Meters 8

Meters

When installing a new power system or doing a little troubleshooting, an appropriate meter can be just the thing to make the job easier.  For example, with the analog voltmeter and the digital ammeter, we were able to determine that the panel above was a little low on output.  What could possibly be wrong? There

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Show Time! 11

Show Time!

John was just about worn out when I talked to him, yesterday.  He’s at the big solar show in Salt Lake City.  Sun Electronics does not have a booth, there.  He’s there to hobnob and network, catching up with old friends and keeping up with the latest offerings. All of the panel makers are there,

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Power Use Optimization and Free Energy Storage 25

Power Use Optimization and Free Energy Storage

In my last post I talked about some seemingly off the wall, but doable, energy storage contrivances.  As for the compressed air storage, apparently some pretty clever people have already thought about this.  Follow this link to a pretty thorough  discussion of the subject. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries-off-the-grid-compressed-air-energy-storage.html. There are some pretty neat pages at Low Tech Magazine

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Cool It 27

Cool It

I never thought I’d be happy about a tropical depression starting to spin up in the Gulf, but it has been really, miserably and mind-numbingly hot around here and the rains have helped in that department.  We’ve topped 100 degrees for days, usually hitting 103-105 after lunch.  It has been so hot that I have

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RTFM!!! 28

RTFM!!!

RTFM!!! That stands for Read The Fine Manual. There are variants on that acronym, depending on your vocabulary. That’s what we used to say when a customer wanted to know how to work something he bought from us, but was unwilling to read the instructions. This happens a lot with solar stuff, too. You may

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Efficiency 37

Efficiency

Going through my morning email newsletters, I came across a press release from a company called LONGi, announcing a new record of solar module output efficiency of 20.41 percent! The exclamation mark was theirs, because another tenth of a percent doesn’t get me all that excited. Last week some outfit announced their record output of

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May I? 41

May I?

Remember when you were a kid and you always had to ask Mom or Dad permission before doing anything so you wouldn’t get your bottom smacked? Boy, you couldn’t wait to grow up so you could do anything you wanted to do! Then you grew up and found out you still had to ask permission

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43

After playing phone tag the other day, John and I were having a conversation about all things solar and my Solar Shed phase 3 performance. He asked how well the modules were performing as these are all recycled salvage panels in the form of roof tiles. I replied that they are doing well, having seen

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Basics 45

Basics

I started taking old radios apart as a very young kid, began my career in electronics at 16, was a licensed broadcast engineer at 19. That led to computers and all kinds of electronic gimcrack design. Having been making sparks for so many years it is easy to forget that some of the basic stuff

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