Running Bear's March 2026 Coffee Shop

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Well howdy there all of you sunshine peeps.

It's heavy overcast troy again,

Got the solar panel set up to recharge the Mr. Peabody battery that I drained down on the fridge learning curve.

Solar 1.jpg


The portable panels have some downsides. They're only semi rigid, and could really use a second person to hold and help tilt while setting up the tilt angles.

But still, I persevered by myself. and finally got the panels laying flat on the concrete. They are Single Facial (only absorb from one direction, and that gave me two more watts coming in than tilted at 50°. Our zone seems to range from upper teens to upper 40s for tilt angle. I figured with the overcast, I'd try to get as much of the sky as possible because the light is to diffused right now.

If the overcast lightens up, I'll go try a better angle to catch it in the lower sky. For this month, I should be in the 30° range, down to 17 for summer.

Here's the initial watt reading with the 50° angle
Solar 2.jpg

and here 2 hours later after I dropped the panels flat:

Solar 4.jpg


I ordered a rigid 200 w panel off Amazon for an easier to use option. Should be here on Wed.
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Again, this is NOT for a whole-home system. I want to get power for the Solar Generators (batteries) should we be without power for a day or more. The joy of living in both the Tornado and Lake Effect snow belts.
 


KriegslokBR52 said:
Good morning gentlemen. Back to work, but the weekend was spent up in New England. Initially i wanted to check out the Greenberg Train Show in Wilmington, Massachusetts. Made it up there after noon. Since i was not far away from Vermont border, i decided to finally use the opportunity to see Wallpole, NH and check out the nice scene of railroad under Bellows Falls. Swedish double unit leading iron ore cars on the European layout:View attachment 261093
Wallpole, where long time ago Steamtown had its headquarters:View attachment 261094
Through girder turntable is one of the rarest of its kind:View attachment 261091
In the south part of the yard there was parked former NJ Transit "Pig" belonging to Vermont Rail System:View attachment 261090View attachment 261097
Closer to the roundhouse:View attachment 261098View attachment 261092
On the west side of the river is town of Bellows Falls with its famous tunnel:View attachment 261095View attachment 261089
An opportunity was there to walk the tunnel, which 😃...View attachment 261096
I ended up in White River Junction for the night.
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Damn, I left the Shriner's at about noon. Just missed each other.
 
Good evening folks, well Today's plans went down the tubes last night as some friends called and wound up with my wife heading to their house just as they called an ambulance for the husband of of friends. On arriving at the hospital his blood was dangerously low and he got air evacuated to Little Rock. My wife got his wife home then had to pack for a trip she was leaving on this morning. Our friend's only son was in Florida and trying to get home. So I took our friend's wife to Little Rock today, took it off from work, and their son finally made it in about 2PM. He was wiped out too, but he and I get along well too, so we will work out getting Carol back and forth to the hospital til Ed is home. Had some dinner and now gonna watch some TV, possibility of an old Western is high on the list of possibilities.
 


bnsf971 said:
While some recent posts have been temporarily been made inaccessible pending a decision on whether to allow the topic to continue, I found this brass engine on Fecesbook. It has the virtue of being cheap, if nothing else, and I know some of us like brass:

Facebook

www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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Its a damn shame the picture is so small I can't even tell the wheel arrangement , let alone what prototype it is representing. Obviously he's a noob or he really doesn't want to sell.
 
troyphoto said:
drop of about 40% efficiency
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The formula to see how much loss due to heat -
Pmax and Voc are listed on the back of the panel or in the spec sheet.
Pmax x (current panel temp - 25) = %loss
Voc - (Voc x %loss) = actual output

In my case, my panel Pmax .36%, Voc 42.4. temp of the panel at that time was 55.8C sitting in the sun and on the ground.

.36% x (55.8 - 25) = 11.088%
42.4 - (42.4 x .11088) = 37.7 v

I measured it and it was very close. Gotta remember to cover the panel before attaching the meter leads as I almost blew up my meter. This was my 360 watt panel and it was pumping close to 10 amps.

Attached a zip file that has an excel file that automatically calculates this. Just add in the info in the orange areas and it will provide the outputs.

Heat loss differs by make and model as the specs differ. The spec sheet of my 100watt HQST panel just to illustrate what the info may look like.
HQST PANEL SPECS.jpg
 

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