Ray's PV water heating

 https://rmenke.blogspot.com/2019/07/diy-solar-water-heater.html

Ray is now heating water with DC electric power from a string of three serial panels.  His electricity has a cost of about $.03/kwh.  The three panels are dedicated to heating water and can not be used to sell power to the grid (or otherwise used) without reconfiguring.   The $.03 is the amount that he would  be paid for excess power converted to AC and sold to the grid.

If Ray needed or wanted more water heating power, he could go to four or more panels in series (instead of the three he is using) or maybe put in two parallel strings (total of 6 panels).  To avoid attempting to switch DC power, which is much more arc prone than AC, Ray depends on not using enough power to over heat the water in the old electric heater.  The higher the voltage, the more likely is arcing, so it is possible that Ray could use the AC switch in his heater, designed to handle 240VAC, to switch the ~100VDC from his three panels.

My water is now heated with a standard AC water heater but retrofitted with about 3kw heating elements to replace the original 4kw elements.    The smaller elements allow my heater to have a chance of operating from my PowerWall battery if the grid is down; my single battery PW has a maximum power of 5kw.  My water heater is on a timer that starts about 9am in order to prevent night time heating from the grid.  My cost is about $.06/kwh which is the amount that I would be paid if the power was sold to the grid.  Night time water heating would cost me about $.10/kwh if I allowed heating at night.

My water heater daily power is about 3kw for less than an hour.  So, 3kwh or about $.18.  Ray's power/energy consumption should be about the same and should cost about $.06 whether from panels dedicated to heating water or not.

If Ray wanted to consider how to automatically switch his DC power (via built in thermostat), he could look at fewer panels in series.  One panel for 30-35 VDC or two for 60-70VDC.

A lead from Texas Country Reporter

Texas Country Reporter episode 1798 has a story on James Evans, a present day Big Bend photographer with a studio in Marathon.  TCR tells us about lamp shade photographs that were first made, promoted, and sold by earlier area photographer W. D. Smithers.  The Smithers lampshades are now highly valued collector items.  Evans is now doing lamp shades in the Smithers style. 

http://www.texasescapes.com/ClayCoppedge/W-D-Smithers-Ways-of-Border.htm

https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/photopublic/fullDisplay.cfm?CollID=15885

https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00286

https://www.jameshevans.com/

Not closely related but episode 1794 had a story on the W. R. Dallas rustic furniture business.  An old business that is being perpetuated by a present day person.

Not closely related, but I'm reminded of my first exposure to the rustic cedar furniture that was used in the original Indian Lodge CCC project in the Davis Mountains.  A 1960s Indian Lodge expansion used replicas; I have done a bit of research on that (REALLY beautiful) rustic furniture.  I eventually learned that the CCC built a furniture factory near Bastrop to make use of local cedar wood; that CCC factory provided cedar products for many CCC projects of the period (1930s).  During probably the 1970s and 1980s, a Smithville business, Texas Cedar Products, sold vacation cabins and some cedar furniture out of Smithville.  I have a treasured coffee table that we have had about 40 years.  And Texas Cedar Products built my now burned guest house.  There is currently a cedar lumber business, Wampler, operating near Bastrop that supplied cabinet lumber for our remodeled bathroom.  More recently, Wampler supplied the wood for construction of burial boxes for both Jean and her sister.

https://wamplermfg.com/

May  29, 2022

I recently had the very great pleasure of staying in one of the old CCC cabins up hill from the Chisos Mountains Basin Lodge.  I was surprised to find apparently original pine rustic furniture.  I theorize that it may have been made in the same CCC Bastrop furniture factory.  I would love to learn more of that facility.  Location, projects worked on, time period, etc.

Feb 2022 cold event

Living on the Edge 

The Feb 2021 event left me in a world of hurt.  5+ days below freezing.  Lost water supply in the first 24 hours.  At the time, I was able to tend a wood stove fire; I burned a lot of wood but the warmth of the house was not seriously threatened despite the grid failures.  Eventually, I found about 6 steel pipe breaks under the house.  I VERY slowly recovered.  First, getting cold water in bathroom only after a couple of weeks.  Had to rig an outdoor shower with a 120v water heater.  That served me several months.  Eventually, I found a plumber willing to work and he, eventually, got normal water in the house.  As I recall, that was late summer.  "Normal" being hot water in bathroom sink and bathtub, in kitchen sink, and to clothes washing machine.  Cold water in bathroom, kitchen, laundry room.

For 2022, a ~2 day ice storm was forecast.  Not wanting to have to tend a fire, I had installed two mini-split hyper heat pumps.  12k and 9k btu.  Those turned out to be insufficient to keep the house very warm under the experienced conditions.  A 3rd (18k btu) unit is ready to install.  The big threat this episode was  ice induced local power failures.  That did not happen but I was prepared to burn in the wood stove.  The wood stove was held in reserve in case of the power failure.  The Power Wall carried me through (barely) the power failures of 2021.  The PW now goes into "storm mode" when the forecasts indicates.  Normally, the PW charges only from PV power.  In storm mode, it additionally charges from grid power and does not discharge while grid power is up.  That is, it tries to maintain a full charge in order to be prepared for a power failure.

The event started early Wednesday morning.  Early Friday morning, the lowest observed temperature was about 24-25.  I lost water supply in the early morning hours of Friday.  I think/hope the frozen place is at the pressure pump about 1/3 of a mile from the house.  Most of the ice failed to materialize and I had no power failures.  I had some concern about poor PV performance due to ice covered panels; we had relatively little ice.  The sun came out before noon Friday and I briefly observed about 24kw of PV production.  Recent "good sun" production has been only about 21kw.  So, the ice seems not to have limited PV production.  The PW has remained at near 100% charge for more than two days.  I have some PW augmentation that might double the capacity of my (still single battery) PW to near 30kwh.  BUT, I have been pulling about 5kw to try to keep the house warm.  In the event of a power failure, I could not expect the PW to take over for longer than about 6 hours.  I believe power failure risk has now declined to near zero.

If/when I get the 3rd heat pump installed, I should be able to keep most of the house warm down to 5-10 deg.  I need to keep working on increasing the number of PW batteries to three.  I'm near to committing to replace several of my 1940s vintage double hung wood sash windows.

Over the past few years, I've experimented with using EV batteries to augment the PW battery.  Tesla has resisted making it easy to use their cars for V2H (vehicle to home; powering a home from the car).   It can be done but only through the DC-DC that supplies the 12v battery.  That power source is limited to 1-2 kw.  Ford seems to be promising V2H capability for their announced EV pickup truck.  IF Ford delivers and Tesla does not, I will buy a Ford.  Individual PW batteries have a capacity of about 13kwh.  Both Ford and Tesla pickup trucks should have 100+kwh batteries.