Power Outage at the Dire Wolf Project

Today, I’m flying (this time not piloting) out to Oregon to begin my new job.

At the time I came home after my long stint with my old job, Jenn had plans to take her friend Shirley on a tour of the north Cascade Mountains in northern Washington state. We were two ships passing in the night.

While at home, I had a lot of tasks that needed attending. It is, after all, much work keeping a kennel running.

For starters, we rely a lot on solar power during the summer months. A generator when the weather gets too hot for one AC unit. We have two sets of panels that charge up our house batteries during the day. One is a set of four panels rated at a cumulative 800 watts.

The other set was the original three we had purchased for the RV when we first decided to go caveman on bare land. And as I was cleaning and maneuvering this second set for better sun catching, I found that they weren’t putting any power out.

Now, 1100 watts seems like a lot if you’re not familiar with the essentials of powering up a house. 1100 watts would do little for a cottage. It is just enough for our small home on a 2500 watt inverter. We run everything on that inverter except for the RV’s lights. And when you run an AC unit, you need all the sunlight power you can muster.

So, I moved them. With Yeti in tow, I took the three panels to a summer position that works for morning and evening light. Then I checked the charge controller. Zero amps! It was as if the system wasn’t hooked up at all.

I unplugged them and just plugged in the middle panel. I checked the controller. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I plugged in two together. Now we’re up to 1.3 amps, not much yet, but when I got the two up on the roof, they now are putting out 5.3 amps.

The third panel was bad.

So glad I am home now to help out with the Dire Wolf Project Maintenance Program (that’s a new title in case you’re wondering).

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Going to get back to Abbot and Stone today. Should be finishing that up soon.   See my trilogy offering:  Pursuit of the Keepers/Jacob Lake Trilogy

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Jennifer Stoeckl is the co-founder of the Dire Wolf Project, founder of the DireWolf Guardians American Dirus Dog Training Program, and owner/operator of DireWolf Dogs of Vallecito. She lives in the beautiful inland northwest among the Ponderosa pine forests with her pack of American Dirus dogs.