Seems like we've had a few gray days this spring! This one is interesting, though, because it gives us, right off, a glimpse into how our solar/battery system works when the sun isn't shining (to compare to yesterday's sun).
Here's how the last two days shaped up:
Yesterday (almost full sun, but the system wasn't turned on until 10:30 in the morning)-
We pulled in 11.88 kWh of energy from the panels;
We did two full loads of laundry, pumped some water, charged the house batteries, used some power tools, and ran the dishwasher; and
At 5:30, the batteries were in float, and we were still pulling in over 500 watts of power. (Float is that period of "maintenance charging" of the basically-full batteries.)
Today (very overcast)-
We pulled in just under 3.5 kWh of energy from the panels;
I charged my computer, we charged the house batteries for a few hours, and we had the phone and wireless internet turned on;
For the majority of the day, we were only pulling in about 350 watts of power, but we were in float for several hours of the day.
Pretty big differences!
In other solar-related news, our new SunFrost fridge has been completed and is on its way from California. It's scheduled to arrive next Monday to replace the old propane Servel we've been using. We'll see how it interacts with the battery bank; it's supposedly the most efficient fridge on the market today, so we should be all set.
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