Solar voltaics - My $50 230 watt solar panel works

So I finally got around to unwrapping my solar panel from it's travel blanket, and tested it with the multi-metre.

It looks like this.

It's leaning against my aquaponics growhouse.

It's big.

If you look closely in the pic above, you can see the glass is shattered.

That's why I got it for $50.

It looks like this in the bottom left hand corner.

From the way it shattered, I'd guess it's tempered glass. That means to replace it will cost around $200, and it will be heavy.

I want it light to go on my boat, so I dont think I'll be using glass.

One option would be to just pour epoxy resin all over it and fill in the gaps to water proof it, but the weight is a bit of an issue. Another is just a sheet of plastic. My boat is small, and isn't meant to be carrying anything other than one person. I plan on either one or two people, a stack of gear, a motor, and this solar panel an aquaponics system, and perhaps a grow house. I'll also need a way to keep any fish I catch alive, so some kind of live well will be required. Otherwise I'll need to catch a fish for each meal on demand. I hate pressure, and I hate being hungry,, so being able to catch some fish when they are plentiful, and save them for a day or two will be a really useful thing. It will also be easy enough to do given how much water I'll have all around me. There should also be enough power left over at the end of the day for an air supply, and perhaps a bit of lighting.

I dont really know how much my motor will use, but I'll do some tests in a bucket of water soon, and find out. If there is enough power saved to the battery during the day, I might even get a few extra hours of cruising early morning or into the evening.

Who knows.

I cant work such stuff out, so only tests will tell.

The best news in that my low cost solar panel works.

I guess I can call that a success.














at 120 thing in 20 years when taking risks on buying broken stuff at auction, I have a 100% success rate so far with solar voltaics, and discovering my $50 230 watt solar panel works.

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Thinking - Opps

Oh, and I'll try to fix that and post more of what's going on.

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Thinking - How many words are in a human

I have a feeling each of us has only so many words in them each week.

Get too many words out, and there's no more to put on your blog.

Lately I've been very involved in the community aspects of all the forums I'm a member of to do all the research I do. Instead of unloading my head here, I've been unloading my head in the forum space.

For some reason I think everyone is connected to everyone else and always know what everyone is saying so it doesn't matter where one says it.

It turns out it does.

Looking back over the dates of my posts, I see I havnt really posted a lot, even though a lot has been going on.

This leads me to believe that there are only so many words in everybody's head. Use them all up somewhere, and you have none left for anywhere else.


120 Things in 20 years - Thinking - How many words are in a human. I got nothing.

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Epic adventurer - Communications and remote blogging

A while ago a nice young lady we know sent a text message saying she would swap her iPhone for a home made burger.

I made her a burger.

Mrs. 120 Things in 20 years got that one, but now, some absurdly nice people from furv.com decided they would give me an iPhone so I could blog my epic Murray River adventure whenever I passed a town with mobile coverage.

They didn't didnt even ask that I mention them in my blog, so... furv.com.

Thanks universe.

And sometimes, even though it was my burger that got the first one, it pays to hold out for the later version :)

Now my karmic credit must be running on empty so I'm off to help old people get safely across roads or something.




120 Things in 20 years - Epic adventurer - Communications and remote blogging, I got a free iPhone!

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Aquaponics - Colander feeder success

Well that was easy.

Not that it was ever expected to be difficult, but the fish found the food within a few hours of swimming endlessly in circles.

Fish are so smart.

I've already started to raise the feeder up each time I feed them so that eventually I can add feed directly from the surface without having to lift the colander.

If I feed from the surface with the colander at depth, the feeds blows away in the current before it reaches the sheltered waters of the strainer, and then gets sucked into the outlet before the fish even see it.

The colander will also allow me to trap any fish I choose with minimum fuss and stress. All I'll have to do is lift it to the surface when my chosen fish is in and it will be caught.

It will also serve as a measuring device as I can stick a stainless steel ruler in it to compare fish to each time they enter.

Is there anything a stainless steel colander cant do?

I also replaced the PVC hide for the little one, but this time I cut the sides so it stands on legs, and raises the walls up off the ground so solids cant collect.





120 Things in 20 years is one of the few places on the net where you might hear someone banging on about an aquaponics, colander feeder success.

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Aquaponics - Colander feeder

One of the requirements for a SLO (solids lifting overflow) is that you need to concentrate the fish solids with a whirl pool.

One of the issues with making a whirl pool in my fish tank is that it's a cube.

I found by pointing the powerhead, I can make the solids collect where I want, but the result is that any feed I put in tends to be removed as soon as it hits the bottom before the fish get at it.

I figured I needed something to hold the food off the bottom until the fish eat it, so I made use of a large kitchen colander.

I hung it by three strings, and then tied an extra string in a loose loop around the three.

That's the three strings going off to the right, and the loose loop going off to the left.

The result is I can pull the thing up to the surface and to the side by pulling on the loose loop to add the feed.

Then I can just let the thing go to slowly drift back to the centre, where it remains suspended a few inches off the bottom.

I found that anything sitting on the bottom was collecting solids so I keep it high enough to allow a free flow under and around it.

The result is any solids can go straight into the SLO and to the grow bed, but any food hangs around until it's eaten.



The other result is that it's driving my fish crazy as they can smell the food, but haven't quite got the hang of going over the top rather than trying to eat it through the holes in the strainer.





My new 120 things in 20 years, Aquaponics - Colander feeder fish frustrating catch cry is "They'll figure it out".

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Aquaponics - My first spinach*

I harvested the first produce from my new grow bed today.

It's some absurdly healthy spinach*.

It looks like this. And if not for the fact that I used my kitchen door for scale, and you cant tell how big it is, you'd be able to see that it's big.

It's also really, really green. I've never seen spinach* look so good.

I harvested a hat full, but even then you cant tell how big it is, because that's a really big hat.

The biggest non-sombrero hat I've ever seen.

My spinach* is really big.

And really green.

Really really green.

I've also had hundreds of baby carrots.

There they are.

Hundreds of them.

They look like this up close.

Not so big.











Things seem to be growing well in the new constant flood grow beds.



*or silver beet


Wearing a hat filled with spinach* from your first harvest from a new grow beds is a good way to get a seat on a bus. In fact as my first ever 120 Things in 20 years public transport tip, I would say its a good way to empty a bus.

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