Events

As
you are probably all aware, there have been some serious wildfires in
West Texas. The Fort Davis/Marfa fire has consumed 166,00 acres and is
60% contained, according to KRTS as of yesterday.  Because of the
extended drought and the rampant fires up north, many people have
started clearing the brush around their homes in hopes of creating a
protective firebreak. There is still no sign of rain for months.

Sara
spent a week in Southern California visiting my sister and her family.
While she was gone, my friend Arick and I took a big step toward
finishing the house: installing our drywall. The drywall turned out
great and definitely sharpened my skills.  It took about 1100 pounds of
the stuff to cover the main portion of our home.

We
would also like to give a huge thanks to Lee Allen (Sara's dad) for
donating some very useful equipment to our system: five 85 watt solar
modules, a pure sine wave inverter, a MPPT charge controller, and a
powerful notebook computer.  We will be posting some stats on these
components as we use and learn about them in the upcoming weeks.

Our
power system has been operating from a sort of a quick-and-dirty
initial setup, but now we are overhauling everything and we want to do
the best possible job; a model installation we can be proud of.  We
initially bought three 85W panels to add to our system, and then when my
Dad picked them up from the warehouse in Miami he surprised us with a
gift of three more.  With these six panels and the five from Sara's dad
added to our two 130W monos and one Harbor Freight unit, we will now
have over a kilowatt of PV modules.  The planned overhaul also includes
relocating the batteries and control/distribution system into a
ferro-concrete utility room that is separate from the house.