Field Notes

<--2020-09-23 11:45:00 | 2020-10-05 09:30:00-->
Other sites visited today: Vaira | Tonzi | Tonzi
Phenocam link: Searching...

East End: 2020-09-29 08:30:00 (DOY 273)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others:

Summary: Testing solar power battery bank, system running on one new battery temporarily

East End
2020-09-29

I arrived at 8:30. It was clear sunny and mild with no wind and a hazy sky. Air quality was in the moderate range. The wetland was still mostly dry but there was a bit of water appearing under the solar power scaffolding where it had been dry before. I found the screen for the tipping bucket on the road and the bucket seemed twisted to the east â€“ hard to believe it blew that hard out here.

I stopped on my way to Tonzi to disconnect all the batteries (sn BB-EE) at EE for testing. There were lots of cold wasps there that I just shoveled out of the way with a tule stem. The power was off when I arrived due to low battery disconnect. I added a relatively new car battery from the lab and booted up the system with that. The system ran all day with that battery.

I left about 9am for Tonzi and returned at about 15:30.

On my way home I stopped and checked the batteries with the load tester. All except one were giving super weak and somewhat variable readings. The best of the bunch consistently read near the weak to good line. However the new battery I brought was a much more solidly good - hardly any drop in voltage when the load tester pulled 50A. I thought it better to leave the system running on the one new battery than to try pairing the new battery with any of the older batteries and risk damaging the new battery. So the system is running on one battery for the time being. 80Ahr half of which is usable so 40Ahr and a continuous load of 2A should give us 20hrs of power before needing another hit of solar power.

We had a short at that site a while back that was pulling like 6A for a week or so, I think that is what really killed that battery bank.

I just bought four new sealed AGM batteries for $870.00. Now we just need to keep that site running for another 10-15 years to see if the investment pays off.

I'm trying to decide if I can wait until Tuesday next week and go and swap batteries or to go sooner â€“ heat and air quality look bad the rest of the week.

0 photos found

11 sets found

14 EE_met graphs found