Small Update on Solar Power.

My modest system has not had a lot of juice in the deep of winter.

Right now the only radio connected to solar is the IC705, and it is running a few hours every day.

While the days are clearly getting longer here at this time of the year it is still very short days with the sun very low over the horizon. On top of that we have had a lot of cloudy time.

If the day is clouded right now, with the panels available the system is just generating a tiny bit less than the IC705 uses. With full sunshine, and we had a bit of it today, I can run the IC705 for many hours a day. The battery voltage, as I use the radio, keeps the voltage of the LiFePo4 battery at around 12.8 - 13.3V. I consider that acceptable. 

This year I will need to mount more panels when the weather permits, and also get a bigger battery up and running.

With this setup I should be able to run full station activity for about 8 months of the year - except for high power amplifiers. The remaining part of the year I estimate that I will still have to run parts of the activities on mains power. 

One more thing: Before next winter I should make a "backup plan", so I can charge batteries when the price of mains power is lowest. This may be semi-manual, or I may find a way to automate the process using data downloaded from the internet.

Then there is the use of low power monitoring receivers. Yes, I need to build some of them, and we shall see how much I will build before next winter. There are still possibilities with some older receivers that I can put into service for parts of this. I do not have to build everything.