4 Replies to “Clean vs Dirty Solar Panels”

  1. Good maintenance is better energy! Good tip, just started following your channel. I knew I wanted to do the school bus tiny home with the rooflift. I’m so impressed with your bus’s conversion. Great bus, great systems, great family safety, especially while driving!
    Your videos helped me show my wife we could live comfortably with one child. Thanks for letting us follow your adventure!

  2. Looking at the graph, it appears that the wattage went from 1700 to 1900 after the dust was cleared. Is that about right?
    Also curious about solar elevation. Is that the number of degrees the sun is above the horizon? How are you measuring that?
    Thanks for posting your stuff here on this site; came across your bus via bOINGbOING dot net recently!

    1. Aaron Bockelie says: Reply

      That’s about right. The solar elevation is derived from GPS. The base platform that runs the docker environment has NMEA GPS UDP packets sent to it, and GPSD service turns that into data. There’s a listener in one of the docker containers, node-red, that on a regular cadence, logs that data.

      There’s another node-red flow that computes solar elevation from that gps data. Both general positional data, and solar data, is stored in influxdb. Then, I can graph the chart for solar elevation as a simple x-y plot.

      The scale of solar elevation is matched so that if I were to somehow be parked on the equator under perfect conditions and acquire maximum rated solar power, it would match the curve that is generated for solar elevation.

  3. I have so many (well a few) questions ! 😅Mostly how much did buying and turning the whole bus into a Whole Full House cost?!?!
    I’m watching your high tech school bus conversion video now on YouTube, getting ideas for what we want to do and I think I’m done searching!! 🤩 I think I finally found the perfect bus with all of the perfect ideas! wow! this is amazing! we are blown away by your design and how you can accommodate 6 + 3 comfortably…. another question if there was something you could change what would it be, and why? And can you come to DESTIN FLORIDA where we live & meet our family of 4 and let us see this in person, btw you will absolutely LOVE ATHE AREA if you haven’t heard of it yet, look it up it’s in between Pensacola and Panama City beach! Thanks 🙏 stay safe & have a blessed journey plz do email me back with the answers we are serious about getting a bus to make home and travel and would love nothing more but advice and info from you guys on how you do it 💪🏼

Leave a Reply to Aaron Bockelie Cancel reply