back to 2023.01.28 Winter Field Day Camp Ingawanis

4 solar:




The weatherman made it pretty clear we were going to have a very snowy WFD 2023, so there'd be no way I could
just spread out the panels on the ground - they were just going to get snow and ice covered continuously and
be a big headache. I'd been thinking about ways to prop up the panels for angling, and so I modified my ideas
for a single large frame that could fit 8 panels and hold them up off the ground a foot or so. I knew it was
going to be cloudy for a lot of the time, but this was going to be more of a test on a proof-of-concept, even
if solar production was very low. It's just unfortunate that this had to be done in such low temperatures.

The frame is a mix of 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" extruded aluminum C-channel 8-foot strips. Similar to PVC, the
sizing of these allows the smaller size to nest inside the larger size. The aluminum is also light and rigid
(in a few directions) but is twisty and wobbly in others where it's not supported. My design was only partly
successful at getting the solar panels to provide the missing rigidity.

The trick for me is my work area in the basement is too small to fully assemble the frame (8x8 ft) so I had to
drill screw holes in the different sections independently, which required some good precision to make sure the
holes lined up between the different pieces. There were some tight fits, but it all came together well. and
was very portable - I just needed an 8ft length in the truck for 6 sticks of aluminum, and a box of hardware.
Oh and wire ties. SO MANY wire ties.

It never occurred to me that icicles could be a hazard for the solar, but thankfully they just dripped a bit
and nothing fell on the panels. (I cleared them away later) The combiner boxes are all reasonably waterproof,
but I ran into another unexpected problem during assembly - snow stuffed into the powerpoles. So those had
to be blown clean before assembly since 89vdc won't get along with wet snow.

It's challenging to get good solar on WFD, since it starts in the afternoon when the sun is already on its way
toward the horizon. By the time the batteries are getting discharged, the sun is about gone. Then you have
to run on just batteries till morning. At least that gives a good opportunity to resume operations at dawn
if the batteries had gone dead, OR charge batteries up a bit so people don't go home with completely flat
batteries. I was actually surprised to see we collected over 400Wh of solar despite the challenges.


finding the sun in fully overcast sky

solar frames (in panels)

2023.01.28 15.10.42 (we moved the panels to the south Sunday morning)	2023.01.28 15.10.52 (the icicles worried me, but just dripped on everything)	2023.01.28 15.10.58	2023.01.28 15.11.14 (the thin frame is too wide to support the panels)	2023.01.28 15.11.28	2023.01.28 15.12.24 (even the vehicles were shading my panels)
final tally is 414Wh off the panels (most of this was recharging batteries just before tear-down)

highest resolution images
last updated 01/14/2025 at 17:44:38 by make_www_index.command version 2024.07.09.A