550w Wind Turbine Installed

Load Test

Solar Electrical Panel

Battery House

Solar Panels Installed

The rain held off just long enough this evening to get the Solar Panels installed. The rail system made the job very quick and easy. The space in the middle could easily accommodate another panel, but for now I have my two 750w groups, off-grid back-up and Grid-tie. I've ordered a 550w wind-turbine to supplement my back-up, bringing my total renewable energy resource to just over 2Kw.

Solar Panel Rails

The rails for 6 x 250w 24v panels have been installed on to the north facing roof of my carport.

Testing new Grid-tie inverter

Whilst the 'Net-meeting' law has not yet been passed in Chile, I'm nevertheless putting together my hybrid solar/wind solution to provide off-grid battery backup and the ability to feed energy into the house electrical system - grid-tie.

I've chosen to split my 6 x 250w panels into two groups. Here I'm testing a Smart Micro Grid-Tie inverter which connects directly to the solar panel. It will convert the 24-40v DC from the panel directly to 230v ac. 

There are several advantages to using this type of inverter:-

- Highly scaleable, add panels and inverters as your needs grows
- Reduces single points of failure, you are still generating power even if one panel or inverter goes down.
- Control losses normally created by long DC cable runs

In the picture above, the 60 cell 250w panel is generating 226w 230v AC in moderate sunshine and is plugged into the household supply. If the grid-power drops, the inverter automatically cuts the AC output. It was interesting to observe how the AC output varied depending on the amount of sunlight striking the panel. It seemed fairly linear all the way from 200w+ down to just 10w output in low light conditions. 

Roof and cement

No 'ReadyMix' used here, but 24 bags of cement and 6m3 of sand/pebble mix, a simple cement mixer and wheelbarrow to transport each mix to the pad. The surface was leveled and smoothed using a plank of wood! Back breaking work, it took two days to complete. 

Fitting the roof tiles

HF Low Pass Filter construction

I've started building a LPF diplexer filter rated for a 1KW SSB/CW HF transistor power amplifier

The diplexer consists of 6 relay-switched units and covers 1.8 to 30 MHz amateur radio bands. It has 1 input port and 6 antenna outputs, so no additional ant-switch is needed.

Next comes the hard part - winding the toroidal ferrite cores, and tuning them for each band.

Carport Construction p2

The basic structure of the Carport is complete; now I just need to order the roof tiles to match the house and a few days without rain to install the pine ceiling. All the exposed Oregon Pine has been painted with a non-stain wood preserver. Ethan, posing for the camera, provides a good reference of scale.

Carport Construction

I took advantage of a short break in the rain to begin construction of a carport. The roofed parking area will span 8 meters wide x 6 meters deep - ample space for two vehicles. The carport will also double as a nice shaded area over-looking our swimming pool during the hot summer months.

GLCD Assembled

The weather has been quite cold and wet recently, so I've used the extra free time indoors to work on my HF Solid State Amplifier project. The assembly of the above Graphical LCD module (Designed by VK4DD), was completed over a couple of evenings .... I now need to perform a few basic checks before inserting the PIX micro-controller and display. 

When the Amplifier is completed, this display module will provide important status information, such as power-ouput, SWR, FET-Temperature, voltages etc ... 

FT-817ND 'wideband' mod

I've suddenly got the itch to do some portable QRP work with my tiny Yaesu FT-817 HAM Radio, which I picked up in the UK a few years ago ... it has been gathering dust for quite some time. So I charged the internal battery and checked it over. It's then I realized that since I purchased it in the UK, the 2m band was restricted to just 144 - 146Mhz which is pretty much useless in Chile as ALL of the local repeaters are located in the upper 146-148Mhz. Also, the 40m band is restricted to 7 - 7.100Mhz; again in Chile I can use up to 7.200Mhz, so this has motivated me to extend its TX/RX capabilities or 'wideband' modification. The original FT-817 was very easy to extend with free software on the Internet, but I guess the FCC didn't like that so my newer ND model, requires a fiddly hardware modification.

 

Basically you have to strip off the top and bottom covers in order to expose and release the front control panel from the main chassis. Then using a fine tip soldering iron and a steady hand, modify the jumper settings as shown in the picture above. Fairly simple, in my case I needed to close the far left jumper and remove solder from the middle jumper to complete the mod. After the the radio is reassembled, it requires a hard reset holding the F and V/M buttons whilst hitting the power on button.

I checked the 2m band, it's now fully open :-)

Doors installed

Exterior almost finished

Looking at this picture it's hard to believe that the temperature was well below zero (-4C) this morning! However the sun came out so we took the opportunity to paint on the wood preserve before the next wave of rain hits. 

The front entrance is now taking shape. I shall be fitting two 50cm wide glazed pine doors, that open outwards. The spaces above the door will also be glazed to provide more light.

The cement ramp at the entrance has been broken up, as I intend to build a small deck and stairs leading up to the cabin. 

Working on cabin front entrance

Finally I have removed the ugly front doors, it now looks less like a garden shed ;-)

Most of the outer structure has now been covered with new Oregon Pine siding, and the windows have been fitted to the bathroom and bedroom.

Making progress on the cabin

Wood Cabin - Roof Installed

The roof was finished this weekend, I had to ship extra tiles from Santiago as I could not source them locally ... just in time for the rain forecasted this week. The wood framing is also almost complete, just need to remove the old shed doors and siding at the front in order to frame in the new entrance and windows. 

Wood Cabin - ready for the roof tiles