Field Notes

<--2012-04-17 11:30:00 | 2012-05-02 12:00:00-->
Other sites visited today: West Pond | Mayberry | Sherman Island

Twitchell Rice: 2012-04-24 12:00:00 (DOY 115)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Jaclyn, Sara

Summary: Installed new DWR solar panels, removed LGR.

Twitchell
2012-04-24

I arrived about noon time with Jaclyn and Sara. It was hot and sunny with little to no wind and a few clouds drifting in from the west. Ducks Unlimited was there driving around the new wetland area on four-wheelers. We saw Bryan Brock’s car but no sign of him. The field is still waiting for tractor work, but it looks much drier than last week. We did see a tractor on its way to disk a field and it looked like there were two trailers of seed waiting to be planted.

Our field sensors are still out of the ground. The system was running on the solar but I’m not sure it is running over night.

The project for today was to install three of the new DWR solar panels (Kyosera KD140SX-UFBS sn 11ZV0M0828, -0829, -0835. 140W, 12V). I forgot a drill bit and the hack saw, so I sent Jaclyn to Rio Vista to buy these tools. While Jaclyn was away Sara and I worked of getting the panels mounted and wired. When Jaclyn got back I sent them both to the Pilot Ponds to finish the met installation there.

The three DWR panels went up on the 4’x8’ base that has been sitting at the Twitchell site since it was set up. The panels are mounted on two 2”x2”x8’ aluminum angle rails. The panels are attached to the rails with tri-groove security nuts and bolts. The rails are mounted to 1.25” aluminum pipe with Kee Klamp fittings. The vertical pipe supports are attached to the base with two u-bolts each. I did not get the second layer of security bolts in place. The panels were wired in parallel with some #10 three solid conductor AC cord. The ground was cut out at the ends. White was connected to the positive terminals and black to the negative. One of the mounting rails covers the edge of the junction boxes on the back of the panels making it impossible to open the boxes without dismounting the panel.

When we hooked up the new panels about 15:30PDT, the old panels were giving about 2A to the system and the new panel gave about 5A. The batteries were at 13.9V so the solar controller might have been throttling the power a bit.

We removed the LGR and pump and screen, keyboard and regulator. LGR sn 05-0010 and pump sn 03387648.

0 photos found

6 sets found

12 TW_met graphs found