heheheheheheheh I really wanted to say NEIL ARMSTRONG, but somehow I wrote Lewis.....remember I said it look like something Appolo crews left in the moon??? (EXTREMELY LARGE VERY BIG G)
eheheheheheheh
But....the music play works fine too...
Now.. can someone write down in one short sentence what the thing does???
Tabs have been around a long time in most browsers besides IE...
__________________
Sailingdog Telstar 28
New England
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)
If you're new to the Sailnet Forums... please read this POST.
Xort-
The web page thing (can we dissemble here?) isn't a browser problem, it's an email problem. My email client ain't changing and it has the annoying habit of opening links--all in the same window, so it wipes out the one you forgot it opened that was still open, when you open a new one.
Consulting rate? Like I said, what did I get myself into!? It really would be better off with some lab rats who would afford to hang a "standard sun" light fixture over it someplace and do a 16-hour lab run. I'm about at the point where I turn to Tonto and say "Our job here is done" and we ride off with a big HiYo Silver! And Away! Oh, wait, I'm short one big silver horse, one Indian, one black mask and a batch of silver bullets. Drat!
G-
How come you are asking about what the thing does when you already showed up a dozen small ones supplying megawatts of power onboard Giulietta? Obviously, this is a solar powered orange press, it squeezes oranges to make fresh juice. The big panels go up-and-down as they absorb solar radiation, you put the oranges in the big pole in the middle and the juice runs out the spigot in the bottom. That's why the tripod is so big, so you can fit a large bowl or pitcher beneath it to catch all the juice.
Kathleen-
"I suppose it would only require tilts " No, the standard version would require tilts--but also rotation of the pole, to track from east to south (or north) then west. No biggie, but something else to fiddle. Then again, unless you are windcocking into a fixed wind all day every day...you'd have to do that anyway.
And now, a raw data dump followed by some comments. I took one panel and a bag full of controller and wires with me yesterday, slipping the testing in between some more sociable behavior. The raw numbers are (drumroll):
============================
SolarStik Saturday July 21st.
Results from ONE solar panel.
11AM
13.5V @ 3.1A angled to sun
moved 45d away dropped to
12.5V @ 2.5A
10% loss.
13.4V to 13.3V dropped
2.8A to 2.6A dropped
Shdaowing:
13.5V drops to 13.2V
2.6A drops to 2A (i row) 1.5A (2 rows)
13.3V @ 2.5A out, 33.25 W in full sunlight (no clouds yet)
13.5V @ 2.9A with bumpers removed, all rows unobstructed now.
1/10 A less per bumper.
11:10AM 39.15 Watts /vs/ 33.25 Watts with bumpers left on!
11:45AM light high cirrus clouds
13.6V @ 2.5A aimed to sun
13.3V @ 1.7A misaimed 45degrees
(then)
13.4V @ 2.1A aimed direct
13.3V @ 1.9A aimed 15d off
1:10PM
14.2V @ 3A /vs/ 14.1 C @ 2.7A (42.6 Watts)
14.2V @ 3A direct /vs/ 14.1V @ 2.7A aimed 10deg. off
3PM flat panel 13.6V @ 2.2A
13.8V @ 2.4A when angled to sun.
29.92/vs/33.2Watts, flat is only 90% of full power.
Another 10-15d past the sun produced 13.4V @ 1.9A, bigger loss.
Some high cirrus clouds moving at the time.
Cloud shift, 13.9V @ 2.5V = 34.75W out, angled to sun.
4:30 PM high solid light cloud cover, abandoned tests.
===========================
So, the first big surprise: The panels on the unit that I'm working with, each have three (one inch?) rubber "feet" on them, so the panels don't hit face to face when they are stowed together. As I'm explaining to my friend what the hell I'm scattering on their lawn (and cabling back to the AGM deep cycle in my trunk, what, isn't that how you charge a hybrid?) they note that the bumpers ARE CREATING SHADOW on two of the three rows of cells that are in the BP panel.
It doesn't take long to see that even a little shadow is not a good thing, so I razored the bumpers off and a funny thing happened. As noted, the output rose! Given the sunlight wasn't prefectly even with the wispy high clouds, and that the SolarBoost display rounds things to only 3 digits...I can only say that it appears that any shadowing, even the one inch bumpers that only partly overlay cells, can reduce output by one or two tenths of a volt AND amp.
The best I got today was 42.6 Watts at the 1:10PM run, bumpers off (one mystery corrected) with very light wispy clouds up there. That's substantially closer to the 45W output that BP guarantees, and the 50W maximum. So I think that in full blazing sunlight, 50W output might not be a surprise. (Remember this is from one panel--not the whole array.) But I'm thinking that unless you are in paradise, 35 (40?) Watts is way more realistic for these panels, in the midday hours.
