The weather up this end of the island this winter has mostly not been too bad. It's not been particularly cold or wet with only a few short groups of days with a cm or so of snow lying and the unusually strong wind storms have all passed us by to the south. It has, however, been persistently a bit windy so I've only really got going in the last week or so which has had some lovely weather (which has, sadly, come to an end for now).
More...Most off-grid houses (and small boats) use DC coupling for the electrical system where power sources (PV panels, wind or water turbines, alternators, generators, etc) feed DC electricity to the battery via a charge controller. The DC from the battery is then either used as such or converted via an inverter to AC at normal household voltages for use.
A few, though, use AC coupling where the power sources feed their output as AC into the “mains” wiring to form a sort of mini-grid with the power flowing in and out of the batteries via an appropriate inverter which also acts as a charger.
I'd assumed I'd just use DC coupling for my house but I'm gradually coming round to the idea of using mostly AC coupling. I'm not really clear about some of the details so here's a snapshot of my thinking to help make things a bit more concrete.
More...Finally, I've finished the north roof.
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As
previously mentioned
I've been interleaving work on the north and south roofs, mostly as the wind indicated.
I don't seem to have many pictures for the north roof but here's a quick summary anyway.
September was mostly about how to do the roof sheeting round the Veluxes on the south roof.
More...I can get depressed any time but I do seem to have a tendency to do so more at the end of August and the beginning of September. I'm not sure why, really, but think it's at least partly a matter of accumulated sleep deficit caused by short nights. Last year it was hardly noticeable but this year it really clonked me on the back of the head.
More...23 of the first batch of 24 of the roof sheets are now up. The 24th, which was the bottom of the pile as delivered, was a bit scratched on the bottom so I've painted over the scratches and set it aside to eventually go on the porch/greenhouse roof.
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