Thoughts On A Bogus Flailing Government, Setting Up Another Solar Panel, Building The Micro-Grid And A Few Personal Perceptions
Well, I am up super early this morning and am just sort of wowed by the brazen announcement by the highest elected official getting on a live broadcast (at a little after two in the morning) and declaring the election a fraud, declaring an unfounded victory and saying that no further votes should be counted. I had to internally double-check that I was not caught in some weird dream which was pretty easy to do because I was already trying to shake off some bizarre dream that I was having before I woke up. In other words things in that regard (the political scenario here) has achieved new lows and there is now a new shitshow for folks to be mentally/emotionally fatigued by and get riled up over. It would be nice if there was just a valid fairly elected leader to steer the country through these challenging times and not all this divisive party-centric horseshit going on while the American people continue to get crushed by a pandemic, extreme financial pressure, mounting debt, looming housing evictions, food scarcity, civil unrest and extreme polarization along party/ideological lines. I wish that the government of this country would get its collective shit together, quit being so fucking petty-minded and do the job they were elected to do for (and by) the citizenry. You can do better America... so whatever it takes please do better! I had to get that out of my system before launching into the rest of this post.
Anyway, The morning was once again rather chilly and I wound up running the propane heater a good bit just for the comfort of it even though I want to start rationing the propane more and could have easily withstood the cold by putting on more layers before going outside to make my morning espresso. The humorous thing is that I will go outside with my pajamas on, get the stove lit, set the coffee maker upon the burner and then smile a little smile as I stare at the little blue flames before looking around at the predawn darkness and just soaking in the woods around me... then all of a sudden I realize how frigging cold it is, have to shake off my early morning reverie and rush back inside to the warmth of the shelter and chiding myself along the way for being so absentminded and not at least wearing a jacket! I am failing to do it any justice but it is a highly animated process to say the least and often comical to me in hindsight.
Once I got all the morning writing done I yet again got bundled up in a few layers of work clothes and got busy doing stuff outdoors even though it was rather damned frigid and I was sore all over from the previous day's activities. My big goal for the day was to get that second big solar panel positioned, anchored in place and connected to a charge controller and battery. I wound up placing the second panel in front of the solar shack at ground level below the other big panel that is installed on the shack's roof. It actually worked out really well because the panel on the ground is angled perfectly to help make a sort of 'roof' over the flap-covered opening at the front of the shack that I use to access everything inside of it. I was also able to fasten the upper frame of the panel on the trailer to just below the roof line of the solar shack which will make the entire setup more resistant to high winds which is always good with solar panels!
There was a lot of steps involved getting the charge controller and battery installed but thankfully I had most of the stuff all in one box from when I had last dismantled the solar rig and micro-grid. I actually used my old battery that I treated with epsom salt (to revive it some) and although that battery is not all that great for running devices with a high amperage draw it definitely does well enough with charging and/or powering small devices so I just wired up a three receptacle DC utility port outlet to it and called it good. That battery does do well at running a small inverter when the connected solar panel is getting full sun so it is kind of nice if I ever want/need to use 'live' power but for the most part it will work for what it needs to do.
The way that I set the solar panels up makes it easy for me to use multiple PWM charge controllers and their respective batteries on a single panel which is pretty handy considering that the cheap little PWM charge controllers do better when there are at least two of them (and their batteries) handling the high voltage from the solar panel. I need to check again (because I think that I have forgotten) but one panel produces around thirty-two volts and the other big panel produces forty-seven volts or something close to those voltage numbers. The batteries are all twelve volt and being used in a standalone fashion so when the PWM charge controller gets over-volted by the panel it triggers the controller to go into float mode even though the battery is not fully charged. The heat sink in the charge controller just cannot turn that excessive voltage into heat fast enough with its tiny heat sink so giving it more paths to travel along (more charge controllers, batteries and even devices being charged/powered) helps to mitigate the effects of the excess voltage. I know it all sounds sort of hacky but the science and principles behind it are super solid and from extensive past experience the entire approach/method works really well and is incredibly stable. It is actually a very simple bare-bones system as far as solar rigs go and not prone to failure because there are just so damn few things that can actually break!
