Prepping

Internet Badassery

One of the things that is so tiring about blogging and social media is the amount of chest thumping from Internet badasses. You know what I mean- those who post things about “I would shoot that cop” or about how they would kill anyone who shoots their dog.

The endless claims about wanting to start CW2, or on how you are going to start shooting people, or other forms of statements about all of the shit they are going to do just get tiring sometimes.

Let’s face it- you aren’t going to do shit. You aren’t going to tilt your lance at a windmill, only to die needlessly charging up that hill, only to find out that your efforts and sacrifices aren’t going to matter. Even if your own little personal war du jour does begin, how do you define a win? Even if you “win,” what is your plan for what you are going to do next? It’s just childish, foolish bravado.

Instead, start deciding how you are going to survive, how you are going to keep your loved ones safe, and what you are going to do AFTER everything goes to shit.

By Divemedic, ago

Food and Water

Let’s continue with our series on prepping. As you recall, I am using a prepping pyramid to organize my preparations.

So far, we covered energy with the solar project. We touched on medicine. Let’s talk about food and water. There are three considerations for food and water: short term, intermediate, and long term.

Short Term

For the short term, I am talking about food and water to get you through three days. This is easy, and most of you have that already. If you have a few cans of tuna, canned soup, and other nonperishable foodstuffs in your pantry, along with a case of bottled water, you likely have enough for the short term. You aren’t going to starve to death in a couple of days, so the real struggle here is going to be water. You need at least 3 gallons of water per person for your short term needs. That works out to 24 bottles of water per person. If you are looking at short term foods, I recommend things that don’t require cooking.

A great example of this is hurricanes. When we know a hurricane is coming, we grab a couple of Sub sandwiches from Publix, a bag or two of chips, and a box of toaster pastries. The idea being that you can ride out the storm and have food to eat that doesn’t require cooking, with the understanding that the food is there more for comfort than it is for nutritional value.

Intermediate

Intermediate is from three days to about the first three months without services. For that, you need to have a good mix of foods, with some of them requiring preparation and some not. This is what I have, and I am planning for 4 people (even though there are only 2 of us):

  • A freezer with a good stash of food. Meats, frozen vegetables, frozen butter, etc. The advantage is that this is exactly the food you usually eat. With this and what is in our pantry, we can last a couple of weeks. Most Americans can, as we tend to keep both the pantry and the refrigerator full, unless you are one of those people who shops every day.
  • A case of MREs for those times when you can’t cook or need portable food that won’t spoil. There are 12 meals in a case, and you can easily get by with only eating two per day, per person.
  • On top of that, we have cases of #10 cans and some pouches of freeze dried foods, a good mix of Mountain House and others.
  • We also have some portable water jugs like these. I would like to have more water storage, and I have been looking at something like this. Having a 55 gallon barrel of drinking water would be sufficient for four people for a couple of weeks.
  • We also have a water filter like this one.

Long Term

For long term food and water needs, you want to start thinking about services not coming back for the foreseeable future. Here in Central Florida, we get a good amount of rain. From an inch and a half per month during our dry period in December, to six inches in June, on average. A nice rain barrel coupled with our filter and some boiling should give us potable water for the long term. If you are in an area without appreciable rainfall for at least part of the year, you may need to think about something else.

Rain gutters and a barrel should get you plenty of water.

This is an upcoming project for me.

For long term food, you need to think about planting vegetables. After a week or so without food, you should be planting.

Three months without food should mean that much of the population is now gone, and the ones that are left are going to be ruthless, hungry, and resourceful. This will complicate your security situation. That talk comes later.

At a minimum, everyone should have short term food and water stored. Depending on your locale, you could be facing a hurricane, a blizzard, or some other relatively common event that means the stores aren’t open. Be ready for that.

Build up an intermediate storage capability slowly. A couple of things bought per month, and you will quickly have a couple of months’ supply. That will put you ahead of 95% of Americans for preparedness.

