Wood, power, code, dirt, and dinner — a work log from an off-grid mountain guy
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 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
Last winter there was three feet of icy snow on the ground for the better part of three months, and I hauled every drop of water I used by hand. No truck was getting up here. Five-gallon jugs in a wheelbarrow, 2 at a time, across the ice from the neighbors well, every couple of … Read more
The inverter showed up a few ago and has been sitting in its box. Before it goes on the equipment wall and gets wired for good, it needed a bench test — mostly because I bought it gray-market, and a gray-market inverter is worth proving genuine before you trust it with a battery bank. Two … Read more