la Nina rears her ugly head

nicobie said:
We have 13 solar panels on our roof, but seeing as how they are tied into the grid they won't do us any good with the power off. I'd love to find a way that they could keep the volt's batteries charged when the power goes out. Then I could be totally independent of the grid in outages. I thought of using my bike battery with a small 120V inverter to back feed the panels in order to energize the solar inverter but have been advised that it wouldn't work.
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You'd probably need a different inverter. You could possibly do a dc-dc converter to 12v and run your 12v inverter off that. I have a 20A dc-dc that runs from 48v- 96v in and spits out 13v. It was cheap. It should be possible to parallel a bunch of those or find larger ones. Not sure what voltage your panels put out. If they are in the right range you might be able to drive a switching power supply made for 120vac directly. Something like a server power supply.
 
fechter said:
nicobie said:
We have 13 solar panels on our roof, but seeing as how they are tied into the grid they won't do us any good with the power off. I'd love to find a way that they could keep the volt's batteries charged when the power goes out. Then I could be totally independent of the grid in outages. I thought of using my bike battery with a sm all 120V inverter to back feed the panels in order to energize the solar inverter but have been advised that it wouldn't work.
Click to expand...

You'd probably need a different inverter. You could possibly do a dc-dc converter to 12v and run your 12v inverter off that. I have a 20A dc-dc that runs from 48v- 96v in and spits out 13v. It was cheap. It should be possible to parallel a bunch of those or find larger ones. Not sure what voltage your panels put out. If they are in the right range you might be able to drive a switching power supply made for 120vac directly. Something like a server power supply.
Click to expand...

Each of my panels have a Enphase mini inverter that feeds 220V single phase directly to my house main so I do not think that will work. But... I'm not too sharp when it comes to this stuff. 💩
 
nicobie said:
Each of my panels have a Enphase mini inverter that feeds 220V single phase directly to my house main so I do not think that will work. But... I'm not too sharp when it comes to this stuff. 💩
Click to expand...
I had to google Enphase. I haven't seen that system before. It looks like you would need to buy one of their batteries to work with their system:
https://enphase.com/en-us/products-and-services/storage

Bet it's really expensive.

For short duration outages just a bike battery and an inverter would be a lot cheaper but you would have to charge the battery when the power was on.
 
Would seem feasible economically to have a system that at least will keep the refrigerator cold (or never have much food in it during this season).
Looks like you have escaped the rampant fires that are prevalent down here.
 
https://abc7.com/evacuations-remain-for-maria-fire-near-santa-paula/5663902/ :flame: :shock: :evil:

Infrared heat signature visible in this GOES satellite view:
https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/wfo/sgx/h5-loop-ir2f.html
 
Best time to visit SoCali. :D

Detailed Forecast
Overnight
Clear, with a low around 54. Northeast wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Veterans Day
Sunny, with a high near 83. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph in the afternoon.
Monday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 61. Calm wind becoming northeast around 5 mph.
Tuesday
Sunny, with a high near 83. Calm wind becoming northwest around 5 mph in the morning.
Tuesday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 61. East wind around 5 mph.
Wednesday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 81.
Wednesday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 61.
Thursday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 76.
Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 59.
Friday
Partly sunny, with a high near 75.
Friday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 58.
Saturday
Sunny, with a high near 77.
Saturday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 59.
Sunday
Sunny, with a high near 79.
 
Still no measurable rain here since May. Nothing in the forecast either. At least the fog comes in at night and leaves a trace of moisture on things which reduces the fire danger.
 
From that orange blob:

The Colorado River provides water to almost 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland. Since 2000, historically dry conditions have added stress to the Colorado River’s water resources. As a result, the risk of reaching critically low elevations at Lakes Powell and Mead has increased nearly four-fold over the past decade. Critically low reservoir levels could affect compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact; Lake Powell could drop below the level required to generate hydropower; and the economies, livelihoods, and natural resources of the Basin states could be negatively impacted.
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So if the water level gets too low, there won't be enough to generate hydroelectric power. Then what happens to Las Vegas? Burn a bunch of coal?

And Australia is now looking a lot like California with the fires but they're just starting summer. :shock:
 
I actually had some precipitation today. Just barely enough to wet the ground. Maybe 0.02". I guess this counts as the first rain of the current rain year.

Back to dry weather tomorrow.