By Divemedic, ago

Two Weeks

It’s been two weeks since the hurricane passed by and screwed up my analysis of the new solar system. Let’s look at the numbers from the past two weeks’ production:

Overview

The house used 621.4 kwh during the period, or an average of 44 kwh per day. The lowest demand day was 36.2 kwh, and the highest was 60.9 kwh. The system generated a total of 663 kwh, which works out to an average of 47 kwh per day. The low was 36.6 kwh, the high was 57.6 kwh.

Overall, it appears as though my system is properly sized as far as generating capacity. How well will we do for the main intended use? That depends on storage capacity. As I said, I have been using the power company as a battery of sorts, in that I send power to the grid during the day, then take power from the grid at night. That begs the question: What if the grid is down? To answer that, we have to dive a bit deeper into the numbers.

A Closer Look

Our highest use days are when we are both home, and when it is hottest outside. This isn’t surprising, since the air conditioning runs more on hot days, especially when we are home. On top of that, the clothes dryer uses a HUGE amount of power, and laundry days are also heavy draw days (the dryer uses more power than both air conditioners combined).

The average solar intensity at my location for any 24 hour period is 200 watts/square meter for an average production of 47 kwh. The best day for production was 60.9 kwh, with an average solar intensity of 232 watts/ square meter. No surprises there- 16% more sun gets you 30% more power.

The good news here is that the hottest days also tend to be the sunniest days, so heavy use days caused by the cooling system are also the highest production days, with the result being the largest daily deficit was only 7.4 kwh. The largest surplus was 13.4 kwh.

What this means is that, should the grid go down, this surplus is likely wasted power. In our case, we would be wasting about 3 kwh per day. Saturday, August 10, and Sunday, August11 were our worst two days:

Saturday, August 10

39.9 kwh produced, 45.9 kwh used, 6.0 kwh deficit

The lowest outdoor temperature that day was 77 degF, with the high being 92 degF. Average solar intensity was 166 watts/square meter.

The air conditioner compressors ran for 6.5 hours

During the day on Saturday, we did 2 loads of laundry.

Sunday, August 11:

44.2 kwh produced, 51.6 kwh used, 7.4 kwh deficit

The lowest outdoor temperature that day was 77 degF, with the high being 93 degF. Average solar intensity was 190 watts/square meter.

The air conditioner compressors ran for 6.6 hours

During the day on Sunday, we did 3 loads of laundry. One of them was bedding, which takes more time and power to dry.

What about the batteries?

The day that saw us import the most from the grid was Sunday, August 18. We imported 25.9 kwh from the grid on that day, with most of that being the hours of 6 pm to 10 pm. This was while we were doing laundry.

My Analysis

We are producing plenty of power for our needs. We are keeping the batteries charged at 85% so that there is plenty of power available for a grid outage, and we are using the grid like an extra battery, storing our excess production during the day in the grid for use at night. If the grid were to go down, we would likely have enough battery power to run the house as normal, but we would likely have to restrict the activities that use the most power (laundry, cooking) for daylight hours. Additionally, there would have to be a restriction on the amount of laundry- no more than one load a day.

Other than that, we appear to have sufficient total capacity, and sufficient battery storage to run the household without interruption.

Interestingly, as a side note: The area near my house has a lot of solar power. Doing the area survey with my drone, I noted that 23% of the homes within a mile of my house have solar systems installed.

By Divemedic, ago

For Sneakers

Let’s say that there ARE people who want to approach your locale. Let’s say that you CAN’T be alert 100% of the time. One way to alert you that people are coming is to have mechanical devices that make noise when intruders approach from the nearby woods. You could place some of these on trails near your location, and anyone hitting the tripwire would alert you to their presence. If you hear it go off, you launch a drone to check out the noise.

Hey, lookie there, fifty people on the trail in the nearby woods trying to sneak up on your house.

By Divemedic, ago

Hurricane Interruptions

I was trying to get some solid data on the performance of my solar array, but we were interrupted by Hurricane Debbie. Still, negative data is still data.

