When I finally got the main gate actuator in what I thought was a sustainable state, with the solar panel mounted far away on the (unpowered) upper gate, it was time to leave for my mainland trip. Since I wasn’t yet sure that the gate would get adequate energy, I just left the long solar charging cable on the ground along the fence.
Leaving cables loose on the ground isn’t great. It would make any future revisions easier, but runs the risk that the cable would get snagged or trip someone or get cut up by yard equipment. Today I took a boatload of cable ties and dressed the cable to run about 6” off the ground along the bottom of the fence.
I gathered some extra cable into a loop near the solar panel both to make revisions easier and to isolate a potential trouble spot — a splice in the cable joined with wirenuts and weatherized (+/-) with black tape.
The fence along the road is planted with a row of podocarpus, which makes a nice privacy screen but made for sticky, buggy work dressing the cable.
So far, the solar panel has provided ample energy to keep the gate batteries charged.
—2p