The Boy Who Harnessed the Sun

I finally installed the solar power system I talked about a few days ago. I have been frustrated too many times over our electricity problems, and so I took the courage to find a sustainable solution for myself and my family. I have now completed the installation, and although it took me longer than expected, I sure have been able to save a lot of money and learn a few things.

I have since been observing the behaviour of the solar power system. I can't tell how it performs yet, as the weather conditions these days are not the best for it. It's been cloudy and rainy a lot, and so there isn't that much sunlight to charge the battery enough.

I saw the sun a lot today, though, and I never thought I could be so happy to see it. Soon enough, anyway, I will share about the solar system I built in detail.

The reason I was able to build it on my own is because I do have sufficient knowledge from my electrical and electronics classes in school and from my experience in the automation academy I spent six months at in 2021. I had learned enough to enable me to think through what I needed and develop a viable solution.

That brings me to the idea that, really, school isn't a "scam." Many say things like, "There is no real use case for the things I learned in school, like the Pythagoras theorem," but the reality is that those things have helped build our cognitive capacity to understand the world a little better and enable us to process even more complex phenomena.

In my second year at the university, I didn't understand the concepts of live, neutral, and earthing in electrical systems. Single-phase and three-phase systems, the operations of a transformer, the working principles of a generator, and the like were even more complex at that time.

Although they may seem unimportant to people who are not in such fields, understanding them all through my years in school has allowed me to think independently and even develop problem-solving skills.

The first thing that took a while when installing the solar power system was understanding how our house was wired. I had to figure that out first before tethering it with another power supply to ensure I did the right thing and not cause short circuit problems. The house's wiring wasn't documented, so I was on my own. It took a while, but with my digital meter with me, I figured it all out.

The next thing I did was design the new circuitry for the solar power system. I did all that in my head because I didn't want to have to look for paper and a pen. It was pretty simple anyway.

Eventually, I was done with the internal part of everything. That took me the most of the day, so I installed the solar panels the following day.

Connecting up the solar panels wasn't as straight-forward as I thought. I had to make a few calculations on the type of connection to make—series or parallel—based on the other components. The real challenge, however, was mounting it on the roof.

As self-reliant as I choose to be sometimes, I just knew that I had to outsource mounting the solar panels on the roof. I had zero experience being on the roof, and there were no safety measures I could take even if I was going to do it myself. By the way, I am not a fan of heights.

The panels aren't lightweight, interestingly. And so moving them up to the roof and installing them was another challenge on its own. I was certain of the connections, so I wasn't worried about having to go back up to make adjustments of any kind.

Now everything works just fine. I am still observing its performance, though, but I'll share my experience and all soon enough.

What the experience of taking on this challenge has taught me is to be more encouraged to try new things and take bold steps. And now I have new ideas and feel more confident about exploring other things.

I am already on a new adventure anyway. More on that soon...

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