Here Comes the Sun: Solar Power

We have a few ways to make electricity on Cambria but our preferred method is solar. It’s silent and it uses free, renewable energy–the sun. We have three solar panels on board. Solar panel output is measured in watts. We have a little over 400 watts of solar panels. It’s not enough.

Back in Canada it was enough–at least it was enough in the spring and summer. Spring and summer days are long on the west coast of Canada which gave us many hours of quality daylight to feed the solar panels. Winter days here are much shorter. We can only count on six or seven hours of quality daylight with which to charge the batteries. Also, it’s warm here. Our fridge and freezer have to work much harder to stay cool. This uses a lot more electricity. So basically, we use more electricity here and have less sunlight to charge our batteries. This means we need more solar power.

We have picked up four more panels. Our task now is to mount them on the aft of our boat, on the radar arch. We have one panel there now. We’ll move it and add the four new ones. Unfortunately, the arch needs to be modified in order to accommodate the additional panels. For that we need a welder and the welder here is busy. Hopefully, he’ll get to us next week.

I’m not holding my breath.

---

I drafted this post in late February. It’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath. We are still waiting for the welder to come. It’s not really his fault that it has taken so long. It’s a long story. Perhaps I’ll tell it someday but not today.