The low temps overnight have now been in the 30s. Actually, the other day it was supposed to be 28F, however, my neighbors thermometer read 18F. Therein lies the problem.
Lithium batteries don't enjoy being charged up when frozen. They can certainly dish out the juice happily enough in sub freeze temps with minimal loss of capacity (Not like their Lead Acid counterparts). The problem happens when they freeze up from 4-6am and then around 8 when they get charged up again... I am told that charging them this way creates little short circuits internally. Similar to stilagmites.
Ok. So I moved all the electrical inside. It needed to be done. Frank, you'll have to forgive me. In order to do it, I needed a number of feet of 10awg wire. Ace Hardware sold me a 500FT roll of red Thhn-ThWn wire for $115 bucks. Not bad for a hardware store. Comes out to 23 cents a foot. Of course I didn't actually need 500 feet...
Now I'm the proud owner of a system with a bunch of needed breakers between the battery and inverter, the battery and charge controller, and the Photo-voltaic in. Much safer to work with. Plus a nice pretty white box.
I purchased this midnite solar mini-disco box a month ago but never did anything with it because I didn't have a place inside to put it up. That is... I didn't have a place to actually create an inside.
The last thing to do for the electric work is to install the AC breaker box along with a master breaker for it. Plus run all the romex to various outlets and switches throughout the house.
Here is what I've been up to : (Aside from taking down my tents and cleaning up the property - preparing for winter)
PS. I've decided to begin sleeping upstairs. It has a great feeling to it. Something about sleeping on the second floor of houses.
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| Left - Inverter | white is breaker box | Charge Controller on top. Red wires all are labelled clearly. |
