Hm... could this be the result of clouds blocking the sun? See if the owner's manual has an appendix, that is often where you find a list of troubleshooting procedures --- since the appendices are often written by the engineers themselves, you often find useful tidbits of info there that didn't fit into the how-to narrative and are not part of the sales pitch.

I sympathize with your problem but I am also relieved that it is obviously a local phenomenon, since there are so many here on Slashdot who haven't experienced this, as they continue to advocate the use of solar energy for base load power generation for an industrial society.

Good luck to you friend and I hope you find the problem and get those panels back up to 4kW all day, every day since that is what you paid for... you might try mounting a large Fresnel lens over your kettle to help it come to a boil on those cloudy days.

Pure CO2 causation, the forced feedback in climate models and the machinations on the data that attempt to leverage a 400% CO2 rise into an extremely-slight-yet-lost-in-noise rise or flatline (depending on how you rearrange the noise) average global temperature... it has been like a bad dream that does not end.

Will the world end in ***FIRE*** or ***ICE***? Or will the world fail to end at all, that would be really embarrassing. It's time to put the steep rise in people-generated pure-CO2 and the observed not steep at all global temperature curve in proper perspective. As in, pure-CO2 causation is a non-starter yet worthy of study --- but it's time to focus on other aspects for awhile. Without all that 'climate denier' noise too.

Let's just talk about actual particulates and albedo. Stratospheric sulfur aerosols reflect more sunlight. In the Arctic, nearby soot may be a larger forcing than CO2. One effect would cause net cooling at the surface and the other a net warming as near-perfect blackbody particles settle on ice crystals. The photograph of a melt water canal with concentrated black carbon particles lining the bottom of the pool begs the question, does this melt channel owe its very existence to the presence of the carbon, or was it caused by other factors? I guestimate that the area of black is about 1/10 the size of the surrounding melt pit... so we are definitely seeing 'grey snow' in the Arctic here.

It has taken five years for the failed 'Glory' satellite mission to be re-launched as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. It is my hope that OCO2 will help to answer these questions by showing where pollution plumes originate and how they move, so that we know where to take samples and what to look for.

Politics demands simplified models and pure-CO2 causation so they can tax everybody without pissing off the coal industry. F*ck politics. It is my view that pure-science demands a balanced approach that will reveal the true impact of coal, among other manmade and natural causes.

And the folks in California would really appreciate a green-tax refund for the 29% of their pollution that is actually from Asia.

When growing up at 15 degrees North in the Caribbean where we do not do DST, it was awkward at times to arrange business calls with the States... but no big deal, I couldn't understand why folks would want too go through all that twice a year.

Now I live 34 degrees North and see what the big deal is. I am on the road to work at 6:30am and come Monday I will not be seeing children walking around, crossing streets and standing around in the dark.

Anything that makes kids easier to avoid while driving in large portions of the continent is fine with me. All those other reasons like saving energy (NOT) can go stuff themselves.

"Welcome to the testing room of the Parallax Corporation's Division of Human Engineering. You will now please go up to the chair, and you will sit down, make yourself comfortable, be sure to place each one of your hands on the box on either side of the chair, making sure that each one of your fingers is on one of the white rectangles. Just sit back, nothing is required of you, except to observed the visual materials that are presented to you. Be sure to keep your fingers on the box at all times. All right, I hope you find the test a pleasant experience."

Take the test: Montage from the film, The Parallax View [1974]

More info about the 'test'

On the subject of stocking up information and entertainment for a future apocalypse,

EXTRA CREDIT. In the 1997 film The Postman, the the Holnists army training camp is set in a large quarry, and in the evening films are shown on a large screen projected from a boat in the quarry lake. The projectionist starts one film, and the crowd becomes irate, throwing rocks at the boat. The projectionist shuts down that film and picks up another reel yelling, "So that's what you want??" and quickly threads it. As it begins the crowd smiles and sits in rapt attention.

What were the two movies?

(perhaps UK folk can use this alternate torcache link)
too bad you posted AC so you probably won't see this...

Thank you all for participating, even those without a clue.
This is a long recap of the story and its comments.

When I said "Think of the Survivor Library as a trove of survival skills, a '100-year civilization checkpoint backup' that fits on a hard drive." Some didn't get it, thinking it meant burying the Library and a computer for 100 years for someone to dig up. That is not what I meant.

A collapse event could happen never, next year or tomorrow. It could be a impact of a Near Earth Object we have not catalogued, Yellowstone, a pandemic. A political Orwellian slate-wiper followed by a Chairman Mao-style 'revolution', famine and dark age. Or over time, even some ridiculous consumer movement to phase out paper books and do away with autonomous storage altogether in favor of some 'cloud' that a future despot ruler could centrally edit, revoke or just turn off. Yes, we are that stupid.

