Grid as generator

The vast majority of off-grid house systems have a backup generator. If you’ve got solar eventually there will be a cloudy week. If you have wind power it could become becalmed. Even micro hydro has issues. Water sources go dry or maintenance needs to be done. 

I really don’t like messing around with generators -noisy smelly things that they are. Then there’s the issues of fuel storage and replacement. If a generator is going to work in an emergency regular service must be done. You don’t just blow the cobwebs off and hope the gas hasn’t turned to varnish. 

With that in mind, when I added solar electric, I decided to keep the grid. A number of electrical loads are normally run off the grid. It’s most important role is to top off the battery bank as needed. There’s a battery monitor wired to my kitchen. If the batteries are low a simple flick of a nearby switch turns the charger on.

There is a danger on relying on the grid for charging. The batteries have to be topped off before the grid goes down. Normally that’s not a big problem. Most of my grid threats I see coming. Winter storms cause the most outages so keeping a shape weather eye is necessary. 

So all that background brings me up to today’s issue. For some reason I’d let my batteries get lower than normal. I got out of the habit of checking the battery meter. We’d had a good long sunny stretch and the solar panels had no difficulty keeping the batteries full. 

Then we got hit with cloudy days. It happened to be at the same time I was running motors that are power hogs. Had the grid gone down I’d have started the outage with depleted batteries. Instead of mostly ignoring the outage strict conservation would have been necessary. 

Most of the time the solar electric system requires little attention. My mistake was in forgetting it needed at least some attention.

Duh.

-Sixbears