It's UP !!!

[Jeff]

    It's UP!!!

    Yahoooo! I finally got my new solar panel tower up! Took me long enough, I've been trying to get someone to help me almost two weeks now. I've poured one bag of concrete into the holes already. I'm going to let that set a couple hours before I pour the other bag in (just because I want to take a break, LOL).

    A very special thanks to Joseph, my neighbor William's brother. He came by this morning & helped me get the thing raised! I thought I'd have to do it by myself, and had all kinds of supports, guy wires/ropes, and pulley systems (called a block & tackle), to make it easy but slow for 1 person to do it. And that in a wheelchair no less! The whole mess looked like some huge spider-thing out of "War of the Worlds"! He thought it would be impossible without 3-4 other guys helping...hahahaha! I loved seeing how shocked he was when I could hold the weight of the entire thing while he lined things up! The block & tackle I used has a 6-to-1 ratio, meaning that for every 1 pound I pulled, it pulled 6 pounds on the tower. God! I love physics!

    I made the tower out of 3 sections of treated wood 4x4's, the framework out of pieces of angle iron I've been collecting, and the tilting & rotating part of it from power window assemblies out of an old '76 T-Bird. Hopefully tonight, I'll get someone to take down my solar panels from where they're just laying on the roof. Then, tomorrow morning, I can tip down the upper section of the tower & mount the panels on the top.

    Now my solar panels will be about 6-7 feet higher to get more sun earlier & later. AND! ... I can tilt and rotate the whole set of panels so they're always directly facing the sun! I'll still have to do this sort of manually using the same buttons that came out of the T-Bird to power the windows. I'll adjust them every 2-3 hours for now (I can see if they're putting out the max by looking at the meter that tells me how many Amps they're putting out). According to the "figures", and reading about what others have gained by installing a tracking system on their solar panels, I'll get at least another 50% more charging power!

    This may be enough that I won't have to use a very small charger on my batteries during the night. For those that don't know, I'm getting ALL my power from solar, and 4 large batteries for storage. This includes lights, refrigerator, some occasional TV, computer, heating (solar assisted, of course), A/C, and keeping my wheelchair charged. The only thing I'm using the Power Company's power for is making sure my battery bank doesn't get too low. Either making sure my batteries get fully charged during the day, or adding more batteries for more storage will eliminate the need for any power from the utility company (or both, we'll see...).

    The next part of this project is making a detecting system that automatically moves my solar panels for me. Once again this will be mostly from parts out of "junk" ... TV's and VCR's that most everyone throws away (and I've been a devoted pack rat!). The parts from the remote controls circuits are most of it. I think the worst case is I might have to buy 5-10$ worth of parts. But... that's the least of my worries, and getting moved down the list until time and the need make it a higher priority!

    Yahoooooo! Another huge savings, benefit, and step towards being totally & permanently independent from the electric company! Instead of an IRA or Social Security like a lot of people plan on, I'm working on & making these future "bills" non-existent!

[Stonebrain]

Congratulations,great work.

I'm in a wheelchair too.Incredible you planned to get up the thing on your own.

Send some pics if you can.You can find a decent camera quite cheap these days.

Would be great if you can get independent from the electric copany.you still need some money for the investments though.

cheers,

jaap

[richhagen]

Congratulations.  I'll second the photo idea of Stonebrain.  I would have loved to have seen a picture of your block and tackle setup to get it into place.  I remember doing some calculations on relative forces for different riggings for a test or two a while back, but I've never used one in practice.  Rich

[Jeff]

Wish I had a cam! I've had two of those "cheapies" that lasted a year at best (2 months for the other one). Still trying to get another "friend" to bring his by & take some much-overdue pics.

  Sorry about the over-simplification of my diary input, I wrote it so I could send/post it to several places & friends.

I use my block & tackle for darn near everything. Even used it to drag around the pieces of the tower and get it into position once assembled. If my hands and arms continue getting worse, I'm going to have to build a !@$%^ robot! And that's not kidding!

I tipped the tower down this morning. That's all I could do for a couple hours. I have one solar panel ready to mount on it, and hope I can get back to put it on in a hour or so. More later...

[Jeff]

LMAO! I didn't really plan on having to put it up on my own! I just got pretty far along on the "back-up plan" when friends that said they would come by to help me put it up didn't show!

[antw]

Are power window assemblies strong enough to hold the panels still in a strong wind?  What size area are your panels?

Antony

Off grid 20 months

[Jeff]

It's the gear reduction (and mounting, of course) that determines how well they'll hold in a strong wind. Even a 7:1 reduction using a worm-type gear makes backlash nearly impossible. That's about what the window motor drives are. Output is listed as 75rpm. With a larger gear mounted to the frame, I'm reducing that again to about 20:1. The panel set I have is the H.F. 45watt package, all 3 panels together are 36inches by 38inches.

[elvin1949]

 Be sure you have older model window motors.

They have metal gears the newer one's have plastic gears.  I think you said TBird parts. I worked for Ford forever it seems like.

later

Elvin

[Jeff]

Yeah, it is a '76 model T-Bird (I think). I forgot all about newer models probably using plastic gears! Glad these were real metal!

Well, it's been up & working almost a week now. It's nice to look at the ammeter and adjust the panels, even though it may only be an increase from 1amp to 1.8amps. Funny how H.F. must rate these panels. Open voltage runs about 22-25 volts in good sun. So...2amps would make that the 45watt rating.

Now to get to work on the 12v air conditioning! High 90's here all week with the heat index of 105-110 !!!

