Live and learn...solar

Guillermo and his worker, with a ladder, a few buckets, and pouches of tools, show up a few minutes after 2pm.

Roberto climbs up the ladder with a towel and continues to wash off my panels. Guillermo takes out his voltage meter and checks the batteries, the charger, the wires.

He struggles up the ladder to peer over the top and check the wiring of the panels.

Alls good in that section!

Then he instructs Roberto to clean the batteries before opening them. Apparently I should have been cleaning off the tops of the batteries before opening them to add water. Duh.

Roberto has a bucket of water, a sponge, and baking soda. No gloves. I cringe again as he grabs the metal post with one hand and washes with the other. I watch him closely, making sure he doesn’t connect accidently.

Guillermo wants me to record the volts every two hours. The charger has a digital meter with three different settings measuring 1) the amps from the solar panels; 2) the amps from the batteries; and 3) the battery volts.

It is the battery volts I am to write down every two hours or so.

And Guillermo wants me to turn everything off so he can see if the batteries will maintain their charge.

I tell Guillermo I usually fill the batteries every Wednesday. He's horrified but politely expresses his concern, that they are taking so much water.

He gets a mirror and looks at the batteries. He tells me they are all full, too full even, and shows me where I've been overfilling them and where the cutoff point is.

I suppose I knew at some point in my life that you are only supposed to fill batteries up to a certain point – most likely why Shazam wanted a mirror – but it’s an ancient point.

All that distilled water I purchased in Manzanillo – grrrrr. Oh well, live and learn…solar!