Playing with the Sun

Power is something to always keep in mind when you are off-grid. When I landed in the farm in early June I bought two 500Watt panels to feed my big power station. Some of the early days where quite windy so I decided to tide them to one of the olive trees and face each one to a different position while connecting them on series to the power unit.

The Bluetti 2000AC can take only 900Watt from external solar panels and my option can get up to 1000 but that is of course the best case escenario and I will never reach that amount. My surprise was to find out I was getting only up to 150Watt from the panels. I completely forgot that connecting them on series jeopardizes the yield when one of them is on the shade, which in my case was all the time.

Two days ago, in the afternoon I decided to change their position laying them on the ground and both facing to the sun.

It was great to see the charging App showing more than 300Watt charging.

Then, last night I decided to set them facing to sun rise to get the most energy during todays morning.

And the result is that I am finally approaching my top intake maximum.

I was watering the trees this morning getting the power from the solar panels while they keep charging the fridge and the unit is at 95% at 10:45am.

I have been thinking on a steel structure to be able to move the panels facing the sun as I do with the small portable one, but I wm gonna wait a few days to see how this setup works during all the day as there are way many things yo do here. Meanwhile it is great not to use the gas generator to water 😉