From the San Francisco station:
Downtown San Francisco has received 0.02" over the past 24 hours, bringing the water year total up to 0.03"
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Tuesday Night
A slight chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 49.
Wednesday
A slight chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 63.
Wednesday Night
A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 43.
Thursday
A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 64. :mrgreen:
 
Might get wet here, too.

I've got stuff spread around outside the sheds I was sorting out, so I will need to get taht all packed back in there. :(

Tuesday
A 20 percent chance of rain after 11am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 81. Calm wind.
Tuesday Night
Rain, mainly after 11pm. Low around 59. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
Wednesday
Rain. High near 70. South wind 5 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
Wednesday Night
Rain. Low around 54. South wind around 5 mph becoming east after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
Thursday
Rain likely. Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Calm wind becoming east southeast around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
Thursday Night
A 40 percent chance of rain. Partly cloudy, with a low around 51. Calm wind.
Friday
A 30 percent chance of rain or sprinkles. Sunny, with a high near 66. Calm wind
Click to expand...
 
We need some of that up here. Instead we just get the wind and no rain.

In a now-familiar warning, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. notified hundreds of thousands of customers Monday that it may shut off power amid dry and windy conditions posing an increased fire risk.

The utility said 303,000 customers in parts of 25 counties in the Sierra foothills and north Bay Area — including Alameda, Butte, El Dorado, Marin, Mendocino and Yuba counties — may be without electricity starting Wednesday morning.

“PG&E will safely restore power in stages as quickly as possible, with the goal of restoring most customers by end of day Thursday, based on the current weather conditions,” the utility said in a news release.

The increased fire danger comes as a low-pressure system descends over the Bay Area and into Southern California, bringing gusts from 30 to 55 mph and dry weather to Northern California, according to the National Weather Service.
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My house is in the area where they are planning to cut the power again. This really sucks. I have my bike batteries charged up and the inverter is ready, but last time I lost all telephone service, both cell and land line, after a few hours which is pretty dangerous.
I guess I get to pig out on the ice cream in the freezer before it melts like last time. I'm going to attempt to run the fridge off the inverter but based on my measurements, my batteries won't last long enough. Other than the refrigerator, I can run just about everything else I want with the inverter.
 
Maybe the Bay area will go back to ice boxes soon. Are generators still unavailable or infeasible? We've had a smattering of wind in socal (enough to close some parks), but rain is anticipated in the next couple of days.
 
A generator is a possibility but would need a lot of gas to run 48 hours and most are noisy enough to be annoying at night. I could also get a different inverter and use my Toyota Prius as a generator. This still doesn't solve the phone problem.
 
It's been raining here since early afternoon. Mostly drizzles, but some heavy rain now and then, a little thunder.

Expected to continue overnight and get windy and gusty as well as stormy tomorrow.
 
La Niña Rain Gage
Nothin'/Skunked-Foggy Doggy-Play Misty-Drizzle Corn-Light Showers-Steady Soaker-Bands/Sheets-Cats & Dogs
************************************************************************ :)

https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/hemet/92543/daily-weather-forecast/337079
 
Saved by the fog! According to PG&E, "the weather conditions improved" in my area and a shutdown was averted. A big bank of fog was drifting in from the coast around sunset, bringing the humidity up. This morning, when the shutdown was scheduled to start, the winds were basically calm but the fog was gone. Something like 23,000 customers were still going to get cut off further north.

So now I have a bunch of bike batteries fully charged that need to be partially discharged for storage. The inverter and a 1250W heater should make fairly fast work of that and heat up the garage at the same time.
 
Been raining from sprinkles to heavy drizzles to regular rain to short downpours all night and thru today, and the streetcorner lake is still overflowing across the road crown to flow down the street.

Puddles in the front and back yards, the ground is pretty squishy everywhere. Jelly took a sliding header trying to do her crazy run around the yard this morning, looked like she'd crawled up right out of the ground. :lol: But her Scotchgard Fur™® let her just shake most of it off, so she took off running and did it again a few times until she got tired of crashing. Peanutbutter didn't try running after her, just watched, I guess he is getting more cautious--he's taller and falls harder. Yogi and Kirin were both pretty gingerly stepping around the slick spots, they've learned the hard way about that. ;)

Gonna have to put more cardboard down in the path to the gate to get the trike to and from it for work on Friday, so it doesn't sink into the muck and get stuck. I don't wanna have to dig it out....

Good news is I won't have to water anything for a while now., maybe a couple of weeks or more, it's gonna soak pretty deep.
 
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