backchannel: overstatement is bad, mkay?

from a thread on reddit

On a cloudy day… you will get basically zero from your solar panel.

Why do people say things that are demonstratably untrue?¹ And why do they say it so confidently?

At this moment (11am) under cloud cover at 35.6 N latitude, my array is pulling 357w, ~48% of rated. If I remember gradeschool math correctly 357w > 0w.

or parked in the shade

“Stop doing that”, said the doctor in the old joke. Or run portables.

You absolutely must have alternator DC-DC charging.

While I agree that OP needed some form of alternator charging, I wouldn’t say “absolutely must have” it or that it needed to be DC-DC.

Many inverters will offer you the ability to have shore power

what?

1. this is quickly becoming the central question of my life. ↩