| Earnings YTD | HP | HELIOS | GLD Owed | GLD Held | Off Chain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 16 | 35.645 | 0.235 | 365.1635 | 227.204 | 0 |
| Day 15 | 25.957 | 0.122 | 323.3945 | 163.979 | 0 |
| Day 14 | 20.761 | 0.07 | 323.3945 | 155.63 | 0 |
| (Day 13) | 12.523 | 0.043 | -178.88 | 0 |
Helios price tanked to 0.171 purchased enough to boost price back up to .270 to protect HELIOS tokens for upvotes. (1.071 GLD/HELIOS for Day 15 post)
Solar when the sun isn't shining
Image is mine, cloudy day at Maddarulug Sur, Philippines
My second day in my off grid house and there is no sun. Totally cloudy. Wind blowing. Looks like rain is coming. Now many people would love a day like this in the Philippines. It is not too hot. The sun isn't beating down on your head and the fresh wind helps get rid of the smell of pollution that hits many areas.
Overall it would be the perfect day to do exploring in the Philippines. Even on the beach going out without the oppressive heat and wind to give the waves a nice little chop would be great.
But I'm in a house where everything I have is powered by the sun. If you know the anxiety as you are watching the battery power level go down on your phone and you don't know when the next plug in is happening then you know how I feel. The difference for me is that when the power is gone my lights go off, my internet goes dead, my fridge stops working and it feels much less homey to stay in.
Backup Power is awesome
Image is mine. Power Box isn't even close to full in the morning but it is getting charge
Here is the thing though. I have numerous small backups. I do have a hybrid inverter which controls all the electrical outlets in the house and has by far the largest battery pack. It was sitting at roughly 75% this morning. If it ran out of power? I have two Bluetti units. One that I use to power up USB items. The other which I use to power the fridge if it is running low and the rice cooker. Then as another level of backup I have a USB power bank which will at least keep the fans with light going for at least 12 hours overnight.
Also... if I was truly truly desperate my cellular phone has a power out mode and honestly if I had to choose between sleeping with a fan and having my cellphone working? I'll choose the fan every time. Well, almost every time. Today with the wind and no sun I never actually felt a burning need for a fan (pun intended)
If you look at the image though. That battery pack has 45% and could keep my laptop and cellphone charged for 24 hours easy with just that much power. Look closer and you will see that it was still receiving 32 Watts of power at 9am when I took the picture. It only got better from there.
Battery anxiety is absolutely a worry in an off grid solar powered home. No doubt about it. I currently have 2kWh worth of battery storage in a system meant for 10kWh. I currently have 600W of solar panels deployed (rather poorly as I don't have a proper mounting system for it) in a system designed for 2400W.
Even running at a fraction of designed specs. Even on a cloudy day where we didn't get more than 5 minutes of full sun. I still did things more or less normally. I ran a load of laundry. I had my fridge for cold milk in the morning. I had my rice cooker for a hot dinner. I was on my computer for much of the day. I charged the power banks, the rechargeable lightbulbs, my cellular WIFI router. The only thing I didn't do was run the fan. I just opened the windows and let the breeze go through. Very pleasant.
Speaking of laundry
Image is mine. Clothes on the line waiting to get dry
One thing I do not have in the house is an electric clothes dryer. Those things are total hogs on electricity! It's hang to dry only in this household.
But there is no sun!
Some might think that it is the heat from the sun that dries clothes. That isn't entirely true. Clothes can be heated and still stay very very damp. It is actually air circulation which blows moisture off the clothes which eventually gets them dry. Now heat makes air convection work more quickly to be sure. However, on a day like today when there is a good breeze going all day long? More than sufficient to dry the clothes I washed
But there is a little more to the story
Now I make it seem like a tiny solar system can power the house easily. That is absolutely not true. This only works because every piece of the system has been designed to sip electricity. My laptop? Its powered by USB-c so it can be charged on a power bank and only draws about 15W of power when in use. My lightbulb? Run on remote control and are battery operated with very low power draw. The fan? It's a personal use fan sufficient only if you keep it close and for one person. The fridge? Small but effective. The washing machine? It works but its manual load for clothes AND water. It gets them clean but it is a very hands on affair. Then again, purchased for only about $60 HBD it is a tiny fraction of the big fancy washing machines that most people in Canada have. The funny thing is that it draws only a tiny fraction of the electricity that those more sophisticated machines use also.
The system works because I've chosen food that mostly doesn't need refrigeration. I've chosen very functional household items that don't require huge power draws. A little planning made sure that even on cloudy days when my solar system is only about 30% capacity? Everything still chugs along at least for 24 hours and probably even longer if necessary.