this is me showing my nibling how to harvest salt from the shoreline rocks. it hasn't rained for 3 weeks (very unusual for east hawai'i! it's because of El Niño.), so the salt nooks were in peak shape!
every patch tasted just a bit differently!
the story i had heard was: to gather salt at the shoreline, wait for a big storm with big waves. then, wait for everything to completely dry out. then go look for white salt deposits in the depressions in the rocks.
i figured that even though i hadn't remembered a big storm, 3 weeks of zero rain would certainly result in some good salt buildup. i was right!
cliff salt isn't just salty, it tastes like the sea. a friend told me: "it's concentrated mana from the ocean." it's not like eating table salt.
plus, we were just using the tips of our fingers to get a little out of the caves, so we weren't eating it by the tablespoon. we didn't harvest any to take home, we just did taste tests. by the time we'd tried a bunch, we didn't want any more salt.
it's good to know that should the boats ever stop coming to the island, i know where my nearest salt is: a mere 5 miles away, completely downhill. 🌊 🌋
I can now say that double-sided transparency #solar panels are indeed a good idea. I’ve put my new 200w of this through the rigours of winter, and find that even when catty corner to the rising Sun, it starts pumping amps earlier than my normal panels and more of them. It melts off snow earlier, too. Snow albedo helps even more with ambient light. Worthwhile to get these to use for ground panels for the #offgrid#solarpunk.
"When you're offgrid, you want to conserve power in every way possible. Running your 12v battery into your 120vac inverter to convert back to 12v and 48v is very wasteful. Here I show you how to run your Starlink setup off of 12v DC only! Fairly simple job, Come on in and let's get to it!"
Success! Other than overfilling the tray, creating more of a tight muffin TUBE, they cooked perfectly, up to the opening of the oven (which is cooler) it was a little gooey there. Done in full sunshine before noon, 30 mins in the #solaroven#cooking#offgrid
it helps to design modular structures and systems with parts that are easy to replace with standard parts and tools. everything doesn't have to be under one roof!
it's also helpful to have important parts of the structure/system accessible for troubleshooting and repairs (ie, do not hide electrical circuits behind drywall).
redundancies and fallbacks are also important.
try to avoid single points of failure (although sometimes this is unavoidable).
design a system that your future self will thank you for, because you made it easy to maintain, repair, and upgrade.
I made a new blog post, and in it I show how I build a device to monitor the voltage of a 12V battery and share it over the Internet. Something that might be useful for remote astrophotography rigs or when building off-grid power installations. I'm using a Raspberry Pi Pico and some basic circuitry to make it all work. Take a look!
Off-grid villages are popping up around #Ontario.
"Provincial inspectors have visited some of the controversial off-grid communities being built in the northern Ontario wilderness.
At least one of these new villages welcomes the government oversight...
"The government has been nothing but helpful to us, because they just provide us with more information about how we can move forward with the project.""
Some #offgrid graphs this morning, as it's been an interesting week for power.
The first graph is the daily power use. It's amazingly regular, except fro Friday on which day the washing machine was in use,
The second is battery voltage. The two table-tops on 10th and 11th were top-ups from the car's vehicle-to-load ability, to keep us going until the wind started to pick up late in the week. The voltage slowly climbs as the battery absorbs all those tasty wind amps.
2/...
And here is the correlation between actual power inputs and their sources. Note the day-night greyed section of the radiation graph, how short the day is to try to gather some solar power. The little wind charger really needs winds above 15mph average to provide appreciable amounts of power.
But we have several more days of wind forecast for this week, so we may get a good battery top-up for the end of the year. #offgrid
Well now, this is civilised. After a prolonged period of very little solar power so far north, and not much usable wind power (problematic direction) the house battery for our #offgrid system is rather depleted. We don't let it get below 50% state of charge, although we could discharge it to 20%, but that would start damaging it, as we can't then immediately charge it.
Usually this would mean out with the little petrol generator, but today, Goth Leo the #EV is powering the big battery charger.
An interesting documentary about a mysterious village, which appeared on satellite images out of nothing, in the crater of an ancient volcano in the middle of Madagascar:
#VillageLife mirroring #CruisingLife tonight. Was in the shower when the water stopped, so dried off, got dressed (it's -7°C) and went outside to kick the frozen lid off the manhole that contains the deep well. Climbed down to check the pump that supplies the house with water.
@vaviurka assisted with flashlight and tools. The pressure switch had succumbed to condensation. Got it working again for tonight and will have to swap it for a spare tomorrow.
So I tested again these AliExpress inverters to their limit today and they held up well. They are sold as “5000w peak” and 2000w continuous. The load was is 500w of multiple computer stuff + 1500w from a hairdryer.
Did it while sun was shining (with a few clouds) on 4 panels (producing around 1400w out of theoretical 2000w) going through two different charge controllers. Voltage fell to 24V (down from 30V with small load) but held steady thanks to 4x shared battery bank. #offgrid#solar
The new cable has arrived, so although the house battery is OK at the moment, I've connected Goth Leo the #EV to the house battery charger and Leo is topping up the house battery.
A bit weird seeing the charger working without the noise of a generator for the first time in 25 or so years, and it somehow feels odd to be charging the house battery like this, but now we can collect some power from the village to run the house for a while. #offgrid