1st year of my solar pv system

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last june 12, 2012, i installed an eighty watt solar pv system with a 40ah deep cycle battery. the target is to light up the whole 2nd floor of my house and to power a small web server and its wireless router. …and that’s what i did. here’s a table of my system’s loads for the curious:

load wattage hours per day
raspberry pi 2.5 24
wrt54g router 6w 24
2x led bulbs 5w 4
led bulb 1w 12
led bulb 3w 4
total 22.5 13.6 (ave)

my 40ah battery setup lasted until april 2013 where i replaced the 40ah battery with 16ea 9ah vlra ups batteries. in theory, there should be an increase in the juice. however, i am not comfortable with my readings. i find it still low. probably due to the thin wires used to connect these small batteries. well…

what i’ve learned so far?

first, use the appropriate cables/wires as much as possible. thick is good but not too thick and you might wish to have the measurements ready. with this in mind, i am having my electrical wiring reviewed and replaced prior to upgrade.

second, use bigger capacity battery as much as possible. i have decided to use the 100ah series on my next upgrade. why?

  1. it is easier to manage. cable and storage wise. unlike what i have right now, it took me a while to connect those 16 batteries
  2. there will be less power loss. as i mentioned above, there is a teenie-weenie but noticeable voltage drop somewhere in the connection/series

third, but the most important thing i’ve learned in my first year, is, solar panel orientation. i have read a lot that the proper orientation of your solar panel should be 15 degrees south-east when you are located in the philippines. i have neglected this at first (for 5mos or so) resulting to time consuming relocation. my panels’ current orientation is on the highest location i could get and roughly facing south-east resulting to decreased charge time.

lastly, solar panels needs cleaning too. try to have it cleaned at least once a month. these panels are prone to moist and dust since they are exposed. so wiping them with a clean soft cloth with soap and water will help pump out as much juice as it can.

..and, that’s it. my next upgrade’s guide is through :mrgreen:


my raspberry pi’s new home

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this is actually my second raspberry pi’s home (the first one, rev 1, have it’s own). nothing really fancy, i just placed my rpi inside my cdr-king cw-5354u’s case. doesn’t it look cool to see two linux distros, dd-wrt and raspbian, in one box? a la voltron?

because usb wireless dongles are too mainstream

for those who are curious, here’s what’s inside:

  • cdr-king cw-5354u wireless router
  • raspberry pi model b rev 2
  • a scythe mini kaze to keep my system cool but still quite
  • a 12v to 5v step down brick

what's inside

what’s the use? i don’t know. maybe, i just find usb wifi dongles too mainstream :mrgreen:


my first encounter with walkers

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there was this cool function that adds a custom css class in the parent’s <li>:


// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2983616/wordpress-filters-documentation-trying-to-understand-add-filter
function my_list_pages_filter($pages){
    $pages = preg_replace( '/<a/', '<a class="parent"', $pages );
    return $pages;
}
add_filter( 'wp_list_pages', 'my_list_pages_filter' );

output will look something like:


<ul>
    <li><a href="#">first level a</a>
    <li class="parent"><a href="#">first level b</a>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="#">level two a</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">level two b</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">level two a</a></li>
        </ul>
    <li>
</ul>

nice! but what if i need a css class on the parent’s hyperlink instead? like so:


<ul>
    <li><a href="#">first level a</a>
    <li><a href="#" class="parent">first level b</a>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="#">level two a</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">level two b</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">level two a</a></li>
        </ul>
    <li>
</ul>

i asked around and i was advised to use WordPress’ Walker Class. creating a simple php function is currently not possible as far as i have reached (i am using WP 3.5.1 as of writing). fair enough.

after hours of digging, i found this cool script. it was nice, quite detailed but it still took me several more hours to understand.
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