Wired the shop for solar

[Shotgun]

I got six used, 250W panels and wired them up with a charge controller/inverter combo. I also got a cheap panel meter and rigged it up with a power strip to measure power usage of individual devices. Spent the weekend hooking up and wiring everything together, and as you can see, the panels are still not in an "optimal" arrangement. They will eventually be mounted like an awning over the bushes, and surrounded with plexiglass underneath to build the wife a greenhouse. The power meter is drawing 6A to power an area heater, just as a demo.

For rough reference purposes: A RF-30 bench mill, using a treadmill motor, pulls about 1kW of power under load, as does an Atlas 12x36 lathe using a 3-phase, 220V, VFD controlled motor behind a step up transformer. These devices run nicely on sun power.