Your modern civilization has failed you. It provides for you collectively but, because it was never a real priority, as it stands it cannot provide for itself in a time of disaster. It cannot repair itself. Many steps have been taken over the last hundred years, little things, that enabled life to become a bit easier and better. And in key areas (food, energy, communication, transportation) 'best' paths were chosen exclusively over other paths that were not as desirable, maintainable or as economically feasible (though not impossible). Some of these roads not taken were not merely abandoned. Details of the technology that ours was built upon live on only in old books for which few copies exist, that never made it to the Internet age.

When I say '100 year backup' I mean a knowledge backup you could use tomorrow if you need it, to help ensure that normal people like yourself could, with practice and patience, re-create civilization as it was 100 years ago, as an alternative to sliding completely into a medieval existence --- or worse, a Mad Max scavenger based existence where everyone waits for some 'miracle' reboot that never arrives.

Your modern civilization has failed you. You cannot hope to even gather a scope of knowledge such as contained in this Library, for our modern world. That is because it is bound by non-disclosure, proprietary processes, and to catch a glimpse of it you'd need access to a volume of copyrighted textbooks and industry publications that you, oh best beloved, could particularly never afford. There are few lay introductions to how modern technology is actually made put together, and even if you could find them you will never have access to the 'experts' who understand it.

That is because in a real disaster the relatively few experts of any particular field of modern technology will be just like you, disconnected and fighting for survival. Some will not make it. They have specialized because civilization has permitted them to do so, and together we have built something that is foolishly fragile.

Your communications will be down. You will be walking, bicycling or riding horses again. You will be fighting to obtain food, heat (for most, wood) and supplies. And if you weather all of these challenges you and your kids will be asking, what now?

You are conditioned to think of each of everything that surrounds you as the best that has yet been developed, the finest and ultimate of it kind and most advanced. And in many aspects this is true. You may be conditioned to ignore and dismiss older folks who point out exceptions or sound warnings of vulnerability.

For example, the warning I sounded recently here at Slashdot, The Dismantling of POTS: Bold Move Or Grave Error?. Modern civilization has failed you, young people. Your grandparents (I speak of my own United States) grew up with a wired Plain Old Telephone Service that was engineered so that in small communities or even cities people could communicate with one another, practically forever, so long as you could provide power to a few buildings. Forty years of little compromises later, what you have now are cell towers and unmanned subscriber remotes that are too stupid to connect calls, all of this controlled by a few central points of failure in distant cities. It's all good and cheap until disaster strikes and everyone pays the price. If you think those cell towers and 'cable phones' in your town will keep everyone in touch after a real disaster, you've got a lot to learn. I hope when you've learned what they replaced and how resilient it was, you'll be at least a little angry.

But to learn how vulnerable we are don't listen to 'old geezers' like me. I'm not really old, just seen a lot happen in my time. Research it for yourself. If you can imagine even one potential disaster (I could cite several) you owe it to your own children to do so. Perhaps a hundred gigabytes of FREE books that were considered to be vital reference 100 years ago would at least help. The "for dummies" books will not help at all.

THANKS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SLASHDOT COMMUNITY for supporting the torrent of 12,929 files in 126 folders, 109GB (perhaps UK folk can use this alternate torcache link). When the story was posted three days ago there were 6 seeders. Now there are ~300 seeders and at times there have been ~700 peers acquiring the Library.

Silly posts I noted but had no time to properly respond to,
Making fun of Henley's Formulas [fine, I'll sell you soap and fireworks, keep the gunpowder]
Demand for printed 'acid free paper' version of ~7,00 PDFs [someone else's job?]
Demand for modern X,Y,Z in the Library [okay, get started, good luck with copyright]
Concerns about practices in 'old' medicine books [but not all, it's not end-all]
Complaints about how 'old' this free library is [missed point entirely. What is the value of NOT having it?]
Musings that Wikipedia would fit on DVDs [maybe the stuff on Cricket] or be 'how-to-do-it' useable [how much of it have you read?]
Musings that collapse would [magically] create a renaissance of 'renewable energy sources' [in China maybe because that's where they're made, for many of us auto alternators will be high-tech]
Musing that 'mass shipping uses [abundant] heavy fuel' [interesting point, but how about economy down too?]
Someone recommending no old X-ray machines [as opposed to... NO X-ray machines? We know more about radiation now]
Argument that even 100 years ago civilization relied on mass transport from distant points [true, but the Library details a ~1900 era civilization rather than the medieval survival level of hunting, fishing and garden that most 'survival' tomes cover]

Notable contributions to the thread,
Thanks for the detail on electrolytic capacitors, stocking spares does seem to be necessary for true survivalists.
This AC who really gets it.
kbahey also get it and thanks for link to this story link in your blog entry!
Many other people also get it, especially the lurkers those who are getting the torrent now. Your action speaks louder than words.

