Thought I would share some data of what happens when Tempest experiences low battery conditions but still tries to collect weather data. It has been completely overcast in Bellevue, Nebr for over 2 days. There has no sun to charge the batteries via the solar panels, hence, the battery level has dropped to 2.39v. (This similar condition occurred for about 8 day back in May.) This puts Tempest Field Test (ST-7764) http://tempestwx.com/station/15413 into what is known as:
Power Save Mode 2
Voltage <= 2.39 or >= 2.375 up from Mode 3
Sensor sample interval set to every one minute
Lightning data is only collected once per minute instead of continuously as when batteries are charged to full capacity or >2.50v.
Now if we compare that to Tempest° WeatherSystem (ST-2827) http://tempestwx.com/station/21476 . . .in which the battery level has dropped to 2.43v (Power Save Mode 1; Sensor sample interval set to every 6 seconds)…you’ll notice that there are Many More lightning strikes than there are on ST-7764. The Tempests: ST-7764 and ST-2827 are < 3 feet apart, so they should both be receiving the same amount of lightning strikes. But. . .since the battery level of ST-7764 has drained more that the other one, the sampling is degraded because of lower power.
Also of interest. . .in Power Save Mode 2, the Average wind speed equals the Gust. . .with Lull = 0. i.e. there is not enough battery power to sample winds but once every minute. . .so the lull value is set to zero. Notice all the blue shading (with 0 Lull) under the ST-7764 wind graph as compared to the ST-2827 wind graph below.
Can only observe the weather. . .but can’t make it change!