Lucky 13 - today was a success! Jan and I spent today working on the power meter. We got everything together and ready in the morning, and got to work midmorning. I think the rest of the crew was about ready to throw the HabCom UPS out the window (it beeps when it doesn't have power), but we finished everything in less than 2 hours of no power. Once we had everything attached to what it was metering (a process which involved soldering the 4/0 wire from the battery bank with a propane torch), we got everything hooked up to the meter controls.

After lunch, we ran cat5 from the meter upstairs to where the remote panel is (we originally ran two in addition to the one I ran a couple days ago, but then realized that there only need to be 2 total for the meter, so there is now a LAN connection in engineering) and plugged everything in. Once we moved a couple of wires around, we had reasonable data that matched what we expected! Lots of squeaking and bouncing ensued. After we got everything in place permanently, I attacked the back of the power meter panel (actually a combination of several panels a little bit apart) with cable ties and it's all contained and pretty now. I am sooooooo happy that it's working. I've been working on getting a power meter out here for a year and a half now and it's finally happened!!

We leave in just a little over 36 hours and I can't believe it. We got so much done. I'm still waiting on the stair light (although UPS says it was delivered today) to come in from Hanksville and I'll need to get that hooked up, probably tomorrow. I'm also going to write an instruction manual for the power meter, but that will probably be something I have to finish after I get back to the real world. There are a couple of components for the power meter that will need to be installed along with the new inverter (which we sadly didn't have enough time to get to), and I've got all of the cables run out to Musk (and it's connected through a DC power meter shunt already) so all that needs to be done is a termination in Musk and it will be ready as soon as the C40 gets itself figured out.

Emily Colvin, XO
MDRS Crew 47