It's not winter anymore folks see the outside temperature insides 80
outsides 81 82
Today we have a million and a half things to do and hash tag this isn't a rant. This is just life
We're not venting. It's just life. So we're staring at all
we told you we're going to tell the story we didn't say it was all peaches and unicorns or whatever so
So today we were going to work on our plumbing actually no we weren't we were going to work on our trailer lighting
Except for trailer lighting has become a month-long project as it turns out, so we went to plan B. Which was all right?
Let's get after our plumbing project, and then we're like but hold on a minute
We get to deal with solar today because it's blistering sunny out and we're not getting
Not even half of our solar is making it to our battery bank
We have adjusted the solar panels for summer solstice. Yeah, I adjusted them if you haven't already seen that video will link to it
I adjusted the panels for summer and we gained nothing
And sun is money. So right now. We're actually having to turn our generator at night
It's bloody sunny outside. We shouldn't have to run the generator for the next six months and here
We are peters along, and I'll tell you what the real problem is we've got a freezer
So if there are two really ice cream crazy people in this household I wouldn't have to work
So hard, and it's getting warm again
And so now the freezers having to work overtime which shouldn't be a problem because it's sunny outside
So it shouldn't it shouldn't be an issue
But because we're not getting the amount of solar that we should now we're having to run the generator to top-up with the batteries
So today, we're going to diagnose solar but first I had a theory back in the winter
I'll share that theory with you right now
one very little known fact about solar is how solar panels actually work, so
counterintuitive
blazing sunny blue sky day yeah, and
We're getting two-tenths of an amp of solar so why do you think that is? well
What they tell you is that a solar panel will generate x amount of electricity?
What they don't tell you is that if that panel is
Even partially covered it will not generate any power at all
Somewhere right in there you're looking at our solar panels. They're probably around 60% covered with snow at the moment
And you would think okay?
Well, I'm only going to get about 40% power output right well wrong
I'm not speaking in technical terms, but the way a solar panel works is each of those little black grids is
actually a very small amount of voltage and
Those little black grid that you see are
actually wired
so that when they all receive sun it generates the voltage that the panel is rated for
however, it's
even some of those cells are covered by something like a shadow or a cloud or
Snow you get nothing
got it, so it seems like each panels producing about one amp or so and
Basically if the panel isn't a hundred percent exposed then you're not getting any power from that panel at all
We have a couple of theories that I'm going to use to
Troubleshoot the solar system first the first theory I have is that we've lost a panel and because Roughly the current
We're getting is about two thirds of the amount of current
We should be getting which if I do the math on my head one panel
Isn't putting out the problem is it could be the panel or it could be a connector or something to?
So I'm going to start with just going up and doing a visual inspection
On all the Connectors and just see if something somehow came unplugged
maybe if not
I'm then going to cover each panel one at a time and have a list that tell me whether or not the current changes and
If we can we can isolate one of the panels that's not producing in addition to free power the good news about
Excessive amount of sun, and heat is that we just might get our new solar oven warm enough to cookin
What are we going to make? I think we should make things to give to other people yeah
I know because I don't really eat banana bread so I make it an idea. That's fun
Yeah, then we give it away for brownies. You know what be amazing. It's we can make like a baked cheese
Cake you know how we're making like the diy cheesecakes. Yeah, I'll bet we could bake a gnArly cheesecake
I guess we should try it you going to the top of the hill. Yeah
And I hate yelling actually I love yelling I don't like it
rather do it for the Radio, so
The first thing I wanted to check is just to make sure that the panels are clean
I mean, they're not spotless, but they're definitely not dirty
So this shouldn't be costing us half of our power next thing to check is all the connections. We've got these harnesses
because these solar panels
I believe I remember correctly they're running parallel so that all of the amperages are doubled
But the voltage stays the same
So just kind of doing a visual on
All of these connectors and these all look fine
What about over here, so this is the other side these all look like they're doing okay?
because we are getting some current from the panel's that tells me that our main leads as
Far as I can tell are doing just fine
That means that you know the main lines not broken or damaged so something else is going wrong
So I think what we should do is isolate
Each panel and see if we can figure out which ones not producing
Maybe so I forgot to bring something up here to cover the panels with and so this is going to bring me a tarp
Thank you. Yes
so one of the realities of solar for us has been that it's not in every day ordeal but
there is definitely a
Top of mind thing you have to always be aware of what the system is doing in our experience
So far solar is not a hands-off plug it in and walk away
Lifestyle which we're not opposed to because right now the sun is providing our power
Reasonably for free so it comes with trade-offs alright, so what we're looking for
Is I want to know I'll tell you when I cover a panel
And I'm looking for a pretty substantial drop in amperage
And then maybe you can let me know what that drop overall is and then I'll take the cover off the panel, okay?
