The First Cloudy Day

Shut down our solar panels when we saw this coming. 

If you want to know the true meaning of anxiety, be a solar energy newbee - and I mean a seven day newbee - on the first cloudy day. If anxiety is rated on a a  scale of 1-10, I would probably be >10.

Well, maybe I exaggerate just a bit ... a big bit, but today didn't even start out particularly sunny. The sun was in and out, so I did find myself watching the read out jump around - 13.1, 14.2, 13.6, 14.5. These are the volts coming from our solar panels. We want a charge cycle to be around 14.7 and, when the batteries are charged, a maintenance cycle of 13.7.  I finally called it quits when Pamela returned from the store and pointed out some dark clouds just coming over the Dome Rock Mountains.

I don't know about the desert, but most places I know probably wouldn't even report a 1% chance of rain. They'd say "no chance". Most places I've been don't consider 20% much of a chance, but I couldn't help wondering. 1% is 100% greater chance that any other day we've been here, and the 2% forecast for the next hour is a 200% increase. Maybe I should pay attention. After all, the normal humidity is around 15-18%. The forecast for this afternoon was 24% humidity while the actual humidity report was a towel-wringing 35%. The clouds are not the usual nimbus one associates with rain, but I'm out of my element here. The temperature is falling rapidly. That, however, I've learned is typical when there is not direct sun. We can have a cool breeze all day even though it might be 80+ in the sun. The desert appears to hold absolutely no heat, unlike a city which might be 10 degrees warmer than the surrounding country because all the concrete and asphalt begins to give off the heat it absorbed.

Even as I sit here writing I look out our large back window and see the signs of nimbus. I look carefully for signs of rain on the mountains a few miles south of us. In the northern Rocky Mountains you can almost always see the rain line as it crests the mountain.

Of course I know that I won't have a blazing sun every day. The idea is to have enough energy stored in your batteries to get through cloudy and storm days. The question right now is 'do we have enough battery?' Yes, I know. The solar and RV rule is 'you can never have enough battery' but at this point we have as much as we can charge. It's not going to do you any good if you can't charge it.

Solar power is really becoming much more affordable. We are using portable solar panels because we don't want to drill holes in our roof (that can be disastrous on a trailer) and we don't want to have to have solar panels determine which direction we face Sinni. The portable are more expensive because each unit has its own regulator. We will probably look at more solar panels before more battery so we will charge what we have more efficiently. We've looked at the new lithium batteries. They cost $1,000 to $2,000 for 100 amp hours. We have 224 amp hours. The advantage, however, is that you can run a lithium battery down to nothing. Even our good AGM batteries should not be run down more than 50%. So a 100 amp hour lithium battery will last as long as a 200 amp hour AGM battery. Food for thought. They are also very light weight, so you can carry many more.

Most of the threatening sky is now to our east. Probably no rain for the desert here. I wander back to my volt meter. We have a comfortable 12.6 volts with the batteries off the chargers.

My anxiety level is down. Well, maybe it wasn't really all that high, but I have learned to trust my equipment. We had put a lot of time and energy into selecting it. Now I can go back to studying the lovely and interesting plants around us which we see getting greener by the day. Did you know that the tall iconic Saguaro cactus might be over 100 years old. All Saguaro are protected by law in Arizona. But I'll tell you more about that in another blog.  

This magnificent Saguaro cactus must be >40 feet high.
That would put it well over 100 years old.