Having switched most everything over to our new solar plant, we decided the old system (which we were running on hot standby) was no longer necessary and we can burn that bridge. At the same time, our dear friends are remodeling a small hale on their property and were having trouble with its solar power. Now, the equipment in the photo above has already been deprecated and the “new” equipment I gave away is in much better condition. The batteries and generator are only a year and a half old, and the inverter is an old OutBack system that is reputed to be bulletproof. So Francis came by today and we removed the old system so that he can give it a new home.
I’m delighted that it won’t go to e-waste and that I won’t be selling it. (I rather dislike selling things.) It will serve a useful purpose and, I hope, make our friends happier.
There’s a side effect that I anticipated by didn’t adequately prepare for. The garden lights that illuminate the path to the outdoor shower and make it usable at night were wired directly to the 12-volt battery system of the old inverter. Similarly, there was a fluorescent lamp in the kitchen and another in the bathroom wired the same way. That was kind of cool in that you’d have light even if you managed to run the batteries down to where the inverter stopped working (we never did), but now the 12-volt system is all gone.
Surely, in the piles of old electronics I shipped over from the mainland, there has to be something that I can make into 12-volt power for the lights.
As a plus, having removed the multi-hundred-pound cast iron bathtub, the 100+ pound inverter, and over four hundred pounds of lead acid batteries from the bathroom wall, I can now work on making the bathroom floor level.
—2p