Solar Project Baby Steps

Just a quick update after some vast laziness, to break the ice.

*DISCLAIMER* This project should be considered experimental, as it contains DANGEROUS levels of electricity, and uses a lot of found/donated materials.  I have made a fully fledged attempt to make it as safe and reliable as possible, but you should still not use it as instructions for power generation in your own house/project.  This is just a temporary setup for hobby-use only. *DISCLAIMER*

Since the days are long and warm again, I got back to tinkering with my solar project.  I mounted my inverter and other "indoor" stuff to a project board, for easy mounting in the crawlspace.  It has distribution blocks, and a relay so I can turn off the inverter in the house.  From the attached electrical boxes, I should be able to securely distribute AC and DC around.  In this pic it's in a little bit of disarray.  I have my test extension cord and kill-a-watt hooked up so I could do a full power test and make sure everything stayed cool.  Because of that, I've since beefed up the wires going to the relay.  They CAME WITH the relay that's rated for 40A, but at ~25A they were getting pretty toasty!  In fact the relay itself is a little warm... it will be held under suspicion for now.

I also did some more infrastructure work outside.  Got conduit run to the patio box that will hold the batteries and charge controller.  Still nothing connected to the house, but I can safely charge my battery on partly-rainy days now!

I'm just about ready to get my full panel array installed, and then I just need to get some batteries and uses for this power!