Off The Grid

WIll Prowse has built a power station on a hand truck a few times. But once you get beyond a 5kw server rack battery, it could get a little tippy. So here's an form factor that is modeled after a normal contractor grade generator.

Roles of men and women.

The 3rd function button on my tractor joystick was always jankey, so I decided to give one of these $14 chinese mini excavator joystick handles a shot. The plastic body is M12 and that adapter pipe that comes with it is M14 on the other end. The shank on tractor is an unthreaded 13mm rod. I ordered M13 tap and die set yesterday and they arrived today. It didn't take long to take the joystick off the tractor and I mounted the rod in my hobby lathe. Cut some off the end and turned it so the end was true. Used the tail stock to ensure the die was square on the end of the rod and threaded it about 40-50mm down the rod. The buttons on this joystick handle are real snap action 5amp switches. I had expected them to be a membrane type but they are the real deal for directly operating my diverter solenoid.

Obligatory prepping topic for the day. If you aren't living the lifestyle you are kidding yourself. So many people focus on the sexy stuff like guns. The truth is you cannot simply say "poof I'm a prepper". You will not bug out to some other place. if you can make it there you may find that someone else is already in your hidey hole. You may find that any supplies you staged there are gone. The truth is you need to move to your bugout permanently so you can always keep it up. You will not throw seeds in the ground a 3 months later have food to eat. You will have to build up infrastructure. You'll have to make sure the well is operable. On a small scale, i've gone thru many iterations of watering systems for animals and you will too. You will not only need to grow food but also a way to preserve it to get through the next winter. None of these things will go right the first time. Or the 2nd time. You need to think about what happens when you get a cut and an infection? What happens when you break an arm? What happens when you get food poisoning? Do you have a suture kit? Do you have a way to brace your arm? Do you have diarrhea meds so you don't get dehydrated? There's a fine line between prepping and hoarding. you'll start out buying one or two of everyting you need. Then you'll do projects around the house and use up your supplies. Eventually , you end up with a storage bulding full of things you will need but you don't want to touch them yet... so you go to the store like everyone while you can. Pick some piece of infrastructure in your house and pull a "fire drill" on yourself. example: your pump pressure switch just failed. Do you have a spare? Do this weekly for different parts of your house. What if the wife caught the stove on fire, do you have an extinguisher or baking soda to put it out? you know your circumstances... the point of this is to make YOU think about what little things could go wrong. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, Being overtaken and slain by the enemy, If you have some fancy prepping gear or a plan that you've not tested, it may as well not work. There will always be something that bites you in the ass. It's best to go ahead and rip the bandaid off and live as you imagine you will live with the economy crashes. Please keep in mind that a sexy plot element in most post apocalyptic stories is the EMP. it's very unlikely to happen. What is likely to happen could be a pathogen introduced into the population or a collapse of the economy. Just something to think about today.

If you are considering an inverter, there are two classifications... "off grid" and "hybrid". Off Grid has an internal transfer switch that either powers your load from the AC input (grid /gen) or from it's internal inverter. 100% of your load will be supplied from the generator or grid when they are available. These inverters to monitor the incoming AC voltage and frequency and if it gets too far out of spec, they will disconnect and supply power internally from batteries instead. Hybrid inverters have the ability to synchronize with the grid or generator. This gives them the ability to load share with the incoming power supply. For example, you have a small 1kw generator that cannot possibly run your house. If you run your microwave oven and the load suddenly goes to 1500w, your 1000w generator can't supply this power... so 1000w comes from generator and 500w comes from your batteries. When the load is below 1000w, the excess power available from the generator is used to charge batteries. This allows you to use a cheaper generator. Victron has added to this "blending" in their inverter software. If you suddenly change the load on a generator it will cause it to slow down a bit before the throttle can respond. If the generator slows too much, the inverter may think it is out of spec and disconnect. To solve this Victron inverters will take 100% of the surge and then slowly back off what they are producing from the battery. Over a period of 60seconds, they will slowly give over more and more load to the generator. The result is a sudden increase in load will gradually shift to your generator. A friend here running SMA inverters used this power limiting feature to run his house off a small extension cord. He programmed the inverter to never pull more than 1500w from the grid to avoid "demand fees" from his utility provider. The result was he could run hte microwave, hotwater, etc and it never pulled more than 1500w from the grid. He used this methodology until he got his solar panels installed.

https://youtu.be/WXZpjZidCNk

Signature Solar has release some design tools. Natually this caters to EG4 inverters, but if you dig a little it will tell you the Voc voltage on cold mornings and such. https://designtools.eg4electronics.com/

Soooo freaking windy today. That dog that I am so fond of was caught red pawed eating the head off a dead goat who'd gotten it's head stuck in the fence. Discussed with wife and looked at the carcass.... she said if he'd do that to a small goat, he'd do it to a child. The dog "went to live on a farm" immediately. Breaks my heart. But it had to be done. In other news didn't get much done today because of the wind. It was just bitter cold. Did get two 800lb bales of hay set out in two paddocks.