The Campfire Trail: January 25 - DIY Homestead - Our Power is Out! Oh, No it's Not!

January 25, 2023

Day 481 of the Adventure

It was only a matter of time before we had a real live test of our solar/battery power system and last night was the night. With heavy snow in the forecast, we were braced for whatever the night delivered. As it turned out, the snowfall was only about two inches around here. Evidently it must have been greater around the area though. Enough so to disrupt power service to folks around the entire region, of which we were among the "powerless". I may not have actually even known about it other than my 3am feeding (of the woodstove) accompanied a glance at my facebook feed as well. I noticed a number of people declaring a loss of power in their homes. A quick glance around the cabin seemed to indicate nothing was wrong here. Then it dawned on me that perhaps we had lost our limited grid power and things may be running entirely on the battery banks.

Sure enough, our dedicated grid circuits were out, but everything else was still functioning as normal. I should explain. We designed our electrical system to be as independent from the power grid as possible, while still allowing for grid power on the property to power larger tools and a few "grid-dedicated" appliances. The key components are the storage batteries and inverter/charger for converting battery power back to usable AC power. The batteries can be charged independently from solar panels, generators or actual power grid input. Or any combination of those. The charging system is set to choose which source to draw from and in what priority. We have it set to draw from solar as its primary source and power grid as a secondary source if the panels are not producing due to rain, snow, darkness or clouds. The generators would be a third source, but we've reserved that option to manual controls only when and if needed. Oddly. the generators are the most costly to operate so they are reserved for emergency use if everything else fails.

Last night when the grid power failed, there was not even the slightest hesitation in power to the cabin from the batteries. About ninety percent of the cabin is powered through the batteries already anyway so nothing even changed there. The only thing that changed was the fact that the grid was no longer available to act as the secondary source of power to the charger. Once my mind ran through the whole sequence of power sourcing that was taking place, a smile crept across my face as I lay in bed thinking to myself, "THAT'S THE WAY it's supposed to work!"

Carry On

Adventure Quote: “And there's no such thing as too much back-up.” ― Stephen Baxter

Base Camp Coffee of the Day: Lost in the Dark (Colombia Dark French Roast)

SNEAK PEEK of our Upcoming OFF-GRID project

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