Solar Baby

posted by katlupe on Jan 9

In November we purchased two more solar panels and the equipment needed to FINALLY move them onto the barn roof. The barn roof gets the most sun all year long. If you study it as we have done over time you will see the areas of your property that get the most sun. We purchased two Kyocera solar panels from the alternative energy store. They did not have anything to mount them on the roof with though. My husband contacted their customer service and asked some questions and because our panels have been purchased over a period of ten years they are not all uniform in size, so nothing they had would work for us. The customer service rep was very rude with my husband on the telephone and wanted us to replace the older panels we had with new ones so they would be the same?????? Now what kind of advice is that? Must be in sales! He lost their company a sale that turned out to be over $600.!!! Which is what we spent at Affordable Solar for the roof racks.

These panels will give us almost double the power we have presently. They are Kyocera KC85T 85W 12V so will give us 170 more watts for a total of 360 watts of power. Plus putting them up on the barn roof will mean our panels will be have longer periods of sunshine even in the dark days of winter here in upstate New York. Unfortunately, our roof racks did not get shipped very fast from Affordable Solar and then all the parts came except for the parts that needed to go on the roof first. So by the time those parts came……our weather turned bitter cold and now we have our usual amount of snow and ice. So that is on hold and our two brand new solar panels are in our barn waiting for the much wished for January thaw.

We Purchased the Clicksys roof mounting system manufactured by Unirac.  Here is a link to it and no, I am not an affiliate of their’s. Just a customer.

http://www.clicksys-beam.com We wanted our panels to be secure on the barn roof as it is a high roof. On Unirac’s web site they said that the connections are secured with just a click and it completely eliminates the bolts and nuts you would normally have to use. Cuts out at least forty percent of the labor that the other types of roof racks need done. My husband was all for that! Saved time as well and he wants to get them up there and quick as possible as he does not relish the thought of doing all that work on the barn roof. On their site they say, “The new innovative design of CLICKSYS™ offers the most cost effective flush mount solution in the residential marketplace. Pricing starts as low as 10 cents per watt. Save time and money with the most revolutionary PV mounting system in the world!” My husband is building a front porch on the barn which will have have a walkway above it to clean off the panels when leaves or snow accumulates on them.

The Google campus in California had  9,000 panels to rack and a variety of roof styles to deal with so they had Unirac perform a custom engineering analysis of the site to make sure that the product they chose would work best for each of the individual roofs.  So a non-penetrating racking system was used for the standing-seam roofs which Unirac was able to provide. I like the idea of it being non-penetrating on my barn.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole
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posted by katlupe on Dec 4

Setting up your solar system is not as easy as putting your solar panels in the sun and plugging them in. Too bad as many more people would want to do it then. You have to study your house and property to see where exactly you need to put the panels. When we first moved here we only had one panel. So we could go outside and move it around to follow the sun. That’s okay when you are starting out. Not if you have more than one or two though. It can get tiring after doing it every day in all kinds of weather. You wouldn’t want the panels to get blown over due to the wind or a storm. We were lucky when we got hit by an in line tornado in 2000. We had about six trees down on our house, but no damage. Most important was that there was no damage to our lone solar panel which was on the side of the house the trees hit. Didn’ get touched though.

A tool that can help you decide where your panels should go is called the Solar Pathfinder
It will give you the sun potential for the whole year! Good to use for setting up a garden as well. It also has software that you can purchase to help you in accessing your solar energy needs called the Solar Pathfinder Assistant Software

You really need the sun as much as you can get it. Our sun here in upstate New York is not as dependable as other places in the country. We are hardly getting any right now (December). We plan on putting our solar panels on top of our barn roof hopefully next year. If we were just setting this up though and had this handy tool, we would have just seen from the start that the place to put them was up there. My husband has observed every hour, every day, every month, every year that the place to put them would be the barn roof. It gets sun consistently.