Getting all that solar stuff sorted was a really good feeling because I once again feel that wonderful feeling of energy independence and in this case have the beginnings of a nice little standby electricity system as well as a trickle of grid power. As far as the grid power goes I have been re-configuring its setup as well so that it is on its own breaker from the homestead proper and hopefully I will not get as many of the power fluctuations as I have been getting since other folks have been using the same circuit for their power needs. My grid power footprint is still pretty small and I even took some pictures of the numbers for my consumption over the previous four hundred and thirty days. I have used only one thousand six hundred and thirteen kilowatt hours the entire time and considering how many power tools that I have had to use 'building stuff' that is not too shabby. If all goes well that number will even slow in its growth once I get the rest of my DC micro-grid setup and then switch over all my critical electronics to operate off of DC power only so that they are grid independent. For some perspective the average American household uses roughly 10,909 kWh per month! If I am doing the math right that is a 195.131% difference between my usage and the 'average American household' which is an impressive difference in my opinion.
Anyway, I stayed really busy throughout the day doing a bunch of stuff that had to do with electricity in one way or another and during the process I kept thinking about how awesome it is to finally see my little shelter area coming along and at long last reaching a tipping point where I can look around at the setup and go 'yeah this could get me through the apocalypse' and if it came down to it I could probably accommodate enough water and electricity for more than just my needs. I know that it may be difficult for folks to fully grasp but having a grid independent water and electricity supply does some pretty damned special things for my overall peace of mind, sense of well-being and for lack of a better term my own sense of personal liberty. I feel like I once again 'unlocked' an achievement in life and am glad to get back to that sort of baseline in regards to critical infrastructure yet alone the 'mental' security of having the basics covered!
By the end of the day I was wiped out from all the exertions of the day and wound up putting away all the tools and wrapping everything up a few hours before dark and considering that I have really been pushing myself lately I fed the dogs early, got the chickens put away in their coop and promptly fell asleep not long after the sun went down. With everything that has been going on I am glad that I have maintained a pleasant sleep cycle because it damn sure helps and my days are far from stressful even though my mind is weighing a bunch of stresses and stressors (at full fucking volume) every waking moment. I have also been thankful that my dreamscape has mostly been occupied by these ultra surreal dream sequences where whatever is going on in them somehow correlates to my waking world and I can often drag that perspective of correlation across the threshold of sleep and into my waking mind which has had a very stabilizing influence over my daily thought processes and helped me keep my eye on the proverbial ball and its inevitable long-term trajectory. I guess what I am getting at here is that a little sleeping (and waking) lucidity has been proving itself invaluable to bolster and solidify my overall mood which could be summed down as: all obstacles will be rendered into opportunities for learning and if I have to tap the wellspring of my resolve along the way then so fucking be it because ultimately if my only real choice in life is what kind of attitude that I have... well I am going to have to choose the most epic and tactically beneficial one that I can and accept nothing less no matter what transpires.
At this point in reality I feel like I have a lot of cohesion between the various aspects of my psyche and am thankful that I came out of that early summer (late spring) bout of depression with my frigging head on my shoulders instead of it being stuck up my ass! Largely I feel that last bit happened because it initiated a chain reaction in my mind afterwards where I could somehow 'shake it all off' and get down to the business at hand without all the baggage involved snaring me into some weird repetitive loop of gaining and losing depression in some unwinnable perpetual struggle. Hell, I did not even come out of it all with a whole lot of 'angst' which I find mildly alarming because I love saying that 'angst is my super power' but that is okay because I have been content with just feeling an all-encompassing resolve and taking comfort in its apparent abundance and how it lends to having a good measure of fortitude.
Well, I have rambled on enough for one morning and am just going to get this all edited and posted before dawn so that I can have another long and massively productive day today. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
I love how this solar setup came out!
My power consumption over 430 days!
Thanks for reading!
More about me: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.
A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!
The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.
I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.
The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.
Follow me on the Hive blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/@jacobpeacock
Please check out the Homesteading Community On The Hive Blockchain:
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
A playlist of my Jacob Goes Off Grid Videos can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CsWYxlqp36dEFkg5mnlzgY41bE761oK
Please consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page!!!
https://www.patreon.com/jacobpeacock
Contribute via Paypal:
https://PayPal.me/jacobpeacock
That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-430
