The Wacky Stories I Tell . . . here comes another one

So, here's what happened today.

We have afternoon thunderstorms most every day this time of year. As today's storm approached, we had a really close lightning strike. Really close. Like we wondered if it might have hit one of our buildings. (We later discovered that a huge pine tree, about 600' from our closest building, was hit.)

We were checking around for damage, and especially checking out our solar equipment, when dh noticed a "hot plastic" smell in the vicinity of our batteries, controllers, and inverter. Not good at all. However, the system was still running, and everything plugged into the system seemed to be running fine.

With additional investigation, eventually the menfolk narrowed the smell down to the inverter, and realized that the interior fan was no longer running.

So, they took apart the inverter (tricky business, because they had to remove the equipment from the charged up batteries), and found that they couldn't repair the fan.

I need to mention that yesterday Russell was working on sorting through our stored man-junk. You know the kind of stuff, if you have a hands-on husband. Russell had found a small, cheap fan, which was designed to be attached to a piece of large construction equipment, to keep the driver cool. We had installed it, but it had fallen off the machine and never been re-installed. It was sitting in the pile of stuff to be thrown out or given away.

They grabbed it up out of the pile, figured out a way to mount it next to the inverter so that it blows air through the inverter, and we're powered up and running again.

Really, is anyone even going to believe me anymore?

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, the system is grounded.