Solar Baby

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 350 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.

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Tags: Alternative Energy | off-the-grid | Solar Panels | solar system