle – great company and products (circa 1998 or 99) was over at the boat and I was showing off my Link 2000-R (*which controlled a Balmar high output on the Yanmar 40 Horse diesel).
I got to grousing about my battery life prior to achieving expert status in batteries and such and he revealed the Big Dark Ugly secret of batteries.
“Buy the heaviest one for a given case size.”
Sure enough, I bought a set of 3 deep cycles from him and they weighed a good 3+ pounds more than thge 5=year service from brand X.
“Works like this,” he explained. “The heaviest part of the battery (conv. technology) is the lead grid. When companies go cheap, the batteries weigh almost but not QUITE the same. When you have a hollowed out grid, the lead (/antimony and whatever, depends on service and use) is more easily dislodged. Falls to the bottom of the battery and shorts out the cells…
Then we had the 3-beers discussion of battery plate thickness: Thick plates deep cycle best, but their Peukert exponent is much higher, The Starting battery has more plate area (which is why for a tailgate party a couple of starting batteries work fine) which yields higher terminal voltage under load.
Thing is, starting batteries don’t cycle (deeply) well. a 10-15% discharge is about where their cycle-life curve gets into ugly. Where a solid real deep cycle (Trojan T-105 or for the deep-pocket crowd Rolls or Surrette’s) can hit 50-60% depth of discharge thousands of times.
See the Trojan T-105 (Renewable Energy) type’s spec sheet here https://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/T105RE_TrojanRE_Data_Sheets.pdf and the cycling data chart, page 2 lower left. See how at a 90% DoD you get only 750 cycles (think a year and a half IRL)?
My nickel bet is your battery bank is too small and your AGM’s will last five years. Nothing wrong with linquid (cheap) batteries, but depth of discharge is critical which is why we made the E-Meter/Link-10 battery monitors which integrated kilowatt-hours over time, arrived at a CEF (charge efficiency factor) and thus we could accurately predict a lot of things, including time to a given depth of discharge at a given (fixed) load.
My nickel bet is if you tripled the battery bank size, you’d be a happier camper…just that’s just from reading your cycling experience.
Ure will now shut up for a while, lol..
For Maker Sunday, or possibly PN, I’d suggest thinking about ways to build your own deep cycle cells or batteries from old ones. I’ve not done this yet, but there are plenty of dead and/or worthless flooded batteries waiting to be recycled at home. I’m sure various agencies would frown on it, but that’s never stopped real Americans. Large old deep cycle batteries(Telco, etc.) can allegedly last 20 years or so in service. I’m no battery expert, but making such a setup and keeping it grid independent seems like a good idea.
Sadly, many/most of us need to maintain grid connection even if we never use it or you will require new inspections and signoffs to ever get service again. In some jurisdictions, grid power is required for legal occupancy. UnAmerican – sure, but that’s reality today.
“I’d suggest thinking about ways to build your own deep cycle cells or batteries from old ones.”
????? or an EARTH battery… that would be interesting to…If you study the earth battery concepts.. then take a look at the eight sided Pyramids.. you can see the similarities.. I would love to see one scaled down with the gold cap.. to see what it would do..
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4553917/metrics#metrics
Or an Air battery.. god I wish I had the money to play with this stuff LOL… tesla’s concept.. there is enough energy floating around us all the time that an air battery would be feasible.. then if you could store that power in an earth battery dam your a head of the game…
How many people carry pocket brains.. does a person think that the energy just lies idle.. nope it is constantly moving.. television satellite etc etc etc.. you can run around a sub station with a light bulb in your hand and it will light up.. that energy surrounds the earth day and night..anyway I could go off on a rant here.. LOL
Cermatec in Utah has a great battery.. tried to get one once.. but they only sell to utility companies and towns..
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/advanced-lithium-sulfur-batteries
Oh I see the kids at Darpa are now the ones running the show and it is off the market.. to bad to.. great battery.. about the size of a mini fridge… and hold huge amounts of power .. now that I think about it.. it was one of the kids that told me about the battery way back then. that was more than a couple of years ago..
