Field Notes

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Other sites visited today: East End | West Pond | Twitchell Alfalfa
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Mayberry: 2018-01-23 09:30:00 (DOY 23)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Daphne

Summary: Fixed multiple wiring issues with solar system, added two solar panels.

Mayberry
2018-01-23

Daphne and I arrive at 9:30am. It was cool, calm and sunny with high thin clouds. The cattails and tules are dead and brown. The weeds on the levees are green.

All power was off when we arrived. Even the charge controller was off. Inspecting the batteries I discovered that one connection was loose and two other connection were left unconnected when I installed the new batteries (see diagram below). Iâ€™m not sure how the system was even functioning and was worried that some of the batteries may have been over worked and damaged. The battery with the loose connection also had a ding in the top near the positive terminal that was venting bubbles.

Diagram of battery connections

After fixing the wiring on the batteries the solar charger was running and there was voltage at the tower but as soon as a load was added the power died. I was worried the batteries were dead, so I disconnected all of them to test individually. They all read 12.9 or 13V but I didnâ€™t have a load tester. I ended up arcing each battery with a battery cable and retesting the voltage. All the batteries produced strong arcs and retained their voltages. We then connected the power line to the tower directly to the batteries â€“ bypassing the charge controller. Still got voltage but no power at the tower. Finally we pulled the power line out of the conduit and found a just barely connected break near the beginning of the boardwalk. After fixing this break with a wire nut and putting everything back together, all seemed well. We need about 60ft of wire to replace the run to the tower.

Additionally, we added two more 140W solar panels (sn 11ZV0M0856, sn 11ZV0M0835) to the power system. These are on a temporary frame to the east of the existing panels.

Daphne checked to make sure all the sensors were running, collected data, cleaned the 4-way and restarted the camera.
The 7700 read: 2.2ppm CH4, 54 RSSI â€“ 76 after cleaning â€“ refilled wash reservoir
The 7500 read: 423ppm CO2, 491mmol/m3 H2O, 13.4C, 102.5kPa, 99.7SS

We left at 12:10

2 photos found

20180123MB_TempSolar.jpg ( 2018-01-23 12:03:48 ) Full size: 1440x1920
Temporary solar panels (two 140W panels) set up for the winter.