Figured I'd update this thread with my solar wins and losses.
Here was one of my losses from 2017/2018 Winter. This was a gut punch for sure. Mother Nature enjoys kicking my butt.
Summer 2018 I got the array all repaired and decided I would not give Mother Nature another chance. We took out over 30 Aspen trees that any chance at all to hit the array. The very last tree we cut fell on the newly repaired array. That was definitely Mother Nature Roshambo'ing me. No pics were taken of that.
Besides the twice smashed array everything has worked EXTREMELY well. The system has produced substantially more power than I have needed to run the aeration AND run the cabin during our Summer vacations. The batteries have been so lightly used they have needed very little maintenance. They are flooded lead acid batteries so by maintenance I mean adding water. They have gone half the year at a time and only need a small amount of water added. In order to further protect the batteries, the system is designed to cut off when the batteries are drawn down to ~60%. The system will automatically come back online once battery voltage has recharged back to an acceptable level. We have only seen the system drawn down to that point once or possibly twice I cannot recall for sure.
Heading into Winter 2018/2019 with the solar part of the system working better than ever.
