Awesome Off Grid Solar Power Then Catastrophic Failure All Around

Friday was an awesome day for solar power at the off grid homestead and the tiny house on wheels. The sun was shining brightly and reflecting onto the solar panels. The new solar panels were pumping out the power.

I hit 700 watts at one point but then suddenly my charge controller started to show an error and the power was reduced down to only about 300 - 400 watts for the rest of the day. Now keep in mind that with 12 volt batteries my charge controller maxes out at 800 watts.

So with loss in the lines and low winter sun 700 watts is very good.

But I cannot explain the reduced output of 300 watts the rest of the day, nor the error.

No matter this was double what I had been bringing in so far with the other solar panels so I am happy.

I went from a daily winter total of 1200 watts to about 2600 watts by adding the second set of solar panels.

The wind was blowing strong and steady all day so I was getting a nice amount of wind power as well.

But later as evening approached and the sun was setting in the sky, I noticed something wrong. My battery bank was very low. This should not be after a near record day of winter solar power.

My wind turbine was still spinning happily so I figured the battery power should be higher not lower. I went outside and realized that there was no more wind. The wind turbine was spinning with no wind.

This could only mean one thing. My blocking diode had shorted out during the day and now I have a 350 watt DC motor draining my battery bank.

I had to disconnect the wind turbine from the batteries fully and put on a dump load directly to the wind turbine to keep it from self destructing in the wind.

I went out to fire up the Harbor Freight 800 watt generator but it would not run right. It ran but very slowly. So I shut it down and fired up the DC generator.

Sadly the DC generator belt flew off broken not minutes after I fired it up. The draw on the alternator from the heavily discharged battery bank was too much for the generator and the belt broke from the strain.

So in a single day I lost all sources of power.

That evening I used my laptop on its own battery power to work on the video of the day while I used only the modem on the forklift battery bank.

I used battery powered LED lamps to light up the off grid tiny house for the night.

Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
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