Here’s the information you need to check it out. It is essential to use the if you are building a new home and plan to set up a complete alternative energy system. Tell me what you think about it.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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posted by katlupe on Dec 2

The only problem with solar energy in New York state is that we don’t get as much sunshine as the other states. You have to add up the wattage of every appliance you need or want to use and then double that for our state. That tells you how many watts worth of solar panels you need to buy. That can and does add up the bucks right there! There are many people who have built their own. In our case we just buy them little by little. But for the people who just have to have it all right away, and there are many people like that. It’s nothing to be embarrassed by, but some people can sacrifice for the big payoff at the end and some just can’t. Here is where the idea of building the panels yourself come in. Solar, Wind, Batteries, Bio-Diesel And Home-Making Components!

If you are handy I think that would be a good idea. I am thinking of having my husband give it a go. As then we could get the two panels more we need to buy the SunDanzer solar refrigeration and freezer. As we all know the most expensive part of off the grid living is building your system so if you are going to be able to build at least some of your components then it becomes much more doable for the common person like us.

We all see the rich and famous adding solar to their mansions. Yeah, they can do it with no problems. Just pay someone big bucks to come in and switch them over. Then the regular every day people like us say, ” Hey you have to be rich to have solar. I can’t afford what Darryl Hannah can.” But you can if you work it right. Start small and build it. That is what I have done. You should have seen the tiny little charge controller we started with! And an automotive inverter from Walmart. Not even forty bucks at the time. But we had tv! That was all we had. And we were happy with that……..then.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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posted by katlupe on Nov 30

This is my attempt to teach the average people about alternative energy systems. To the average person the thought of solar or wind power is way beyond their world. Yet they think nothing of throwing their hard earned money to the grid powered systems daily. Most people think you have to be making a six figure income to put one in their modest homes. I am here to tell you that is not so. I know because I live with it….every day and have since July of 1999. Yes, it is a learning experience over time, but it is VERY affordable for the simple living folks like us.

Presently we live with 185 watts of power coming from three solar panels. In the dark days of winter, like now, we have to use our generator more often. In the summer though, it was a very different story. We only had to run our generator about once a week. In case you didn’t know, we have to run the generator to charge our batteries if the sun doesn’t shine enough to do it. I call our system a “add as you can system”. Meaning that we add a component as we can afford it. It’s best to buy good equipment so you have to spend some money on each one. That is better than buying cheaper equipment that doesn’t last.

Right now we have 24 used locomotive batteries that we replaced our original fork-lift truck batteries with. A charge controller is essential to any alternative system as it controls how much of a charge is going into your batteries. Our controller is the Xantrex C-60 charge controller (60 amps, 12 volt) and back in 2004 it sold for $245. at Backwoods Solar. We have never had any problem with this at all. I would highly recommend it to anyone just building their system. A meter comes in handy for letting you know how much power you have going into the system and how much is going out or what you are using. The meter we have is the Tri-Metric meter made by Bogart Engineering.

The generator we use is made especially for off the grid systems and is sold at Backwoods Solar. It is a DC only generator and has made the biggest difference in our system. When we started out we used an old car for charging the batteries and not only did the exhaust stink, the car was noisy and the gas was expensive, which it did use alot of. The generator isn’t as loud as most generators, but you can definitely hear it. Works great and uses way less gas. Some day when our system is built bigger, we will use our generator less and less.

The thing is that anybody can do this. How many people complain about the cost of their electric bill every month? Just start small. Hook up one 50 watt solar panel with a small charge controller and pick up a couple of the golf cart batteries. Then hook up an automotive inverter that can be bought at Walmart or any truck stop store to your system. Now you can run your lights and tvs without adding to your electric bill. And you know what the best part is! You will not be without them during a power outage! Everyone else will be in the dark, and your house will be all lit up. I know many people are very handy and could build the equipment themselves if they knew how. Here is some information on how you could build your panels for about $200. Not bad! Click Here!

I will be adding more information for you every day or close to that. So please check back and if you have questions that need an answer post a comment and I will try to find out the answer.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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