Today we tested the 120v power system from the inverter. This runs household appliances off the batteries. Monika first plugged in an electric water kettle and after that finished, she plugged in a rice cooker.
When the photos below were taken, the solar panels produced 288 watts of power while the batteries were being charged at 128 watts. That means the rice cooker was drawing about 160 watts of power.
That is good news considering that the solar panels are horizontally mounted (not aimed at the sun) and are partially shaded by trees. We cleaned the solar panels during the test and showed an increase of 5 watts (almost nothing).
The test shows us that we can operate autonomously for long periods of time without having to run the engine to charge batteries...as long as nothing breaks.