All right, I'm going to cover a panel number one now
Okay, so I'm going to remove the cover from the hall
And then I want you to kind of keep an eye on the jumper doesn't increase okay?
okay, I
don't
three extra amp
Okay, that's not good that means we're getting three amps out of that panel or so all right?
Let's continue down the line, so I'm going to cover up panel number two
That's the one in the middle, and we'll see what the current drop is on that
All right, any noticeable change in current down there. It's leveled out at eight point one so about eight and plus
All right, eight amps is quite a bit
I mean, that's probably what I would expect each of these panels to produce is about eight amps, so
Let me move on to panel number three and let's see if that one gives us eight amps - okay, so something changed
I don't know. Maybe my head was creating a shadow, and I didn't realize it, so
Hmm, let me think about this for a minute
So I'm thinking that this little bit of panel that's exposed right here is throwing off of our calculation
So I need to change my tarp
So are we having any changes right now? Is it pretty done steady?
It's pretty steady so like thirteen point seven to nine, so let's just go back through one panel at a time
So I'm going to move now the panel number two and we'll see what happens
Zero changed so far okay, so we're still at thirteen point seven to thirteen point nine. Yes
Okay, so I'm going to move now back to panel number one and let's see if there's any change there
It said about fourteen
Thirteen point nine, okay
So that makes no sense why to panels is fourteen but three panels is eighteen
So let me take this off this last panel here and see if we get any change
We're at Seventeen point three
So that means that every single panel is producing, but something's not making sense by the time it gets to the charge controller now
I know that
The size of our wiring is an issue because we're running
I think it's around a hundred feet and we're running on TweLve Volts
So I think the voltage going down that wire is only maybe like in the seventeen volt range
Which is really low
So we're trying to push a lot of amperage
Through a fairly small wire and that's not a good idea with solar which is why these kind of low voltage are V?
Type systems aren't really excellent for off gridding. They're okay, but
They're meant to run very short wire runs and when you're off gritting like we are you run pretty long wire runs
That's why it's really ideal
if you can to go to a higher voltage
bolt on the panel and on your charge controller that way when you run that high voltage on a
Long run of wire you don't lose nearly as much current
But that requires a far more advanced charge controller to handle the higher voltages coming in
Which we don't have right now, and it's typical when you first start out you're going to use more budget type solar components
And you're going to run into these restrictions so at this point because I did some fairly basic troubleshooting
And it's not obvious to me. What the problem is
I'm just going to give go power a jingle and
See if they have any ideas because they probably have run into scenarios like this before
Brief message with your name phone number and the products you are calling about
We will respond by the end of business day one of the other realities of solar is that you have components
to date
It's still a component industry where you've got batteries from one company cables from another company a charge controller from another company
Wires from another company and panels from another company and so you end up with all this stuff
It's kind of like the PC world where?
you're you have to download new drivers and reboot and update your operating system and all the stuff to get things to work together a
Good system really comes down to things that are well-matched
Go power has a lot of matched components
Which is why we felt like we shouldn't have too many struggles
And we don't know what part of this could just be rooky mistakes
so we're learning as we go which is awesome because we want to upgrade our system in the near future and
Hopefully, we'll have our training wheels off on solar by the time that day comes
But this is one of those harsh realities of solar you need to be prepared to ask for help and I have to say that
using the internet for support isn't always the best idea you get a million ideas on how to make solar work on the internet and
We prefer to just call the company direct and talk to them about their products
so when you choose a company to work with make sure that they have as good of technical support as they have a
product and that way when you have questions or concerns you can get help because
Solar is often dealing in large currents with low voltage having access to meters
For this stuff is not something you're just going to find at your local big box store
We have volt meters
but they're limited on the amount of current that they can measure and
So without buying a meter that cost as much as our solar system
It's challenging for us to do a lot of diagnostics on these systems
For example, we still have this brownout issue with the transformer on our inverter
And I just don't have the equipment to test it so it's something that we're doing because go power has generously sent us three
Different units, and it seems to be a consistent problem across units, but I don't know that it's the unit
I wonder if there's something in our system. That's causing it
So unfortunately I guess we'll just kind of never know which really sucks
But you have to understand that this is not household
Electrical this is pretty specialized low-voltage and having the right tools to work on it
They're not readily available. I can also say about these
Rv-style more budget type systems that Data is super
Important because you don't have time to sit out here and visually look at the charge controller, but the higher-end
off-grid type
charge controllers track your data
and you can you can look at those charts and a lot of them will track a month or more even a year and
So you don't have to ask yourself. Well, I wonder if we got any solar today
You can simply look up the charge controller look at the data
And it'll tell you exactly how many watt hours you got that day and so you don't have to sit here and be like is
it charging and look at it right, so
This is part of the higher end equipment. This is not part of that category
This is real time it. Just tells you what it's doing at the moment, but if you're gone, you know you're away from home
Shopping, and you come home, and you're like gosh
I wonder if we got any solar today this won't tell you so just to do some basic troubleshooting
We have seen twenty seven amps before on our charge controller. So we know that. It's capable of it
We're just not sure why it's not doing it now and this happens sometime over winter
Because the highest I've seen from recollection was about 18 amps and that was prior to me doing the the solar panel tilt for summer
And now we have full blazing sun, and we're sitting at 16 amps, and we should be sitting closer to like 28 or 29
So just to check I wanted to feel these wires for warmth in case somehow
You know we're overloading the wire with too much current
Which is possible, and there's just no warmth here at all everything's working fine our disconnects are working, okay?
