More Wind Generator Research and Bargain Shopping.

Our Location today is at the La Posa South, LTVA, Quartzsite, Arizona.

Click on the pictures to Enlarge

I felt tired but just could not stay asleep and spent most of my night tossing and turning. After laying there staring at the ceiling when I noticed some light starting to seep past our Window Shades it was time to get up. I managed to be up before the Sun not that it would matter much because being a little bashful it would immediately try to hide behind a wall of Clouds this morning.

With everything ready for breakfast I managed to get quite a bit of my morning reading finished before Kathy came downstairs shortly after 8:00. After double checking our supplies I was able to delay my plans for today so we could do other things. One of those involved further research about adding a Wind Generator to supplement our Solar Panel System for being Off the Grid. It seems where ever we go if there is a Cloudy Day you have Wind as well as any time there is a Storm.

The first thing you need to consider is your Battery Bank which is where all the energy that is harvested is stored. If you only have Two Batteries and loads of Solar Panels you wasted your money. The idea is to have room (Capacity) to save the energy for a Rainy/Cloudy Day. Because we use our Battery Power for running our CPAP Machines to keep us breathing along with our Lights, occasionally our Microwave, our Vacuum Cleaner and charging all our Electronics we need to add at least Two more Batteries to our Bank in order to make it more efficient.

The other day I was researching Batteries and having kept everything 12 Volt it was quite simple. There is always the discussion that 6 Volt Batteries are better but today’s technology has change that and they are now on a level playing field. I also chose AGM Deep-Cycle Batteries for our system because there are no Explosive Gases emitted during charging like most others. The much larger Lithium Batteries were also considered but we would have required a Special Charge Controller and Inverter to handle the special needs of those Batteries along with their excessive costs for all I saw no advantage.

If you add new Batteries to your Bank every year say for Four Years in a row they will balance out. If your batteries are Five and Six years old like ours and you add new ones to the mix with the Old Batteries that will let the New Batteries do all the work. (Sounds like some of my Former Coworkers.) That will cause the New Batteries to totally fail before the Old ones. We’ll be looking at different options.

Clouds finally breaking up.

I was also told to try the Larger AGM Batteries that you often see in Semis. Those Batteries had Two and a Half times the Storage Capacity but were Two and a Half times the Weight and Price. As I age the Smaller Batteries sound more appealing to me and if a Battery looses a Cell it is easier to replace.

Those that already have Solar on their RVs know they require a Charge Controller but did you know that you also require one for a Wind Generator. The have Charge Controllers that are specific for each application but they also have those that do both at the same time. Another thing that is interesting is that these Controllers are not rated by Amperes but by the Wattage that the Solar Panels or Generators produce taking away all the guesswork.

Clouds almost look like Snow.

Some of the Wind Generators are sold with their very own Charge Controller so that is also something to consider when making the purchase. There is still more to research to do so I’ll tell you more each day so you don’t suffer Technical Overload.

For lunch we had Chicken Noodle Soup with Toasted Bagels and Macaroons for dessert. As soon as we finished eating we were heading out the door. It may have been 63 F (17 C) but the southwest Wind seemed to chill you to the bone. (I think I just heard our kids telling me to suck it up.)

We needed some groceries but it seem like the local stores in Quartzsite didn’t have what Kathy wanted so we were off to Blythe in California. Our first stop however was the Ace Hardware where I wanted to check for some Stainless Wingnuts. The last time we were there they were out of stock. Today they had even less of those fasteners in stock. It seems the store is going downhill.

Our next stop was Albertson’s where it seemed that practically everything in the store was On Sale. If a can of Soup is $2.49 a piece but if you get Five or more they are only $1.49 each, how many will you buy? All kinds of deals like that.

We saw a Jackfruit on someone else’s Blog the other day and today we saw it for ourselves. It was priced at $1.49 a pound and each one weighed about Twenty Pounds making them worth around $30.00. (Kathy looked it up On-Line and couldn’t find any use for it in our diets.) 

As soon as we got Home I turned the Weber on to preheat while we put our groceries away. We had gotten a Thin Crust Barbecue Chicken Pizza (On-Sale $2.49) for supper. Even with the southwest Wind blowing the Pizza was done in Twenty-Five Minutes. It certainly was different but we were really starting to enjoy the taste by the time we finished eating it.

Tomorrow we are back on schedule plus we have a visit planned. Thank you for following along and feel free to leave a comment.

Be Safe and Enjoy!

It’s about time.

Krackers

The World's Great Proverbs

Light comes, light goes.