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I’ve been here a while now. In Ashby terms, I’ve just got here.

Boaters don’t tend to move a whole lot on the Ashby.

Remember this picture I took on moving from my first stop.

Not one boat has moved since I left one month ago. It looks exactly the same.

Since I got here in early October, 80% of the boats I come across haven’t moved at all. Been in the same place. Completely.

Feel a bit alienated by moving around. Everybody else just stays in one place.

Still there we are. They are probably good people and have special privileges.

Lockdown

We are, however, on lockdown still. Which means that I’ve stuck to my position here in the wilds with nothing but rolling fields, birds and cow noises to keep me company.

Due to the fact I’m doing the Amazon Flex bit at the moment, I’ve not been able to undertake Whisky Sampling, as requested by readers, (never mind maybe next time).

I’ve had to stay under the influence, of tea and coffee.

Amazon Flex Bardon

I’ve moved up to the Bardon station on the outskirts of Leicester. I used to do flex from the Northampton depot.

There seems to be a lot more work here. The depot is bigger…

We generally get 2 cities to deal with. Leicester and Nottingham.

The staff seem quite friendly at the depot. Which is nice. It’s a bit more multi-cultural, being Leicester.

The station is always busy, and there can be large queues, sometimes they congest the roads outside they are so large.

Adding Solar Panels to an existing array

The wind the other night, blew one of my solar panels off the roof, (fixed, not flexible),.

I think this may have lead to some moisture in getting in the controller, and shortly after getting it set-up back on the roof again, the controller had some communication problems, then gave up altogether.

As an upshot of this, and realising that we’ve spent close to no money on Bonnie this year, I decided I’d like to give her a Christmas present of some new solar panels!

These will be exactly the same as the existing ones. Which, out of interest, ‘experts’ told me wouldn’t last 2 years and I would regret buying. Nothing could be further from the truth.

They have made in excess of their money back and it’s time to get some new ones – add her up to a full complement, more or less.

Here’s where I’m putting them.

There’s still some room along the sides.

I’m not too keen on the blue one along the sides for 3 reasons.

• You’d have to walk on them to get to the front of the boat. You have to do that on the existing panels but there you’d have to walk across the face of the panel.
• Slight shading from the plank and pole and ropes.
• Since the panels would be smaller, they’d drag the efficiency of the larger panels down to their wattage rating.

To place them there, you’d need a new and separate controller to get the maximum out of the whole array.

When you add to an array. The power (w) output of each panel is restricted by the worst performing panel. SO, if you add 2x50w panels to a 2x100w panel array, all panels will function like they have a 50w output.

As things stand, I’m going to get some panels exactly the same and add to the existing array.

When they arrive, I’ll do a post titled adding solar panels to an existing array.

In the meantime, I shall continue tapping for blocks with Amazon Flex and enjoying the great British weather.

Until the next installment….