Added 25 miles of range to my car's battery today on #offgrid solar power. Gonna be able to stop using public fast chargers except on road trips.

(in december, when maybe I'll want a little more power)

this is not the end of my solar install.. it's the end of the beginning. I have 20 more panels and the solar fence was designed to also be the backbone power distribution system for my ballasted ground mount arrays

so much wheelbarrowing gravel up a hill lies ahead

solar fence is fully working and charging my EV #offgrid!

oh the wires I've managed today

Completed connecting all wires for my #solar fence, which took 6 hours today.

I've only turned on 4 solar panels so far but already getting this interesting graph.

finished 3 days of pulling wire for solar array

soon my pretties...

wire pulling day to #solar array.

successfully pulled four 6 AWG guage wires thru a 1" PVC conduit with 2 sharp 45s (oops) and some other 90 degree sweeps

with quite a lot of difficulty, and help

my tasks for the day include reviewing some long machine-translated contracts, and fighting with tree roots inside a trench

which first? decisions, decisions

"A large, bright, white ball in the sky is providing warm rays of
light"

-- beginning of my current NWS forecast sums it up pretty well

Wired up the panels on the #solar fence up to the combiner boxes. And a little wire management.

Unfortunately before conduit comes more trench digging, since I am also running a power line to the woodshed to charge my EV, and its trench will fork off from the solar array.

Hung the last panels on the #solar fence yesterday. Conduit next.

My dad in South Carolina just got power back after Helene knocked it out.

5 days without power, and so without running water because they have a well.

I imagine it was especially grating that he had a 6 kw solar array sitting idle the whole time. Probably time to improve that so it can run offgrid.

First article I've seen on the #Helene flooding that mentions the catastrophic floods in eastern Kentucky in 2022. https://archive.is/5gSB0

I live halfway in between the epicenter of those of these climate change boosted floods and it's very hard to not imagine it happening here.

Bonus: Spot the nuclear fuel decommissioning site in the upper-right of the photo.

Ringing endorsements on google maps for it include: "Good employer, meets or exceeds National regulations concerning discharges into the nearby river."

If you wonder why they put that IN A FLOOD PLAIN, well lots of environmentalists in this area have been wondering the same for years.

Here's the destroyed bridge plus still good bridge for context.

TNDOT did suggest, in their news conference yesterday, that this is a major priority, and that they are doing some unusual things with contracting out the work to get it started very quickly.

This is interstate 26 in Erwin south of the destroyed bridge. TNDOT has not publically said how they plan to get 26 open again to #Asheville, but this work clearing a frontage road, plus the still usable bridge in the background suggests to me they'll detour it thru Erwin, over that bridge, and reconnect back to 26 just before it ascends into the mountains.

#Helene #NC

finished trench for solar array conduit

combiner boxes installed

getting real

been doing the #offgrid low battery limbo with Helene's weather system

finally seeing blue sky this evening and hoping for some more tomorrow

heard from family in Asheville, they're ok

Damascus, Boone, Elizabethton, and Roan Mountain (not on the mountain) are all towns I like to visit that have been seriously flooded.

Some of the flooding around here. This road to Asheville in Ewrin TN will be closed for some time.

Still waiting to hear from family in Asheville.