Recommendations to read books,
Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold; Stephen King, The Stand; Niven and Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer; Lewis Dartnell, The Knowedge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch; George R. Stewart, Earth Abides; Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz;

Other sites and Libraries to check out,
Global Village Construction Set
The Long Now Foundation, they 'get it'.
The Rosetta Project [great idea though its value for survival is nil in any language...]
Project Foxfire
Pointer to the cd3wd library which has many modern technology, education (including Khan Academy) and classic literature packages.
United States Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series - NEETS
http://www.rarefile.net/1g1jay...
  http://www.rarefile.net/1rqsbc...
  http://www.rarefile.net/vk0a8p...
  http://www.rarefile.net/ecqwwr...

Thanks again.

The lawful act of stalking "cold fjord" reveals a penchant for gainsaying, short posts and a rolling rally of rebuttal. This can have the effect of people wishing you would just shut up. The post I responded to was more than a 'zinger' and does represent the view of many including some in the military who would gladly take Snowden out in a black op given the chance.

But then again, the lawful act of stalking "TheRealHocusLocus" shows a preponderance of blustery paragraph-rich prose that goes off --- offal at times --- on tangents that do not reconnect with the original topic. People don't wish I would shut up as often because I'm easier to ignore.

Who's to say which extreme style is more effective or necessary? Just glad there are folks out there listening.

Thanks.

Concise way to put it but these declarations are easy to challenge on the basis of this or that President. To add to your statement and share responsibility, the people of the United States have failed to challenge the idea of this perpetual state of emergency because they were blindsighted by anger on 9/11, but also because they have not picked up on parallel clues of history such as the Weimar Republic, lulled by Hitler into the dissolution of its own government. Americans (and Congress) have been contented to be governed in a dictatorial manner.

Rolling back gruesome laws by process of repeal is an appealing idea. Two clear examples are the Eighteenth and Twenty-first amendments and Glass-Stegal. One was cause for a toast. The other is driving us to drink because our economy is toasted.

Prohibition was slapped into place with simple language and it was easy to whack this mole down. But what if... the same result had been achieved by passage of a two-thousand page law that sent tendrils into dozens, hundreds of other laws, modifying language here and there to inject the topic of alcohol into places where it had never been, conflating alcohol with drunkenness though it is not its only cause with even more tendrils branching off into the distance, even bringing into existence two-way relationships with hybrid grafting where some pre-existing thing are now also related to alcohol, and declaring kittens cute, and building a new bridge in Iowa, and other things.

Let a dozen years pass and you find that whole careers and industries have been built around these roots. Other laws have been bound to and around it in careful deliberation or in a partisan frenzy of panic. Anything that does not 'work' has been adjusted by building out exceptions and clarifications. All in all it does not do what it set out to do, but every time anyone suggests that it might be best to roll it back, they are surrounded by an angry crowd of people whose lives now depend on it, and they are holding pictures of --- cute kittens.

Welcome to the 21st Century, when laws over a hundred pages long do not receive the derision, mockery and suspicion they deserve.

I do not see an easy solution to this, unless starting today parents were to start introducing this topic to young children in a stern context. "You need to wash behind your ears or dirt will build up there like special interest clauses in Omnibus Bills." Or "You have to rewrite this essay, it's too long. Are you trying to bury something in it because this is a lame duck session and teachers are in recess for the holidays?" Because it's too easy for 'contempt for the system' to sneak into the system. All it takes is to apply a level of obfuscation that exceeds the level of content. No one will ever call you out on it because they're too ashamed to admit they cannot figure it out.

I see that this story was dropped into the everybody-else-is-watching-duck-dynasty department. I'd better go check out Duck Dynasty to see if something interesting is happening. See ya!

This is a valid and welcome point of view in the discussion. Will you pussies who modded it -1 Troll please stop??

I see 'patriot' as a personal point of view that becomes Patriot-capitalized over time, maybe hundreds of years, usually in some self-serving context. But of course the Founding Fathers were Patriots! Snowden (unlike Assange) has refrained from using his press conduits to leak names which might compromise the safety of individuals involved in covert operations, if he even had access to them. The bulk of the material I've seen is for presentations and slide shows bragging about specific operations and capabilities. I say poo-poo to the arbitrary act of stamping things 'classified' or 'top secret'. Subject matter does count.

