The day the plant came alive

The batteries are wired, the inverter is running, and there is 120 volts coming out of a box on the wall that was a stack of parts this morning. Two lithium packs, a fuse, a pair of busbars, an inverter, a charge controller. No panels connected yet — that is tomorrow, because it started raining. … Read more

The batteries are in

The bank is racked and sitting in its box in the corner of the studio — two 48-volt lithium packs, about a hundred pounds each, on oak rails inside an insulated plywood box I built to fit the corner. That corner’s been the plan since I bench-tested the inverter a few weeks back. Now it … Read more