Off-Grid Living

Remote sensor solar power systems fail field researchers in a way that is almost impossible to diagnose without a spectrum analyser. I was asked to review a persistent data quality problem at a water quality monitoring station on the Grand River near Elora in Wellington County. The station used a Campbell Scientific CR1000 datalogger connected

Weather station solar failures in Ontario happen quietly. The station keeps transmitting data but the numbers are wrong. You do not find out until it matters most, during the worst storm of the winter. I was asked to review the power system for an agricultural weather station on a grain farm near Listowel in Perth

Weather buoy solar failures on the Great Lakes do not happen because the equipment is wrong. They happen because the energy budget was calculated for dry land. I was brought in to review the power system specification for a Lake Huron nearshore monitoring buoy deployed by a freshwater research group out of Owen Sound. The

Fish hatchery solar failures do not announce themselves before the stock dies. I was called to review the power system at a brook trout nursery near Thessalon in the Algoma District operated by a conservation authority that had experienced a catastrophic stock loss the previous August. The facility ran 12 fibreglass rearing tanks with a

Mobile solar trailer projects start with a generator bill that surprises every project manager. I was brought in to review the power setup at a residential subdivision site near Cambridge in Waterloo Region. The site super was spending $1,140 per month on diesel for a 10kVA Generac running 24 hours a day. The overnight load

Solar security gate failures happen at the worst possible moment. The first hard freeze of November can turn a reliable system into a locked-out nightmare. I was called to troubleshoot a locked-out gate at a hobby farm near Fergus in Wellington County in early November. The property owner had installed a 20W panel and a

Trail camera solar failures in Ontario are invisible. I was asked to troubleshoot a trail camera setup for a deer hunter near Perth in Lanark County. The Moultrie Edge Pro cellular camera had been running on its internal AA lithium pack with a 6W solar panel since October. In late January the hunter found 847

Modular housing solar fails before the unit leaves the factory when the panel specification ignores the roof load limit. (1) A modular housing solar installation sized from a residential catalogue rather than a structural drawing is a liability waiting for the first heavy snowfall. (2) I was called to inspect a modular relief housing unit

Remote radio station solar power failures do not always sound like static. (1) I was called to troubleshoot an audio quality problem at a volunteer community FM station near Haliburton that had switched to off-grid solar the previous summer. The station ran a 50W Inovonics transmitter, a small mixing console, and a computer playback system.

Solar weather station data integrity fails quietly in an Ontario ice storm. I got a call in January from a grain farmer near Palmerston in Perth County who had been relying on his remote weather station to trigger his grain bin aeration system. The station was a consumer-grade Davis Vantage Pro 2 on a 3-metre