At Parua we were relying on our batteries which weren't really doing it anymore, so we put in new batteries. The old ones were 5 years old. It is so much better with new gel ones that are really taking in and holding the power. We are tried the fridge on it yesterday, as it was on gas and really using a lot. We figure the sun will be more economical. It wasn't so successful, as it used the batteries a bit too much, so back to gas.
We had an interesting day last Tuesday, when the new batteries went flat for no apparent reason that we could fathom. One of our fellow campers, Alan and Eddie spent most of the day trying to figure it out. What they think happened was that the left bank of new batteries weren't as charged as full as the right bank, so the power drained from the right to the left to make it balanced. Luckily it was a sunny day and we were able to get back up to 50% by night fall. Eddie put the generator on in the morning for a couple of hours to get them a bit further on and the sun did the rest.
We came back to Pataua on Saturday, and all seemed good with the power so we decided not to worry about the man from the autoelectricians that we had booked. However, this morning we seemed to have lost some power, so we are back to plan A with a man coming after Easter. We are going to put a new solar panel on the roof too, so we will have heaps coming in, even on a cloudy day. Maybe then we can use the fridge on solar too.
We are making plans where to go after Easter, but it is all very fluid at the moment and could be anywhere in Northland. We don't want to go south of the Brynderwyn hills
No comments:
Post a Comment