BUILD A HOME SOLAR PANEL

This adventure took place back in the early 1980’s while I was experimenting with living completely off the grid with solar power.

As I said in another living off the grid post on this blog, I was using a 120 volt DC solar array to charge a bank of batteries and converting the DC to AC with a expensive, back then, sine wave inverter to run the house. Since my house was out in “the sticks” I could only receive two TV stations and they were both weak and snowy. So I decided to build a satellite TV system.

As you may remember, the Direct TV type of satellite service did not exist then but you could receive TV station programing downlinks if you had one of those large 12 to 14 foot C-Band satellite dishes. I was able to get hold of a 12 foot dish and I bought a nice downconverter and remote controlled receiver. Now I could watch TV in style!

One weekend I invited a friend of mine up to visit and experience living off the grid for himself. He brought a large pizza with him and I had a cold 6 pack or two waiting. That day a thunderstorm was brewing in the south when he arrived. After showing him the solar array, the battery room (outside the house) and answering questions about how it all worked it was time to go inside and get out the pizza and beer and turn on the TV to watch a Star Trek episode that was being downlinked to TV stations across the country.

My friend thought it was all pretty cool because here we were out in the middle of nowhere with no commercial power sitting in comfortable chairs eating pizza (which I heated in the microwave oven) drinking beer and watching next weeks episode of Star Trek. On the satellite the TV programs were downlinked a week early from what you would see on the local station and this added to his amazement.

The thunderstorm was starting to get very loud and we could see flashes of lightning coming through the windows. About three quarters of the way through Star Trek, suddenly we heard a very loud “crack” followed immediately by ear shattering thunder. All the lights and the TV went out, a small puff of smoke came out of a wall outlet (I had MOV surge protectors on each outlet) and all we could hear was the rain hitting the roof.

We looked at one another and he said “I guess a power pole got hit by lightning”. But then I said “wait the power can’t go off because we’re solar powered”. We rushed outside to the battery room and as I opened the door you could smell the combination of ozone and burnt insulation. The fuse to array was blown but that was not the problem. The last battery on the top shelf was missing a terminal and clamp, just a burnt battery cable was hanging loose.

Melted lead from the battery terminal was sprayed around like paint. The lightning had somehow managed to blow the terminal off the battery! I was flabbergasted! I said to myself, I knew I should have put in a ground rod on this system! We both had a very exciting afternoon but later after I replaced the battery I checked all the panels in the array and was very happy to find that both they and my precious sine wave inverter were just fine. So always make sure your solar power system is well grounded, the pizza is hot and the beer is cold.