The notes about angling the panels are made without a protractor, using the old Number One Eyeball, so don't expect one-degree precision. They do tell me that there's a significant loss, at any hour, from being as little as 10-15 degrees off from a direct solar angle, and a killer by 45 degrees. Since the sun shifts 15 degrees per hour...Someone shifting their panels just once per hour to track the sun, could be gaining a lot of power versus flat cells. Ten percent times each hour, times the power difference of those hours when the sun is brighter overhead...There's never a mathematician around when you need one.
Kathleen-
Oh, you HAD to put that image into my head. Now I can see the mini version of the "War of the Worlds" tripods coming. I'll have to take a circuitious way home and make sure to use heavier security chains, to make sure it can't follow me.
If there's time, and if there's one more day of "don't go out, it's so sunny and bright you'll catch fire" then I'll try to get one more run, either the early or late hours of the day to check the output in those times, as well as the max under "incineration" lighting. I suspect those hours are just icing on the cake, we already know:
1-The rotation and angle make a 10% plusplus difference
2-The MPPT controller makes a huge difference, 10-20% plus.
3-The bumpers need to move off the panels and out onto the trim.
4-Brian needs to come out with a "Solar Stik Jr." that's not bombproof, but is sized more for smaller craft. Although I guess there's a limit to how light you can make the mast, and still securely support those two panels under wind loads. And....
5-This really is as good as it gets.
Frankly, I never thought the test panels would show up. (Come on now, how many folks thought that would EVER happen?) And while all the numbers haven't quite matched some of the optimism, I give him great credit for being willing to just drop off a rig and let the numbers come as they may.
The output I've seen, given the more northern conditions I'm under, has been about as good as it gets. The "who knew?" about MPPT controllers being more efficient, and PWM charging batteries to a better depth faster, and angling the panels....Been a real education to me. I'm betting that when PS comes out with their review, they'll also make similar comments. This is no miracle--but it is as good as solar gets.
If anyone has a friend in the "stainless tubing and towers" business and can get them to run up an estimate for a similar rotate-angle-support tower, I've got a feeling the SolarStik is actually a bargain once that metalwork is figured in. I never expected that, either. Even in inch-and-a-half stainless, I don't think anyone would like the fabrication bill for anything the could come close.
HS: Thanks very much for all the work you've done. I'm sure that while most of it was to satisfy your own needs and questions about this particular device, you've done a lot of people here a great service by posting your thoughts and your results.
My own situation allows me to simply put up a load of panels and wait for the sun to move overhead until I get full output. But your results in optimizing that output with MPPT and PWM devices is impressive, and not everyone has the space I do. I particularly think that a SolarStik Junior, as you put it, would allow 25-35 footers to use a single 50 or 130 W panel to great advantage in an anchorage situation, and would keep more people off shore power and/or running gensets to keep their beer cold.
From reading this thread I believe that HS has found the MPPT the real benefit and the SolarStik a nice to have. As a way explanation of the MPPT's operation I foud some interesting information at http://www.blueskyenergyinc.com/pdf/...0is%20MPPT.pdf
The cost of a BlueSky MPPT is $210.
So I would need a MPPT AND a Outback MX60 charge controller ? Or one or the other ?
__________________ S/V Scheherazade
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I had a dream, I was sailing, I was happy, I was even smiling. Then I looked down and saw that I was on a multi-hull and woke up suddenly in a cold sweat.
Question: On the system that you have, What happens early in the morning when a flat pabnel gets no direct light until about 10-11AM? More specifically, how much of a gain over a flat panel system is to be had? I'd be interested in hearing a comparison from someone who has a flat system as to when it really starts to put out power.
we purchased ours in May and have been thrilled with it. We've been playing with ours for a few days now and found that in the straight up position at 7AM we get hardly anything, but when we pitch and rotate we get around 5 amps that early in the morning.
It doesn't seem to be the amount of power at one time we are producing, but rather that we can now produce it all day. Averaging 7 amps most of the day on the blue sky 2000E we seem to be averaging around 70+ on a good clear day.
This is just based on simople math, but our estimate based on the time of day, hour by hour that we are producing a steady 7 amps. we are running our quite a few appliances on our boat.
Hellosailor, after having read the numbers just posted, they don't give any early morning or late evening output, so could that be where the real difference is? Simply articulating the panels in the morning and evening seems to produce much more power early and late in the day which is where we notice huge gains over a flat panel.
