Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Loonies to the Left of Me, Loonies to the Right of Me…

My first hands-on experience with solar took the form of a five watt panel.  I used it to power a muffin fan.  It was good for the “Gee whiz” factor when I showed it to people.  When some one saw it they would invariably tell me it was “Neat”.  Then they would say it was too bad it wasn't really practical in the real world. 

At the time it was practical for a very few folks.  Twelve volt panels proliferated. The largest consumer panels tended to be in the 125W or so range and they cost upwards of $5.50 per watt which could fetch over $6 per and up.  The practical application came only to those folks who lived beyond the power lines.  If the local utility had to cut a right of way and string new lines a quarter of a mile or more, you stood a good chance of breaking even or spending less by going off-grid.

And then…

Grid-tie became doable.  Distributed generation (DG) let a homeowner hook up to the grid and on a good day watch the meter spin backwards.  The price came down a bit.  There were solar purists who were not pleased, true one-percenters.  DG was bad. By their reckoning DG freed the homeowner from thinking about her consumption.  She was free to still use as much fossil fuel electricity as she wanted above and beyond what she offset with a solar array. Less bad but still bad for the planet. 

Battery banks are expensive.  They have a finite lifespan.  The least expensive batteries, lead-acid batteries, could run a few thousand dollars for a two kilowatt bank.  There is maintenance to consider.  The batteries are temperature sensitive.  They optimize in a seventy five degree environment.  They need venting. They need to be equalized every six months.  In order to build a system you need a charge controller, an inverter and an interface for a remote generator for stretches without sun.  Using low-maintenance absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries could eliminate a lot of work but could almost double the price.  The economics of off-grid allowed for a smug eco-chic, but doomed solar to a tiny niche market.  And that was no way to alleviate the dependence on fossil fuels.

On the other side of the spectrum from the tree-hugger crowd lurks a segment of the population preparing for the end of civilization as we know it.   Their reasons for off-grid living has more to do with insulating themselves from any kind of government intrusion and often fear the meter reader is a government spy.  More than likely though, they want to be free of a system that might fail.  That system could be the electric grid. 

A word of caution to those folks.  Aside from the inherent expense and work of a battery bank, a societal collapse would lead to a cessation of any new batteries being manufactured.  When the batteries you already have reach the end of their usefulness, the batteries available to forage will be owned by someone else willing to defend them or not worth having.  All batteries self discharge and over a period of months and years will be no good to anyone if they've not been hooked up to a solar array or other charging system.   

Luckily for the rest of us,  grid-tie has not only become more mainstream but the price has dropped dramatically over the years.  Technology has given rise to the mini inverter.  Each panel in an array has its own on-board inverter which eases the effects of partial shading on the panels.  The price per watt of the panels has dropped from $5.50 per watt and up, and panel wattages have risen to 250 (and larger) at 24 volts.  The number of installers has grown and it won’t be very long before every good electrician will be able to wire an array. More on the numbers at a later date.

We’ve gone way beyond “Gee whiz”.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

An Old Hippie Finally Gets His Wish!


By Ed McMonagle:


Moving from Philadelphia to NH in 1974 was supposed to be the beginning of my move into an environmentally conscience world. My degree in Chemistry and my years as a HS teacher had led me to investigate the new world of back to the land and environmentally living that had cropped up in the late sixties. I knew Vermont was the place to be, but I got accepted into the UNH graduate school to study the Chemistry of soils. What a better way to begin my life as a back to the land farmer, study the place where it was all happening. Well I did graduate but I also had to make a living, and since I did not want to leave NH, which I had come to love, and I did not want to work in the Chemical industry, I did what I had done before, returned to teaching. So, 34 years later, with a house in the woods (at least I did that right - but it was a conventional house), two kids out of college with degrees in Engineering and on their own, we finally decided to go solar. 

It just sort of happened, I met with Jim Gamble, who had just opened the Solar Store in Concord and I signed up for a free site survey. That was the spring of 2009. Jim came out to the house, climbed on the roof, took some readings with his solar pathfinder and sent me a report and quotes for both a PV system and a Hot water system. More money than I had and also the report showed that all the trees on the west side of the property were blocking much of the winter sun. So the summer came and went, winter came and went and spring was back again before we decided to bite the bullet. I had done a lot of research and decided that the hot water system was the more efficient system and was the way to start our journey to the sun. I called Jim and told him it was a go. I also called a tree guy and we took down about 50 trees. Most he took away, especially the large pines and some he left for me to turn into firewood. Jim and his crew of two, set up my evacuated tube hot water system in a few days and we were off and running. 

That was June, 2010. I immediately fell in love with the power of the sun. Even on not so sunny days, the temp of the glycol was above 130 degrees all summer. My wife got a bit tired of my announcement that we all need to take a nice hot shower/bath because the sun was shinning, and the water in the 85 gal tank had reached 140 degrees. I even opened the circuit breaker on the HW heater to see what it did. A month later I remembered it was off. All through the next winter, I was amazed that even though the outside temp was close to zero, when the sun was shinning, the glycol was flowing at a very comfortable temperature.

When I heard that Jim had closed the Solar Store, I was very upset that he would leave me without any support for my system. I contacted the Solar Store in Dover and they said they would work with me if I needed any maintenance. I was still not happy. Come December 2011, NH Lung Assn. announced a program to retire old dirty woodstoves. Well, my woodstove was over 30 years old and although it had served us well, it was time to retire it. So, off to the Stove Barn to buy a new stove with help from NH Lung Assn. A week or so later two fellows show up to take away my old stove and install my new one. They did a great job, and as we were talking, one of the installers happened to mention that he was buying Jim Gambelʼs inventory and starting his own solar store. On the spur of the moment, I told him if he was looking for someone to invest in his company and help out, to let me know, because I was interested.

About a month later, that person, Mike Fay, called me to say he was looking for someone to invest in the company. Now it is the spring of 2013. I am a partner in SunRay Solar and on my roof is a nice shiny 3.4kW PV system that I love even more than my Hot Water System. At this moment, we have had zero electric usage on our bills for the last two months and the meter is spinning backward at the rate of over 100 kWh/month, and it is only the beginning of May. My wife now complains about my reporting of how much energy we have produced this week.

Am I an old hippie who has finally got his wish. You Bet. 

TO BE CONTINUED...