5: I think I know where one more elevated panel could get us legitimate intake for another half hour.

Which means I know what I'd _like_ to test next, but I can't until I get another cable.

Guess I should get that ordered, then. Anna's already signed off on it, and the shop where I ordered the other cable is having an end-of-season sale.

Not bad at all. We could go for literal weeks like this if we had to. Servers wouldn't be up 24x7, we'd bring them down at night. I'd ditch my mail server and webserver probably also go down, maybe bring up mail server for a few hours at a time every day. Mastodon and core networking stay up.

This was a productive day.

(3/3)

3: Parasitic load by the server UPSes is not included in their load reports. It's about 15 watts per UPS. Not terrible by total, but terrible by percentage. In an emergency situation, we pull the UPSes and we gain a full-sized refrigerator at no loss.

4: Drew about 900 Wh without having to move panels. That's on a good day, but it's only one panel and that one isn't even angle optimised. There's legitimate per-panel upside available here (10%?) and massive upside with more panels (+300%).

I think 4000 Wh is in reach on a day identical to today; more if you add panels at the best couple of previous test points.

Despite running the server core all-out for over three hours, we added charge to the battery. Not much, but some.

(2/?)

...and servers are back onto mains power.

If I'd had my test panel where I really wanted it, we'd've managed only another 15 minutes or so' that still would've been useful. Sadly, my cables aren't long enough.

WHAT'D WE LEARN TODAY, SOLARBIRD?

1: We're still done at 2pm. And it is _abrupt_. But we can make it to 2pm at strong input _without_ having to move panels around constantly.

This can be pretty effective even in an unattended/turnkey setup, as long as the goal is emergency power with a solar generator and not anything like full power.

2: Height - as always, here - is key. Absolutely critical.

(1/?)

Lower balcony went to zero around noon, or would've, if we'd had panels there. Now is where we'd be chasing sunlight spots for around 170 watts for brief periods of time, with room for one panel.

New test location (one panel) went up to sustained 210 watts.

The question really is more about how much after-literal-noon we get at this new test location. I've already learned that we can get quality emergency power _before_ noon in other locations. But after that, we're really chasing sunlight and it's constant panel relocation and that won't do.

If we can pull power here for a reasonably long period of time, then this is where we'd be able to put fixed panels. It's also where we'd have to build a rack, which is why I cobbled together my little elevated frame.

More later.

(2/2)

This location isn't quite right - it's not elevated as high as it should be and would be if we build something here - but it's close enough.

It started producing earlier than I expected (in the 100 watt range) and only briefly dropped into two digits due to shadows from a small copse of trees in the distance. It has been limited a little by newer trees until between 10:45 and 11am - but it's been producing consistently the whole time regardless, mostly in the 100 watt range.

Then at 11am it cleared shadows and jumped to 200 and we switched over the server rack.

(1/2)

@tsturm @ai6yr

Where is the heat that hurricanes have not pushed into space? Earth's only heat sinks? It is in fires.

Fire.

Japan is burning, Russia is burning, Canada is burning.

The heat not pushed into space is heating forests, heating soil, turning forests into Kindling.

Canada has burned (it's hard to understand the scale) 30 Million Hectares of forest in 30 months.

Its a warning that fossil fuels are death.
Build the replacement energy, fast