Solar Eclipse?

     Well not exactly the kind you would probably be thinking of.  The day after I got the thermostat changed out I wanted to give the bus a run down the highway to see how it would run.  So I drove out to the post office to grab the mail I hadn't picked up in a couple weeks.  It's a good 15 miles and would give me an idea on the way back if there was progress made on the cooling system.

     So what about this eclipse you say, well I'd show you a pic of what happened but the median of the highway wasn't the best place to be taking pictures.  It was now a certain fact I was going to be having a solar power outage.  Due to the results of my failure to remove the solar panel from the roof before heading down the highway.

     I had done this once before regrettably but the panel stayed in place actually pretty good.  I always tried to take it down so that I wouldn't have an incident.  More so that it wouldn't cause anyone else any problems or worse.  The drive way entry to the post office has a good grade to it so the bus tends to rock side to side a fair bit coming out of there and it apparently slid the panel off to the side and when I hit the highway at speed it let go.  I am so thankful that nobody got hurt by it!

     I new right away that it had happened because the roof hatch made an awful sound.  I pulled off at the first exit and looped back to take care of the mess.  I made fast work to pick up the panel from the median where it had slid to a stop.  The glass portion was completely shattered but held together by the layers of plastic and electric elements inside it.  The frame was in 5 pieces and the wiring pulled out.  I piled it all together, crossed the highway, and tossed it on the floor in the bus. Glad that was over I headed back to my side of town.

     I had been looking at other solar panel options but am not yet settled on how I will set it up and don't have the finances for that right now so we will have to rely on the bus power for awhile.

     I'm looking at some flexible roof mounted panels from GLOBAL SOLAR

or from GO POWER.















     Pretty cool stuff.  I will have to talk with these companies later when get ready to power up the system and see what will work best for us.