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4347039_Experimental_study_of_earth_batteries/link/58d6471b45851533787eb2ed/download
earth battery.. One of the grandkids asked me what I thought about the pyramids.. I said take a good look at it… what does it look like… LOL they were trying to view it but when taking a simplistic look at it.. it shows something completely different..
then take a look at placement of pyramids around the globe and the lay lines.. of the earth.. what did I see.. a global power grid layout.. Was Tesla Right.. I will never know.. seems people want to much control over this stuff and as long as they want to have total control you will never know and the grid will always be fragile ..
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-Tesla-Model-S-85-battery-module-block-24V-250Ah-5-2kWh-3200mAh-cell/173744320608?epid=25021027276&hash=item2873f7f060:g:CZAAAOSwLsxbNp4B
getting a good battery management system is crucial…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Global-Power-LiFePo4-48V-200AH-Power-Wall-with-BMS-Prismatic-Lithium-Ion-Battery/402738843342?hash=item5dc51b0ece:g:~PMAAOSwzEpf3dcK
now you can find a warehouse that has forklifts.. they change batteries about every two years.. check around they will let you have them for core charge.. just check them out to make sure they are still good.. the tesla batteries are the best bet.. in my opinion.. or the lifepo batteries.. junk yards will sell you the tesla batteries or the prius prime batteries for two hundred if you remove them..
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2017-36-VOLT-ENERSYS-18-125-15-FORKLIFT-BATTERY-EXCELLENT-CONDITION-CLEAN/383481743738?hash=item59494b097a:g:PagAAOSw73xef2he
the same with golf courses..
George
I just stumbled across this news item:
“U.S. GOVT LOSES LANDMARK VACCINE LAWSUIT”
https://cairnsnews.org/2018/11/19/u-s-govt-loses-landmark-vaccine-lawsuit/
“Vaccine injury lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,& Del Bigtree, producer of the suppressed anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) are credited with this victory. They demanded the relevant government documents proving that all federally approved vaccines had been tested for quality over the past 32 years — and there were none.”
I suspect we won’t hear about this on the main stream news. I am however looking to find verification that this is true. I hope it is!
Thanks for that link. We should spread this around even though it happened a couple years ago.
— From November 19, 2018
All linked documentation has been scrubbed…
It’s TRUE. What else is TRUE: UNvaccinated kids are healthier than Vaccinated kids, and YES, vaccines DO cause autism in some children who get the MMR vaccines. Also, why get a Hep B shot within 24 hours of birth (sexually transmitted disease) and a synthetic Vitamin K shot? Where are the studies to prove they do no harm? How would you measure that if the effects on development don’t show up for s few years, and you can’t prove it? One day, vaccines will be known to be a modern day plague, especially on Americans. Parents, WAKE UP!!!
Would be careful using anything labeled manure for growing food. Make sure it is not another China knockoff, and we know that all Bull Shit comes out of Washington, D.C.
If George is using the cowpots, that guy was features years ago on “dirty jobs” with Mike Rowe… helluva system that guy came up with.
“Unfortunately, not all of the weeds have been kept at bay. Some of these are stubborn(like democrats) and come back. Despite the nearly 0° temperatures during the Texas blizzard this winter, or voting machines.”
the perfect weed solution.. ( not for sale in California) and fun to play with…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmalTsg4FAA
http://xm42.com/dealers/
You could pre order them LOL… out of stock… dam it anyway especially when I have some pesky weeds to get rid of…
I guess you could build one LOL LOL LOL… easy build..and with C entrally R eadily A vailable P arts around the house and shop….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxQ-sFeDtio
OR you could just buy this fella for $24.95 and hook it up to your 5 gal propane tank:
https://www.harborfreight.com/propane-torch-91033.html
I’ve used it and it works.
That is EXACTLY the one I was using, lol (Mine was upgraded in a recall 5-10 years back)
Parts sorting… an ongoing task at the Volcano ranch ham shack. We have a number of ham radio nets to choose from. 2 meter mornings, MWF, and inter-island 40m nets every noon and afternoon. These get long, typically an hour or more. Lots of parts nearby the radios to sort while listening to the net and awaiting my turn. I don’t attend ALL the nets… just when I feel like sitting awhile. The parts sorting makes me feel productive during what would otherwise just be boring ‘wait time’. And after 40 years in the industry, I don’t watch TV anymore. Not entertaining to me.
