This article should be subtitled:
“And, the importance of regular visits to your Bug-Out Location (BOL).”
Back in August of 2020, I wrote about the solar photovoltaic (PV) power system at my Bug-Out Location (BOL). I believe it was General Electric that used to put on all their professional product literature, “Our policy is one of constant improvement.” That’s great advice for all of us! In the last three years, I have made some refinements and corrected some significant shortcomings in it.
My BOL is deep in the woods, a quarter-mile off the road, and is surrounded by trees. That’s great for OPSEC and natural air conditioning, but it is very challenging for harvesting solar power. Fortunately, there is a cleared corral area about fifty feet North of the house where my solar panels are located. As I detailed back in 2020, I have the main bank of solar panels facing South, with an additional panel facing East and West to catch the first sunlight in the morning, and the last sunlight in the evening. Relying on solar power off-grid requires that you maximize not only your peak output, but also your hours of “harvesting”, as any significant loads you are going to power overnight, such as refrigeration, will be totally dependent on the energy stored in your battery bank, unless you have a power source other than solar, such as a windmill or water turbine to supplant the solar.
For many reasons, it is important to spend time at your BOL, among them the ability to put eyeballs on and observe first-hand how well your systems work – or don’t work. (More on this later). I try to overnight at my BOL at least twice a year, once in summer and once in the winter. I stayed overnight earlier this month over the July 4 holiday when I had some time off work. I specifically wanted to observe how well my solar power system worked during early morning and late evening, as when I was up there during the day, the system performed very well. I was dismayed to find that the East and West facing panels were not doing much at dawn and dusk, as the first and last sunlight fell in the corral about 35 feet South of where the panels were!
So off I went to the home improvement store, bought 100 feet of 12-2 landscape wiring cable, and extended the wire to the East and West panels by 35 feet, and relocated them South by that distance. A subsequent early-morning visit confirmed that the East panel was now illuminated when the sun first peeked over the trees, and an evening visit confirmed that the West panel was now also catching the last evening sun as the sun dipped below the trees. However, I discovered something else as well. As I walked around the corral in the evening, I also found another area on the West side, where the sun was shining down through a clearing in the trees, nearly an hour longer after the other panels were in shade! I stepped off the distance from there back to the other panels and the distribution box, and found it to be only 90 feet!
So, back to the home improvement store for another 100-foot spool of 12-2 landscape cable. I also had an ‘emergency spare’ 200-watt solar panel that had arrived damaged, and instead of the seller having me send it back, he sent me a replacement and told me to just keep the broken one instead of incurring the shipping costs to send it back. I had kept it in the barn “just in case”, and I got it out and put it in the “new” West location and ran the wiring to it through PVC conduit where it crossed the path to the barn so I wouldn’t damage it with the tractor. Voila! I now support the refrigeration load nearly three hours per day longer than before.
I had also wanted to have the ability to heat water with solar energy. Solar water heating panels are common and not expensive, but for reasons already assigned, I would have had to place them out in the corral to get reliable sunlight on them, and even with heavily insulated pipes the water would cool by the time it got back to the house. I spent a lot of time pondering how to overcome this.
I had two 12-volt, 180-watt solar panels that I had purchased on-line early in my solar power system construction because of their cheap price. Unfortunately, they had a big shortcoming. A 12-volt battery system nominally runs about 12.6 volts, and requires a charging voltage of around 13.5-to-14 volts to the batteries to charge them. Additionally, there is a voltage drop through your charge controller or regulator, so you need to start out with 16 volts or more out of the solar panels to make up for the losses and actually charge the batteries. Most 12V-rated panels do provide 16 volts or more at full output. My “cheap” 12-volt panels would only make around 13 volts maximum, and were therefore useless for my solar power system – the only thing they were good for was running a load directly that only required 12 volts. So, I stored them away with the thought that maybe someday I would come up with a use for them.
As I pondered how to heat hot water from the sun, I remembered my “cheap” solar panels. Here was a place to use them, as a heating element would not care that they only made 12 volts! I found a small electric water heater (Rheem PROE-6, six gallons) and a 24-volt 300W water heater element to replace the 120-volt one that the heater came with. I built a stand for the solar panels, ran the wiring into the house, installed the water heater, hooked it all up with a current meter in series so I could see how much current was flowing into the water heater, and… it didn’t work very well. The 24-volt heating element required 12 amps to make full output, and my panels only made around six amps, even in full sun. Obviously, my “cheap” panels were lacking in current as well as voltage.
So, as an experiment, I disconnected one of my “good” 12-volt panels from the other system and connected it in series with two other “cheap” panels wired in parallel double their current. Now, I had 12 amps through the water heater, and wow, was I making hot water now! Success! So, I did have to buy another “good” panel to use with my solar water heater, but at least I was able to reuse the other cheap ones. Another advantage of using solar power via electricity to heat the water is that I could use the electrical output of the additional panels for the main solar power system, in case something happens to some of the other ones.
As I mentioned earlier, it is important to spend time, especially overnight, at your BOL location if possible. (If it is not too far away). This accomplishes a number of things:
- Checking how well your infrastructure works, like solar power. Had I not done this, I wouldn’t have known the shortcomings of my own system.
- Walk the property and see what is going on. Look for animal activity. Talk to the neighbors and keep up with them. That connection will be vitally important when the SHTF. I also like to go outside in the middle of the night, when my eyes are adjusted to the darkness, to see just how much light I see from the neighbor’s compounds, as a gauge of what things are like outside before the SHTF.
- Getting used to how the place “feels”. When the SHTF and you bug out to your BOL, it will be a HUGE adjustment both physically and mentally. Getting used to staying there before the SHTF is a huge benefit to your peace of mind. It will make the process much less stressful if you know what to expect, and can immediately function there without a second thought. Learn the sounds of the house and how the bed feels. This is particularly important to other family members who may not be as “on-board” with prepping as you are. Take them there with you so they are familiar with the place too. Have things there that they look forward to, like games, books, puzzles, or other “fun things” that will make them look forward to going there, and help take their minds off of the deteriorating situation in the outside world. Our BOL has a lot of wild raspberry and strawberry plants around, and my wife’s “fun” activity up there is picking berries! My wife and I can walk into our BOL and, within five minutes, have either a cold beer and a soda, or hot coffee (depending on the season), the battery radios on sizing up the outside situation, the wood stove lit, and be getting dinner ready!
- Getting you and your family in the mindset of your BOL being your “warehouse”. Bulk food and supplies go up there first when purchased, and older supplies get rotated back to your regular dwelling for use, to keep things fresh. This also gets them in the mindset of, when you need something, you think, “Do we have that at the cabin? Yes, we do! Remember to bring that back next time we’re up there!” That keeps them ‘in the loop’, and also keeps other people’s memory as a backup adjunct to yours. (This is becoming more important to me as I get older and can’t remember what all we have up there!)
- Being at my BOL is a calming, comforting influence on me. As I read and hear all the bad news and the deteriorating world situation daily, I feel better when I visit that remote cabin and see and feel our “Plan B”.
Good luck and God bless.