Everything's working good there are disconnects not causing any problems
I mean, there's a slim chance that this component could be causing a problem
but it would be warming up you feel once because resistance creates heat right and
there's no warmth there at all so
I'm not sure what's going on Something's?
Not working correctly
But basic troubleshooting be just feeling your wires for warmth if you've got warmth that means something's not getting where it's supposed to be going
I'm stealing the cameras. Jesse has a revolution. You know what I'm thinking, huh?
I might have just had a freaking idiot moment. 
_That would be nice
-like a major idiot moment, 
-okay,
Don't know okay. I hope so
Sorry folks, it's a little dramatic because you see how much crap we've just gone through and this is part of solar
So if I'm right, I would love to be right so as the batteries get full
Part of a charge controllers job is to limit the amount of current going into the battery right?
So like as our inverter charger gets closer to full you're going to see the amperage dropping
Right so during bulk. It's like crazy
I'm filling the batteries up, so we've had days where our batteries have been low. It's still low and well
That's why I don't know today, but I'm thinking because this is dropping still
Yeah, it was at 18 and we're getting lower, but if you look at our battery voltage
We're getting up there
I'm yeah
Holding a really high so this may be the amount of amperage that it needs to hold the batteries
Because it knows the batteries are at Thirteen Point One volts
so
this is why a phone call to go power might be really helpful because they might say are your batteries full like yeah like
What's not supposed to church full of batteries really get though, okay? Good to go?
So that may be what's going on because it's dropping
I mean when we were up there it was eighteen something and now it's down to sixteen and it's dropping
So what that means is it may not be a panel issue
It may be because the batteries are full holding that would not be a fantastic revelation
Yeah as far as why it's not charging when our batteries are empty. Well that I don't have anything for you
So part of what we do because our lifestyle allows us quite a bit of time discretion is
Chores when we're waiting for something else to take place like go power to call us back
So I've got a pretty exciting event happening today. We're closing on my rental property. It's sold I
Know, how are we going to party?
-rum raisin ice creams 
-totally in the hot Tub
Hold on before we count our chickens
I better go get the documents and sign them because if any of you folks know about real estate
It never goes as it's supposed to go
So I've got to go to town get those documents Herbie hancock them and overnights and back alright
How signing all done so hopefully within the next three days or so my rental will be sold?
It's nice to have that weight off of our shoulders. We don't have to worry about it anymore
While I was gone, go power called and asked me the exact question that I mentioned earlier
What's the state of charge of your battery bank? and they confirmed what I kind of already thought and that is that as your batteries
Become full the charge controller limits the amount of current going into them
It doesn't change it to none because it's trying to keep them at a maximum voltage
you know state of charge and top that off with our batteries aren't new so it's kind of a
Interesting situation, but they said the way to test whether your panels are putting out enough power
Or not is when they're in full sun like they were earlier
And you're getting a limited amount of current coming in
Put the inverter under a load turn something really good on something with a lot of juice and what that I'll do is
It'll pull the voltage down on your battery Bank
and that should signal the charge controller if it's going to to let lots more current come in so
Unfortunately the sun is already off the panel's today, so that's a project for another day
So unfortunately the harsh truth with solar is that it's not a hands off power system
So for those folks who are thinking about going off-grid?
realize that there's going to be a measure of hands on with your
Electricity it is nice because it provides a lot of energy independence
But it's not something that you just plug in and now you've got endless and abundance of free power
Of course there are more sophisticated
Systems and some of those can do some things for you which removes an element of the day-To-day maintenance
But the good side is that it does allow you some energy independence
You know during the summer months not so much during the winter
You do get some power that you can use and there's a limited cost
There's no such thing as free power because batteries cost money and all the technology and all that stuff to run it takes money
So you're going to pay for your power one way or the other but for some folks they don't have a choice
There's no grid power available and does all this mean that alice
And I are going to go run and get hooked up to the power grid now, not yet
We still like the idea of having a self-sustaining energy system
Within reason so we're going to stick with solar for now
and we're hoping down the road to upgrade our system to a more adequate system because we really are on the
Maximum end of the system that go power sent us. It's really meant for our being and we're full-time living here
So we've got some other panels. We're going to be working on some solar projects in the future
Thanks for joining us for this video, and we'll see you next time
