Are we comfortable yet?

7:24 am - Friday - January 10th - TWW - 22° F, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 49° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were awakening to snow from an overnight snow storm.....

 .....yes, it was as cold as it looks....lol!

The overnight low was around 30° F here at TWW, but the skies were crystal clear Thursday providing those much sought after solar rays to infuse electrical current into our thirsty, depleted battery banks via your 12 mono crystalline photovoltaic (solar) panels once again.  Each day the cycle repeats itself, and you find yourself hyper aware of how much electricity you consume on a daily basis, and how much you might be using right at the moment.  You are hyper aware, because you know the limits of your electrical system, and how much time it will take to replenish 25, or 30% of the power you used the day before, and overnight.  You turn off lights when you leave a room, and after a certain point in the morning you turn off all the lights, and open all the curtains to receive as much natural light inside as possible.  The sun shinning through the windows means you don't need lights, and the heat transfer through the windows enables you to turn off most of your heaters.  Your life is a mixture of 12 volt and 120 volt readings.  You hope, after a while, you won't need to be obsessively checking the state of charge on your Bluetti battery bank, or on your flooded cell house batteries, but you continue to check on an hourly basis.  It's been almost 3 months since you began living off the grid, but there is still this level of anxiety lingering in the background.  A hundred 'what ifs' swirl around in your brain.  You mostly trust the systems you've installed, but seem to always be waiting for the 'other shoe to drop'.  I'm inclined to be a little obsessive/compulsive, and this living off the grid kind of puts it into overdrive.

When we boondocked in the Anza Borrego Desert back in 2021, which was the 3rd, or 4th time we've boondocked there, we were in a comfort zone.  We only had our two 8d, flooded cell, house batteries, and a 2,000 watt inverter to provide direct current and alternating current to the coach.  There was less to worry about, and it worked well.  90% of the time we had clear, blue skies, and our batteries returned to 100% virtually every day, without fail.  We had been using this system since 2012 when we installed our first solar panels, and had gotten quite comfortable with its reliability, and I'm sure that we will become more comfortable with our expanded battery system, and its reliability.  

Thursday was our third successive day of winds in the mid to high 20's.....bad for us, but its all relative, right?  They've had winds over 100 mph in SoCal for the last 4, or 5 days, and that is like Category 1 in hurricane terms.  I grew up in the Pasadena/Altadena area, and judging by the aerial views of the fire damage it looks as if an atom bomb was dropped.....complete devastation.  And that is another one of the hazards one faces in a large urban area built along the foothills of the Angeles Crest and San Bernardino mountain ranges.  I love the rural, low population, high desert!

With winds in the mid 20's for most of the day, and the high temp for the day barely reaching 43° F it felt more like low 30's, or high 20's much of the time.  I wore my heavy duty Carhartt lined jacket with hood all day long.  So, what did I do Thursday?  Well, I attempted to connect our new Cloud Energy, 12 volt, 300 amp hour batteries to the house system, but it appears I will need to change my existing Blue Sky charge controller to one like a Victron, that has settings for lithium batteries, as the Blue Sky readings went crazy, so 2 steps forward, and one step back.  It's okay....we've got 3 more months to figure this out.  In the mean time our two 8d batteries are doing just fine.

Charles and Phyllis arrived for a 4 day stay....the longest time they've spent here yet.  We're going to begin integrating 10 more 400 watt solar panels into their solar array, which will be another learning experience for us.

Phyllis and TLE served us chili con carne (Phyllis) with Mexican cornbread (TLE), and I wish I had taken pictures.  Was it ever good!  We were back in the Newell by 6 pm watching one of the two semi final NCAA college football playoff games between Notre Dame and Penn State, and what a game it was!  With 3 seconds remaining Notre Dame kicked the winning field goal to win 27-24, so they will be in the final down in NOLA (New Orleans).

Thanks for stopping by!