Our First Full Day Using Solar Power

Two of my father's favorite lines from my youth:  "Turn off the light when you leave the room.  I'm paying for the electricity you use."  And......  "Turn off the water when you're done.  Do not walk away from the sink with the water running!  I'm paying for that water and I want to see it being used, not running down the drain."

Living in a motor home repeats my childhood experiences.... The majority of the lights in our motor home have LED bulbs in them.  The florescent tubes in the motor home are the only lights that Eric didn't replace.  Turning off lights when leaving a room is our habit, whether we are at a campground or running on battery power.

Now we have a panel that shows us 

the charge rates of the AGM Batteries. 

We overnighted in the driveway of  AM Solar.  Eric is patiently waiting for 7:14 am Pacific Time.  Sunrise brings what's essential to our new battery system....

   The solar cells on our solar panels
   are called photovoltaic (PV) cells. 

The photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly into electricity.  Sixteen minutes to sunrise......  Eric is like a little boy preparing for a friend to visit his house.  He's setting up his room for the day's activities...   Now he's looking down the street hoping to see his friend as he turns the corner....

Here comes the sun.............  

We rush to the panel to check on the battery charge indicator....

 The batteries are charging at 0.3 amps. 

 It's not much, but we are no where near
full sun at 7:20 am.The charging rate
will go up as the day goes on.

Here's the assortment of Owners Manuals

to read.  Eric's read them once, online. 

I hope the second read will be as interesting.

The first AM Solar employee parks his car and gets out....  Eric pops out of the motor home.... "We're charging at 0.6 amps right now!"  Thumbs up from the first employee on the scene today.

Greg Holden, co-owner of AM Solar came &
spent more time with us on the new control panels.

He and Eric talked about upgrading the breakers
for the inverter.








I am waiting for Eric and Greg to finish their conversation. No rush.... as Eric is learning a lot from Greg.

An AM Solar tech replaced the 

30 amp breakers for the inverter 

with 50 amp breakers 

Greg didn't have two, so he had 

one taken out of his motor home for our use.

After saying thank you to the group and giving Deb a hug, Eric and I hitched up the Jeep and headed to Valley Center in Eugene.  This mall allows RVs to park for free for two nights.

We are paying more attention to the lights we use; turning off the Internet & computers when leaving the motor home.  I think we'll be miserly with our resources for a while.