If I am shown a slide prepared by some military contractor that gushes about the 'superior kill radius' of their new product I shrug, recognizing that there is a modern context in which such bravado is an accepted practice whether or not it is to my own taste.

If I am shown a slide that indicates that my government has a cavalier attitude to citizens' rights and actively seeks to build out deep taps and communications retention, I get hopping mad. Because they are smart-stupids. Smart in cleverness but stupid in practice and grievous harm. It does not matter the level of cleverness or coolness of the technology. The mere act of building this thing is stupid.

Thus I am grateful for Snowden's revelations and do give him a 'pass'.

I shed crocodile tears for the poor NSA whose operation to listen in on Chancellor Merkel was laid bare. When I recall Merkel's defense of US surveillance practices worldwide, they become crocodile tears of laughter. You can't make this stuff up!

When I read that the Russian government has back-tooled some of its handling procedures for sensitive documents to an earlier era of typewriters and print I think to myself, now that's really clever of them. If only we were as clever...

It is my own opinion that Snowden's exposure of tap capabilities worldwide, such as we have seen, is necessary to establish its capabilities and awaken the American public, prepare them for the coming debate when they (hopefully) might have an opportunity to take a stand against this, stop this. If there was no harm presently being done to US citizens and more evidence of direct malice towards his own country I might revoke that pass. But no, we ARE being screwed, by US. The pass stands.

As to the revelation of 'so-called classified' material, if more sensitive material from the FBI Hoover era had leaked as it happened we could have avoided years of bad road and unlawful harassment, unjustly ruined lives. So much faux-communist in-fact-malfeasance bullshit. Hoover was a loon.

And if the government would strive to protect the value of tyhe dollar with the same verve with which they have attempted to protect their dirty secrets, we'd all be dog-damned rich.

Which is why no one in Congress can be expected to cast the first stone at the NSA. Whether they are in a position to know of its effectiveness or not, they will shy away in mortal political terror of NSA producing clear evidence that mass surveillance has "kept us safe". Still waiting. Likewise, pure judicial challenges run into stone walls as courts circularly argue over jurisdiction.

Or in the case of Hepting v. AT&T the Ninth Circuit committed to a sorry-ass monkey fuck decision where the case was dismissed on the basis of a piece of legislation ('retroactively' granting telecom immunity) that was passed after the case was filed. Pause to reflect on that. Has there ever been a clearer example of dereliction of duty of the judicial branch? Or a clearer admission of guilt by the Government?

That is because the NSA was terrified of Hepting vs. AT&T, more scared than it had ever been. Think of this case as a Pandora's box for them --- in which dozens (if not hundreds) of civilian technicians who had been involved in constructing its backbone taps might be encouraged to come forward to add their own piece to a sketch of NSA's domestic spy apparatus. As they came forward you'd see a map of the USA with taps appearing all over, and that would dispel any rhetoric claiming they did not intend to tap America itself.

And besides --- my own speculation but borne out in several places --- I allege that Hepting vs. AT&T would also have exposed that some technicians building our taps were foreign nationals and foreign corporations under contract to NSA. Countries whose spies we have convicted. Strange bedfellows laid bare. Gathering conversations (not silly metadata) has been portrayed as a high cost of liberty, though in the wrong hands it will subvert liberty. Our challenge is to prove this on three fronts.

We must seek to de-fund the NSA by calling into question the track record of mass surveillance to counter threats as of this day --- today. I draw a line at today because they could be cooking up something for tomorrow...

We must de-construct and demonstrate the motive behind mass surveillance to conclude that its only purpose in the end is to gather blackmail and empower absolute rulers with the tools they need to subvert our system of Government. This is true even if those presently engaged in it have good intentions.

We must defame the NSA and what it has become, the people behind it, the Senators who support it because someone whispered something in their ear --- was it a secret of National Security or was it blackmail? There's the rub --- dismantle it.

And that Constitution thing. Thar be dragins.

Same here, wasted years daydreaming about success, it's just a form of mental masturbation. Now I cherish my fears and revel in my worries... and gain a small measure of success and satisfaction from the knowledge that perception of reality is reasonably accurate.

I apply The Power of Positive Thinking by being positive that I will screw up completely unless I think. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK , but that's okay. I don each mask of the Four Temperments (this one comes with music) in turn as I consider any great challenge or problem, but the phlegmatic fits best.

I 'm the sanest person I ever met. Don't get out much.