S&B power outage

Had a storm on Sunday morning and lost power for a few hours.

Pretty much everything went as it should:  the house battery was in float (100% SoC) from the DIY shore power converter when the power went out.  The few things already fed from the charge controller’s LOAD output:

  • 02Cool 12v fan spinning happily, facing my desk

  • the laptop was already charged

  • 3g wifi puck

I made oatmeal in a Swedish mess kit, powered by 1oz of denatured alcohol.  I really prefer Coleman fuel single-burner stoves but I had mine disassembled for maintenance.

After that I read for a couple hours on the Kindle (It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis).  And took a nap.

When the power came back on the DIY converter cranked the controller up and restarted Bulk charging.  Didn’t take long to get to Vabs and after that it was a (literal) matter of time to 100% SoC.

About the only thing that wasn’t great is I got caught with my phone nearly dead.  It was no harm / no foul because I charged  it off LOAD, but it was a reminder to stay aware of my phone batt level.  I recently swapped to my backup phone (an old Note 2 hacked with new firmware) and wasn’t used to the discharge profile.

All in all it was good practice for the future.  :-)

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