[elvin1949]

 Where are you at.That weather forecast is just like mine.  West_Louisiana

later

Elvin

[Jeff]

I'm in southern NC 12 miles from the SC border @ Dillon. HOT ! ! !

I even had one of the motors, the one that operates the tilt axis quit working due to heat!

[Jeff]

Had to go to the hosopital this morning. Transportation arrived 2 hours early, so... I forgot to adjust the panels for a better angle before leaving. When I left, they were still pointing at "sunrise", and putting out 1.45 amps. When I got back at 3 in the afternoon, obviously they were pointing almost directly away from the sun. The meter read 0.55amps! WOW! After adjusting the panels, they shot back up to 1.95amps! Definitely a good incentive for having a tracking system!

Added: After repeated problems with the tilt-axis motor, I shorted the heat sensing switch with a small (22 guage?) piece of wire. So far, no problems. BUT, this is STILL a temporary fix! Can't remember if I mentioned before, but I tried wrapping the motor with a layer of insulation, then a layer of alum. foil. Then 1 more of each again. It seemed to work OK for a few days, but then another 100 degree day brought on the same problem!

I've downloaded schematics for a tracking system (found from this site, of course!), and even found kits for these. The next step I've found is to check on how much each of these automatic controllers "hunt". That means, when the sun goes behind a cloud, the system may run for a few minutes trying to find the best place. OR... the controller tries to adjust every 5-10 seconds, almost eliminating any benefit you'd get from automatic tracking! Seems so far, 1 adjustment only every 90-120 minutes is more than enough.

[elvin1949]

  Rural McG

  I agree on periodic adjustment,but i would say every 60 to 90 minute's.If you wait for 2 hours you will loose a little more.

later

Elvin

[Jeff]

I checked the amperage difference in 1/2 hour, it varied between 0.04 and 0.07 amps, so I'm not loosing much if I can only make it to readjust for max 1/2 hour late. Heck! I'm lucky if I can even get up that often! LOL

I borrowed one of those "cheapie" cameras from a friend and got some pics!!! The emphasis seems to be on "cheapie"! I don't think this camera is even RATED in mega-pixels! It's more like 340k pixels. So... although I finally got some pics, it's barely enough to even verify I got something sticking up in the backyard.

What looks like a horizontal bar coming out at the top is actually just the back leg of the main mounting frame for the panels. The next horizontal bar coming out a few feet down is a center bar that was on the axle I used to mount the whole thing to the 4-by-4. The axle has a 3/4 inch bar the entire length, welded to a piece of 2-by-2 angle iron, with about 6inches sticking out on each end. I used one of the rims on that axle to mount the whole she-bang to, but you can hardly see it from the quality of the pics.

Taken early this morning. You can just notice a last-minute change I made to the existing Harbor Freight mounting frame. I didn't like how flimsy it was, and I found a piece of 1 inch angle-iron to replace the upper cross-bar (going across the middle of all 3 panels).

Now that I'm using my old "work and CAD" computer, I looked up the spec. on the Kevlar cord That I'm using for guy wires. It's MIL Spec. MIL-C-87129 type 9, 2000lb.

That's the last I had of that cord. BUT, I still have lots of other Kevlar webbing, tape, and thread!

At the very top, you can also barely see I put an extra wrapping of Kevlar, it's a Sandia spec.: SS323241 type 6, class 8R, 1 inch, 4000#. Not just for the highest stress point, but for a better & softer mounting for the guy "wires".

I pre-drilled and screwed the axle to one corner of the 4-by-4 with 3-1/2inch wood screws, not only to prevent splitting of the 4by4, but because I couldn't drive the @%*!^! things in by hand! I had to cut the 4by4 at a 45 about 1 1/2inches back and 4ft. down to clear the 3/4 axle. It's welded inside the 2x2 angle iron. There was just enough left of the 2x2 angle iron sticking out to mount flush to the 4by4.

The entire axle/4by4 is wrapped with MIL-T-87127 type 2 Kevlar tape/tubing, 9/16 inch, rated 1500lb. to prevent the 4by4 splitting, or the whole thing coming off.

Hey, it's what I had laying around! I never claimed it to be the best designed ny far! Just the best with what I had laying around.

added: Oh! I know Kevlar isn't the best for standing up to exposure, so I dipped them all in some Thompson's (generic brand) weather seal. Guess I'll see how it stands up! Bad weather yesterday afternoon put some 50+ mph wind on it, and it was still standing when I got home from the doc's!!!

[elvin1949]

 Made from stuff just laying around.

50 mph wind and it is still standing.

Sounds like good stuff to me,design ain't bad either.

 Looks good to me,keep having fun.

later

Elvin

[Jeff]

Thanks Elvin! Glad I had that "junk" just laying around!

Update: it's still up & working fine. And still loving all the extra amps charging I'm getting from aligning the panels. Even if I only do it 2-3 times a day is giving me about 50% more charging power easily!

Elvin, I missed your offer of your HF controller. Sorry about being so late replying, but it's just not worth it for me on a very limited budget. It would be good to have as a working reference to see what blew in the other 2 controllers. But, I'm using a dimmer pot. for the inside lights on a 70's T-Bird to reduce voltage from 12v for all my stuff that benefits from it. It handles a lot more amps than the HF controller too.

I've tried a couple new posts now, but they don't seem to show up. They get accepted, but when I go back to look at them, or use SEARCH to find them, they aren't there!

I'm finally getting started on a genny! I may be powering it with a savonius type VAWT for the first 6-12 months. Ultimately, I hope to be able to get or build a small engine powered by solar heated water/ammonia and use that on the genny.

I'll try creating a new post in WIND about the new genny.