Doing crypto mining with distant access allowed is to realize that something was wrong at home, while being in a city 3h away.
We couldn't tell what was wrong, just that for some reason, the power seemed to have gone out around noon. We're fully solar powered so on a sunny day, that is a very odd time to lose power.
We didn't realize until the evening, but when we did we went straight home.
As we approached our land, I could make out the contours of our motorhome, so we knew that was okay.
Then we got closer and pointed our headlights at our solar panels and noticed something was wrong.
We've had them laying flat on some concrete blocks because it gets quite windy at times, and cows can trample across our land so flat on the ground is not an option.
There are three sections of panels, and the western one is a string of 6 panels. Only one was still laying on the blocks!
One was way over in a northern direction, having flown past the back of our motorhome.
Two lay between the motorhome and the array where we usually walk.
One was on the ground next to where it usually lay on the blocks, and the last one had flipped ontop of some of the other panels, causing a chain reaction of pushing some of the other panels over as well.
I'm guessing a bigger dustnado hit them 😬
3 of the 5 got their glass shattered, and a panel next to them probably caught a corner of one of them as they flew, cause there's a corner sized dent in it, but it didn't shatter, so that's nice!
We have a 650w panel that's gotten quite beat up and even ripped some previously, but still puts out enough to not lower the output of the string it's attached to in the 300w range.
So, with this knowledge, I felt quite comforted last night as I helped my husband put them all together again.
Our 3 batteries were full by noon today, so that's also a good sign, though we might have lost of efficiency from that newly tossed around array.
On a more positive note, we're getting out 4th battery delivered probably Wednesday, so we will be able to hang out and run the AC and mine at the same time as it keeps getting warmer this summer! 😎