  • When it’s a typical Florida sunny day with sunshine until the arrival of our typical afternoon thunderstorms, my 10 kWDC array generates about 58 kwhAC per day.
  • Two days before Debbie arrived, it was getting quite cloudy. We only generated 32 kwh.
  • As the rains began to arrive on Sunday, our output dropped to 18 kwh.
  • It rained all day on Monday, and we only generated 17 kwh. Still, generating that much power while simultaneously getting more than 3 inches of rain is a feat.

It’s sunny today, so we are back to full power. I want a week of solid, typical weather before I lay it all out.

We lost power once for about 15 minutes, in addition to a handful of blips, where the power was out for less than a second. The Powerwalls transferred us to battery power in about 1 or 2 seconds. Just long enough that we had to reset the clocks.

More data to come.

By Divemedic, ago

Drone

This prepping topic is on security. Being able to keep an eye on your surroundings is a great way to assist in the security of your area. Not only can you quickly determine if a threat to your physical security is approaching, you need to be able to scout in advance of any movement that you are making, look at areas that may be hazardous (like flooded areas) and other things you may want to see at a distance.

One of the keys to security is not letting opponents surprise you. A person who is prepared needs to be familiar with the area where they live, and be able to monitor that area for the appearance of those who would endanger their safety. You never want an opponent to surprise you. Watching events, it is becoming obvious that a drone is a huge multiplier by allowing you to keep an eye on large areas of the territory surrounding your shelter, so I decided to get one.

Apparently, a 20 year old was able to thwart the Secret Service by using a drone, while the SS drone was not able to fly because of “connectivity issues.”

The drone I selected is a DJI Mini 4k. There are more capable drones out there, but the large advantage with this drone is that , at less than 249g, the drone is light enough that it doesn’t need to be registered with the government in order to be legal, and we all know that I am not registering shit. I got it as a Prime day deal for less than $400. That deal included the drone, three batteries, and the charger.

It was easy to fly, and I took it up for its first flight after watching the below video. I am posting it here, cued up to some elevated footage, so you can see how clear the video is.

The only thing different with mine is that I have it set for Imperial instead of metric units, and the lower left corner is a Google maps kind of display that shows you where the drone is on a map. I have found the drone to be intuitive and easy to fly. I have been taking it easy because I don’t want to lose it, but on the two days I have flown it, it has gone as high as 250 feet and flown as far away as 1,000 yards. The drone reaches a top speed of 20 mph, and the battery gives about 30 minutes of flight time. Following the rule of thirds (one third to go out, one third to return, and a third for contingency) that means the drone has the endurance to go out about 3 miles. I’m not yet comfortable flying it that far.

It’s capable of operating in winds of up to 15 miles per hour, but I won’t fly it in winds that high.

I recommend that you find your own drone to keep an eye on the area.

The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.

By Divemedic, ago

On Aquanta

I previously recommended the use of a controller for your water heater as a way of controlling power consumption. Now that I have the solar up and running, the Tesla app is a great way to monitor and check up on your electrical loads.

Now that I have the ability to do this, I am convinced that the Aquanta water heater controller doesn’t actually DO anything. Whether I am home or not, using hot water or not, the amount of electrical power that the Aquanta is claiming I am using to heat water doesn’t change, at about 15kwh per day. The only time the amount of power the Aquanta was claiming went down is when we put the system in “Away” mode- telling it to turn off the hot water while we were out of town. At that point, the Aquanta reported that we were using about 1 kwh per day. The only problem? The amount of power we were using for the entire household didn’t change, according to the Tesla app.

At this point, I began suspecting that the Aquanta is a random number generator. It reports to you how much money it is saving you, but isn’t actually doing anything. I decided to test it and see what was going on. I am going to make a serious accusation here, so let me state that I did all voltage readings using a FLUKE 115 True RMS multimeter.

I measured the voltage across the output of the Aquanta while it was in “efficient” mode with a green LED showing and got a reading of 249 VAC. The water heater uses power consumed of 4500 watts (4.5kw), so a little application of Ohm’s law results in 18 amps and 14 Ohms of resistance. We can directly use Ohm’s law because the water heater has no capacitance or inductance, it is a purely resistive load.

