#Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden

The Open Kitchen Sculpture garden has been a fixture in the Norris Square area for years now. Conjured into being by Pedro Ospina and all those he pulled into the project in over 15 years of clearing lots, clearing rubble and trash, planting and creating, the space at 2241 N Philip St is now home to a small grassroots park like space with gardens, giant sculptures and a workshop. These days the space hosts regular art events and potlucks bringing together a beautifully weird mix of locals and newcomers.

The garden already had solar, but the system was dated and the lead acid batteries storing the power had met their end of life. The system had become barely functional except for moments when the system had direct sunlight. The old system was a familiar looking system to those who knew the last generation of lead acid based off grid systems. 6 panels fed a nice Midnight Classic charge controller and a MAGNUM inverter. That fed a 24V battery bank with badly deteriorated deep cycle lead acid batteries.

This was coinciding with workshop classes Pedro was holding in the trailer parked on the land. There were opportunities for a grant, so we came up with a tiered proposal depending on the grant outcome starting with a basic system rescue upgrade and at top of the list a full on inverter, battery and PV upgrade.

The full grant came through and we made a plan. and ordered the gear: a gigantic and heavy AF mini fridge sized 14Kwh heated lithium iron phosphate battery, a 6000W inverter/charger and 4 450w bifacial panels to expand the existing solar array.

Moving the heavier gear was a lesson in itself. While some fun engineering can come into play moving objects, just moving that 280+ lbs battery was a lesson learned. Upon delivery, we were fortunate enough for the driver to unload the battery directly into the van with a ramp and winch built into his truck, but the task of moving the battery from the van into the container was more of a struggle. Fortunately we had a small crew up for task and we pulled it off with minimal cursing. It would have been a different story altogether if we needed to move that thing up and into the van or up some stairs. In the future we'll do our best to remember to order 5kwh rack mount batteries instead. While those are still heavy, they can still be shifted by a person or 2 without too much trouble.

Our efforts were blessed by accompaniment of Christina, a friendly symbiont and comrade as well as cofounder of the Catalyst Cooperative, a worker coop which created open source climate datasets. (https://catalyst.coop/)

A few weeks later, we showed up to test out the gear at the first potluck of the season. After a delicious community fueled potluck, we gave a breakdown on the setup and offcially inaugurated the Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden Solar Expansion of 2025!!!