MadModder

That's really interesting to me, Joules. In the 90's I lived on a houseboat that I built, and traveled 1700 miles in down the US coast and across Florida. I had a Heart Interface 1200 watt inverter, and unfortunately a small noisy Coleman generator for when the 25 hp outboard motor wasn't running and charging. Three 90 AH deep cycle 12 V batteries. I lived on that boat, off and on, for ten years. It served as a basecamp here on our land while I built our present house 25 years ago.

I would have loved to have had photocells and a more modern storage and inverter system like you have now. I did make a hot water solar collector for showers. I found that 12 V lighting and appliances were useful on the boat back then. The inverter had a charger in it so if I ever did spend the night at a marina, it would transfer switch over automatically and charge the batteries.

Now I do think about alternative power, so it's interesting to see how much more efficient your system is than anything I ever was used to. And how little space your array takes up for that amount of power. We do heat with wood (we live on 67 acres of mostly forested land) and one of my interests in Stirling engines has been with the ultimate aim of making something big that, in the frequent power outages we have could serve for some power. Although for continuous use, photocells make more sense. Both would be ideal. Actually a Stirling would make sense for CHP since we heat with wood.

I'm obviously a long way from producing usable amounts of power via a hot air engine. But I do think it's possible. Well also, I have to admit, building a big Stirling would be fascinating and fun. You have to add in the fun factor in anything, I think.

I still do have the Heart Interface inverter but it stopped working. I think the output power transistor(?s) is the problem but I am not knowledgeable enough about electronics to troubleshoot it. I can solder well enough and once built an LNW-80 computer from scratch - bare boards and ICs etc, but analyzing circuits, nope.

Wow, very impressive Steve, engine and its back story.   I sometimes wish I could focus long enough to build engines  but something usually comes along and takes my mind off that idea 

We have a 12v Rolls battery that's covered by the workshop and Studio array.   That handles  fridge and freezer plus most of our IT gear.  The tracker has ended up powering our Bluetti (7.5kW total storage) power station.   That pretty much covers all kitchen appliances, microwave, the air con and any other heavy loads up to 2.5kW.   I run the lathe and mill from the Bluetti as well when we have plenty of power.   House is still grid tied as never enough in winter, but March through October the house only uses 1-2kW a day.   We don't sell back to the grid and using the Bluetti solves lots of regulation issues having solar dedicated wiring in the house.   Pretty much just electric shower and electric range cooker only loads we can't power, wife likes to bake, so well worth the power used.

The Bluetti can handle a direct feed in from the tracker and make full use of the array.  The 12V side maxes out at 600W per array, looking into moving to 24V replacing the Rolls battery. This is as much a hobby for me these days, it certainly isn't a fit and forget system.  My workshop rack is a lot of work compared to the Bluetti.  The all in one is very convenient, and portable, I would certainly say it's the way to go if you are starting from scratch.

Apologies for the awful picture of Bluetti stack, AC200L and two B300K expansion batteries.  Wife really likes this system and took to using it straight away.

Uh...... first attempt @ 16 IPM 8000 RPM and .020" DOC ....not so great. For some reason it seemed to wander sideways in the cut. I think the bit was flexing. The spindle and mount were really solid and no detectable play, before or after. It managed one pass, got back on track, then took a detour again, this time into double the depth of cut, which broke it.

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You're only one step away from making a buzz bomb Andrew...

Careful measurements were taken to clear Studio and also work out best position for winter sun, based on the x8, 100W panels we have.

I am currently seeing 750W an hour for at least 4-5hrs (sunny hot day), after around 4-5kW all our batteries are full  so don't have a true
amount for how much the tracker can produce as it gets throttled back.   These last few days not even activated the tracker as it collects enough just pointing up.  I think we produced 20kw for the air con during these heatwaves.

The array is 2m x 2m to give it some scale, so not far off 20% efficient, considering our latitude.