Hey world. I got a partially cloudy day when I was at home, which I've been hoping for since my last post, so I put the solar controller out hooked up to my larger 60W panels and my cheaper 10Ah battery - at least it''s cheaper to replace if something does go horrendously wrong, huh? The clouds were quite high level today, so it was continuously semi-bright, with a bit of variation - not the massive clumps of grey/blue that were in vogue a few weeks ago. I slurped just under 2.5Ah into the battery, which is OK for a few hours, and better than nothing - given the grey clouds in the week ahead's weather forecast.
So I'm pleased it works, at least. The controller screen doesn't come on, but I have no way of knowing if that's because of my weird setup. Maybe I need to find someone with a battery and some knowledge on this stuff nearby...
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Which leads me into the other part of this post. I finally caught up with the solarpunks.net RSS feed, and watched the two videos of Jaimie Mantzel's island life. Worth a watch, even just the first one of his solar sail/panel boat.
What most struck me wasn't the engineering, but something else - the resourcefulness. This has been an attribute of people I've always admired, and always seems central to that hacker mindset - that things are possible if you get creative. I love that sense that you're not waiting for somebody else to OK something, or even to teach you something. You have an idea, you can get hold of what you need - even if it's not what you expected - to make it a reality.
Resourcefulness seems like a key aspect of a solarpunk world, but I don't even know if it's something you can teach.
Either way, I need to reconnect to my own resourcefulness as I carry on picking up electronics stuff. Learning is nothing without creativity.
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