Fire ants are an invasive species where I live, and a constant battle with a wild jungle on the next lot. The university ant lab here has learned to battle them in the wild with a bait gel that is an insect growth regulator that sterilizes the colony and allows them to die out, without poisoning fruit trees or the environment.
https://littlefireants.com/
Go to the drop-down menu “Treat LFA” for the gel bait recipe. I have eliminated them on my property, but it is a constant battle around the perimeter, needing treatment every six months. Our ants like to climb trees, and they will drop on exposed skin unexpectedly, with nasty results.
My solar PV system is leased. Advantage was zero cash outlay and they did all the complicated work and interface with the electric company. Unfortunately, the solar outfit gets the tax credits, since they ‘own’ the system. The sales pitch heavily touted the ‘sellback’ to the electric company if we didn’t use all the juice. Again I am disappointed as the software that runs the thing keeps a bare trickle out to the grid, even when the home is not occupied for a week at a time. My electric bill says I consistently sell back 1 kWH to the grid each month… that’s all. Just enough to keep the contract working, I guess. I have also learned that these are ‘cookie cutter’ systems, standardized for mass installation sales. 3.5 kW panels, 7.5 kW inverter, and a 9.5kWH battery system. I have come to understand that the best efficiency is to use the system to the max, draining the battery, and let the grid make up the difference. Never mind sell-back. The ONLY metric that counts is the billing for the grid and lease combined. It just barely pays for itself monthly, which lowers my combined costs compared to when I was totally ‘On grid’. Oh, and we pay 37 cents a kWH out here on our small island grid. That price is what makes the leased PV system viable.
Separate independent PV systems, not grid tied, make a lot of sense. I did just that on a small scale with my solar hot water system. The circulation pump and controller were still ‘on grid’, and if the grid fails I had no hot water! So I put up a single panel and small battery/inverter to run the 120v parts. Pump is 86 watts and runs intermittently during sunny days. The controller is only a few watts, and is kept alive overnight by the battery. Thinking of what it would take to isolate the ham shack and PV power the radios for emergency usage possibly next. (ANOTHER advantage of solid state radios, George!)
Laughably, Hank, for ham radio contests I can run the TSD-590S and the SB-220 on pure solar. (C are to guess as to who (eyeing contest multipliers) came up with that? The solar here runs ONLY the office and ham shack and a freezer (and if needed the shallow well…)
First full day of Spring! I got so excited I wet my plants…:)
As an aside, I hit the 72 milestone today, so, not THAT much younger than Ure…
(Mom always told me that if I would have been born a day earlier or a day later I would have been an offspring…LOL)
“First full day of Spring! I got so excited I wet my plants…:)”
LOL LOL (Choke) Coffee on the screen, now!
Something to chew on that I just ran across. Patents for a “tic-tac” type space & seacraft goody, and a compact nuclear fusion device.
Could be where all those mission trillions went.
https://www.collective-evolution.com/2021/03/16/paradigm-shifting-ufo-tech-that-alters-space-time-is-operable-u-s-navy-chief-tech-officer/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30645682/navy-ufo-patents-compact-fusion-reactor-inventor/
“Picked up a new product from Amazon recently (CowPots 3? Round Cow Pot Planter (12 Pack), 175mL) that may improve our gardening success. ”
you know.. the best potatoes and gardening I ever had was using OLD horse dung.. dam I had three hundred plus pounds of spuds that one year.. and three sweet potatoes that filled a five gallon bucket.. it was amazing..
so the old cow dung seed starting pots might be a good idea..
same monday again . all fixed .. even trying to ramp the goldies in oz .. hava nagila brother yeeeeehhhhaaaa
hey georgey oral vaccine mate !!! its comin mate .. bit of solyent green . youll have a heap of new veges lineing up to hear your tales
Fire ants: large pan of boiling water right down the hill took care of mine in FL. Kills the grass, but the ants move. Just keep working away from the house.
Der der jab em!!!
You big cows like big salty bob moriarty and you george are so respectful not caring about the evil just wanting your big lick as well in markets . So me too !!! What wonderful greed !!
Rampin gittin tough Georgey . Rig something
yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy .. short the USD buy the market buy gold buy stories