Cue another cool tool…
This little Milwaukee 12v cable cutter speeds things up and saves my worn out wrists and hands.
As someone pointed out earlier, something about these “300 dollar” tools weighing you down and not being very portable…there’s some truth there-I don’t pull out out stripper tool, the power cutters, or a lot of these fancy tools for just two or three terminations-I still do that old school with manual cutters and a razor knife.
But when you are in an inverter room doing dozens of terminations, it’s such a time and body saver.
Oh yeah-I wish any of these tools were anywhere NEAR 300 bucks. 😄😄😬😬
Anyway, the day ground on and we got most of what we wanted done accomplished.
I honestly was ready to quit around 5:30 when we were finishing up a panel change out in the generator shack.
That work made the generators not functioning as far as powering the camp.
Denise says” This means we won’t have nice hot showers in the cabin tonight. “
FUCK.
She was right.
No electricity, no controls for the hot water heater.
Fuck that.
I basically mentally and physically dropped a gear and put the hammer down to push the inverter connections in record time.
Because I’d had my heart set on a luxurious long hot shower tonight!!😄😄🤷♂️
It wasn’t quite perfect, and not 100% done, but the system was ready to power the entire camp for the first time.
This was to be something of a historic moment-if we had done everything correctly.
It would be an expensive and disappointing moment if we did anything wrong. 😬😬
We did all our last double checks, and finally it was time to throw the last switches and find out…
And so, at a little past 7 pm after a 14 hour work day, the last switches were closed and the new solar power system powered up this camp for the first time.
It’s a little hard to grasp how this system will be a paradigm shift for how this camp operates.
They have been entirely generator powered for at least 30 years.
No more noise.
No more using gallons of fuel every single day.
No more power outage every night.
It’s huge.
It really was an historic moment.
And for the first time ever, and the camp dates back to the 50’s, this camp had electricity all night.
Everyone involved is super excited.
Here’s how the inverter room, now powering the entire camp, looked when we ended the day.
All that was left for us to do was have celebratory beverages…
…and of course, go take those nice long hot showers!!