Tuesday - It's a warmer morning today, but at 77°F, it's not too bad. I'm sitting outside for the morning test session, and there is a nice, light breeze. Unfortunately, the wind is supposed to pick up around noon and have gusts up to 33mph.
After the morning test session, I rode the Ural to the local hardware store to pick up an 8’x2x6. It wouldn’t fit in the Jeep due to the length but it’ll easily fit in the Ural. The guys at the hardware store got a kick out of it. I need the 2x6 to mount to the ceiling of the shed for the hanging bike rack. The ceiling joists are spaced 2’ apart and this gives me a lot of flexibility on the position of the bicycle rack.
Wednesday - The bicycle rack arrived this evening and I felt obligated to get it installed. The 2x6 is twisted a bit so it wouldn’t fit snug to the ceiling. But it’ll work. I used some bungee cords to prevent the hooks from coming off the seat and handlebars. This was a problem that I had with a similar rack in Fairbanks.
We went into San Antonio today for an appointment. It was north of the airport so quite the slog through city traffic. And, the north wind along Hwy 90 added to the driving stress.
I also drained the fresh water tank, the water heater, and blew out the water lines on the class C. I still need to pick up some RV antifreeze for the traps. While I had the RV parked in front of our lot, I also removed one (of three) of the solar panels to reinstall on the class A.
Since I had moved the solar charge controller from the class A to the class C last spring, I needed to pick up a replacement. I didn’t repeat my mistake not taking temperature into account. The other charge controller maxed out at 100VDC input from the solar panels. With the four panels wired in series, the voltage could exceed 100VDC when the air temperature drops below about 35°F. The new charge controller has a max input voltage of 150VDC. I’ll start that installation tomorrow.
Thursday - I reinstalled one panel onto the class A and they are wired in series. Since they were previously installed here, it went pretty quick.
The next task was installing the new charge controller. It is physically larger than the previous one but the old wiring was just long enough. After powering it on from the batteries, I connected to it using the Victron software, downloaded the latest firmware, and ran through the configuration. I then turned on the switch to the two panels.
The most challenging part was getting the new controller recognized by HomeAssistant, the home automation/monitor system I’m using. Communication is via Modbus over WiFi from the Raspberry Pi running VenusOS. It turns out that only a slight change was needed in the Modbus YAML file for it to start pulling data.
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