NOMADICISTA

Now that it's been getting a little warmer, I've been playing with the bike again. For a laugh, I bypassed the diode to see if I could pedal against the battery current. Despite the motor being designed for mains voltage, it ran pretty good backwards on 12V. Not too fast but it could turn the flywhe...

Nice one, it looks good. The wires look back to front though... massive fat AC lead and scrawny looking DC lead? :wink: Although I guess the AC lead has further to go and you're only stepping down from 240V to 130V. I've got a similar project waiting for me this summer / autumn. I've got a big 30V t...

Wow, is that one of your installations?

They missed a bit... There's nothing on the shed roof or the lawn

With a bit of help from my parents, who came down to dinner on Saturday and stayed overnight, we managed to heave-ho the big Sharp array on to the garage roof. http://i41.tinypic.com/2mxikwp.jpg The Sharp array at 46.4V is working very well, charging better in low light than the amorphous array. In ...

Maybe not quite what you were after but I've just built a fixed tilt ground array mount from wood and aluminium that was cheaper than buying mounts but still far from cheap. I mounted two 170W panels of 130x99cm size and it cost about $185 ($156 of that being the aluminium extrusions) in parts from ...

With a lot of head-scratching, measuring and drilling, I finally got to mount the new Sharp panels on something more sturdy than garden chairs. http://i44.tinypic.com/fwq6tx.jpg I decided on a fixed tilt angle of about 45 degrees as the summer should provide more power than I can usefully use (yeah,...

There's a feature in Nature about a new type of Lithium ion battery that can be charged and discharged in 20 seconds! The problem with traditional lithium cells was apparently the substrate used to hold the lithium. A materials scientist has found a way to improve this so that the charge / discharge...

Finally, the replacement 15W solar panel came back and this time wasn't shattered or anything. I fitted it back in the frame and brought the half broken one back indoors. While I was at it I decided to put blocking diodes on all the amorphous series pairs. Even though Sharkey reckoned you don't need...

We went to London at the weekend and just walking in Soho we were almost run over by a guy pedalling one of those tricycle rickshaws that have sprouted up as unlicensed taxis in town. They have no license, no insurance and charge people money to ferry around town centre. He ran a red light and we we...

One benefit is that we also enjoy usage of the various cycle paths around Crawley Are you allowed to use the cycle paths? I thought the ruling was that the C5 was classed as a quadra-something and you were allowed to drive it without tax and a license if: It was limited to 15mph Wasn't driven on th...

Wow, you live just a stone's throw across town from me. What a small internet this is! Yeah, I'd love to have a go in one - just not on that road outside Tescos with cars and trucks roaring past me at 40mph. On such roads I try not to even ride my bicycle on the road as it's too dangerous - and we h...

I had to work out of town today so I decided to stop at the shop where I bought my 12V inverter from and picked up the 24V version. I'd already decided to do it yesterday and had reconfigured the battery bank for 24V. I briefly agonised over whether it was better to arrange the batteries as two para...

It's no good Captain... She cannae take the power! I've over-cooked it a bit with these new panels. It got very clear and sunny this afternoon and the Sharp panels overloaded the controller. At first it could cope with the extra power, limiting the battery output current to just over 15A but as the ...

Thanks Griff. It's nice to have an audience that stays awake :) Well, I got the new controller and have it all fixed up. Had to work on it until 2am as it needed the wiring and a new box with the two disconnect switches, fuses and so on fitting. I started work on it after dark as there's no other wa...

It's rare in this country to come across good customer service but the guys at brightgreenenergy.co.uk certainly proved to be a bit a rarity. I got a mail back from them answering my questions and then called Alex at the web shop. We talked about the various options for panels and he offered me a be...