Articles
Field notes from off-grid
Off-grid living, field testing, and what it takes to run on the sun.
10 days off grid. Building SunBloc in the monsoon.
I'm about to fall asleep and off-handedly check the weather. What I see is concerning. It's going to rain for the next 10 days straight. That can't be right. Even during the height of the monsoon season it rarely rains for more than three days in a row in Arizona. This forecast is telling me every single day will be wet and cloudy. I brought 24 burritos in a portable camping fridge. How am I supposed to manage electrical work loads with needing to keep my food preserved for the duration of...
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The Nameplate Lied Part 2: Reversing Sulfation on an AGM Battery Bank
It's midday. The day after the stress test. The charge controller is in float. The symptom that starts an investigation. The batteries are pushing back every time the controller tries to push current to them. After a night of deep discharge, these batteries should be consuming every watt the solar can deliver. Instead they're refusing the charge. The last article ended with a diagnosis: sulfation. This article is about the recovery. THE HISTORY This shouldn't be happening to batteries that...
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The Nameplate Lied: Real-World AGM Battery Capacity, Sulfation, and What Happens When You Push a Solar System to Its Limits
I wake up. The first Sunbloc stress test was just completed the night before. Other than the voltage being uncharacteristically low the batteries operated without failure. A low SoC event but completely recoverable. I check the controller. It's in float. That shouldn't be happening at all. Even worse it's only midday. The batteries should be swallowing up all the energy possible after a night of deep discharge. Their was more to the state of the batteries. One stress test shouldn't...
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