anemometer, broken solar, and doc wattson.

[birdhouse]

hello-
got back from a three day weekend up at my place.  i managed to get a doc wattson hooked up that didn't work, 390w worth of broken glass solar panels installed, and a davis brand weather station installed. 

the doc wattson...  i modded it by removing the internal shunt, and used sense wires that went to an external 100A shunt.  hooked one of the red wires to the battery + and used the two (used to be black wires) to run to the external shunt.  the unit powered right up, but wouldn't record anything.  if i removed one of the sense wires from the shunt, the meter would peg to 3447w, or something like that.  other wise, nothing.  i think i may have damaged the unit with the soldering iron while removing the internal shunt.  now that it's modded, the warranty is out the window, so guess i'll order another. 

davis weather station...  nice piece of product!  i'm impressed with the quality, and detail.  the anemometer is located @ 62' of my total 70' of tower.  funny how sometimes the turbine will be spinning while the anemometer isn't and vice versa.  i think it takes about 2mph of wind to get the blades to move, but then the rotational mass will keep them spinning even once the anemometer has stopped.  it did record a high wind speed of 25mph on sunday night.  i was asleep, and with a fried doc wattson, i have no clue what the turbine did.  though i did wake up with a full battery bank!   

broken solar panels...  some of you may remember i got two free evergreen 195w 12V panels a while back, and fixed them with automotive clear cote.  well, i finally got those installed.  it is a really cheesy mount because i don't really care about them!  put the positive wire through a 40A 60V diode with a decent size chunk of ALU.  wow, that got hot!  so i added some more ALU, and it was better.  they are wired right to the battery bank, and my ts-60 will keep the bank in check.  i saw 6A @ 26.5V out of them at around 1pm. 

i also bought two 30w new panels, but didn't get around to mounting/installing those. 

i also made a deck and sides for the four wheeler trailer.  (no pics)  to make it easier to gather firewood, and brush clearing. 

almost forgot, i taped a cheesy solar spotlight to my tower.  it's angle isn't perfect, but it makes for pretty fun night time turbine watching! 

and now for the pics!

adam

[DamonHD]

Mmm, nice!

Rgds

Damon

[SparWeb]

I just got a Davis system like yours, too.  I dove in head-first and got the weather-link too, so now my wife knows if it's raining at home when she's at work.
It's mounted near the base of the tower, and I'm planning to move it to a taller location, once I find a suitable lattice (TV) tower for it.
If you decide to get the Davis weather link, drop me a note and I'll give you some pointers, because setting it up is tricky (stuff that's not in the manual, stuff you wouldn't think matters but really really does).

[birdhouse]

spar-
isn't the weather link another 200 bucks or something?  i don't even have internet up there, so thinking i might not gain much! 

i would like to get some yearly graphs together as time goes on.  not sure as to how to approach that yet. 

adam

[thirteen]

Good table trimings.  How much snow do you get?
Birdhouse, if there is a airport close bye you might be able to get weather records covering you for both wind and rain. Just a side thought.

[birdhouse]

thirteen-
no airport within 100 miles 

four foot of snow is about max i think.  i've only ever seen three foot myself. 

adam