Then I put it into “Away” mode. The LED on the unit turned red, so I measured the output voltage and got 70 VAC. Another application of Ohm’s law using the same 14 Ohms we calculated before tells us that the water heater is now using 5 amps and 50 watts of power. Take that 50 watts of power and multiply it by 24 hours in a day, and you get about 1 kWH per day.

So it doesn’t shut off the water heater, it merely lowers the voltage from line voltage down to about 70 VAC. I am not sure when or how it does this, other than in vacation mode, but I don’t think I am saving any power.

I just don’t think that this is a good unit to use if you want to save power, so I am withdrawing my recommendation of the Aquanta unit. My recommendation is to either use an electro-mechanical water heater timer, or a smart pool pump relay.

By Divemedic, ago

Four Days

So we are four days into operation of the solar equipment. Right now, we are operating on a limited basis, more on that in a moment. I am not home because we are on the road, but both air conditioners, all vampire loads, and the water heater are running.

Output

We chose a system that is 10 kilowatts DC. That translates to about 8600 watts AC. The system begins generating electricity at about 9am, and reaches a peak of 8kw at around 10:30. By 1pm, the Powerwalls are fully recharged from the night before. At that point, there is no place else for the generated power to go, so system output drops to match whatever the house is using. More on that later.

We haven’t used any electricity from the grid since the sun came up on Friday morning. That indicates that I have enough panels for my house.

Storage

There are two places that I can store the power I generate. One of them is in the Powerwall, which has a total capacity of 27 KWh. Right now, I am maintaining a minimum of 30% as emergency backup, and using the rest to compensate for lower output at night or overcast conditions, or to make up for transient high loads, like when both air conditioners and the water heater are running at the same time. The advantages of using the battery are that the power stays within my home, and losing the grid means that I can still access it. The disadvantage is that the upfront cost of batteries is high.

The second place that I can store generated power is in the grid. The electric company buys my excess power in the form of credits that I can redeem when my system can’t keep up with the loads that I am placing on it- nighttime, stormy weather, or when loads simply exceed what I am producing. The advantage of this is that the upfront cost is low, but the disadvantage is that it relies on the electrical grid for redemption.

I can’t use the grid as storage because I don’t yet have permission to operate (PTO) from the power company. I should get it within two weeks after our final electrical inspection, which is supposed to be this week. So we should be fully operational by August 9.

Results So Far

Each day, we are generating between 35 and 45 kWh before panel output is reduced when the batteries are full. The solar energy being generated is directly running the house during the day, with the rest charging the Powerwalls, which run the house at night.

The water heater is using 4 kw when running, the upstairs AC is using 1.5kw, the downstairs AC uses 2.7kw, and the rest of the house uses 0.3kw. Since the ACs and water heater don’t run all of the time, the panels are more than capable at this point of keeping up by charging the batteries during the periods when the large appliances aren’t running.

Once we get our PTO, I will know more.

By Divemedic, ago

Installed

The solar power system was installed this week, We turned it on this morning. 24 panels, each capable of supplying 420 watts, for a total capacity of 10 kW. We can’t yet sell the power back to the power company, because they haven’t yet approved our application. Until then, we will run off of batteries and solar, with the excess being given to the power company free of charge. Hopefully, that will change within a week or two.

The install took two days, even though it was supposed to only take one. On day one, the team got the Powerwalls mounted, and 21 of the 24 panels on the roof before an incoming afternoon thunderstorm stopped work for the day. On day two, they got the final three panels up, ran all of the conduit and wiring, then shut power off to the house for about an hour so they could make all of the connections. They turned the system on, but that was at 1700, after it began raining again, so we didn’t generate any solar at all yesterday.

At 1000 this morning, we were generating 5 kW from solar while only using 0.5 kW, with the 4.5kW of excess going into the batteries. Our Powerwalls are already charged to 50% of capacity, and we have already generated 6.5 kWh purely from solar.

I will revisit the numbers within a week or so. It’s still to early to talk about how well the system is going to meet our needs.

By Divemedic, ago