😄😄 We were hampered by constant rain storms, some damaged conduit, a shortage of one size of conduit because apparently the guy who ordered it is too stupid to measure properly( that’d be me BTW,🙄😄😄), a shortage of that particular...Continue reading
A Day in the Life of an Off-Grid Solar Installer
This is our project journal — field stories from off-grid solar installs around Northern Arizona. The 4 a.m. starts, the parts that don't show up, the problems solved on the fly, and a behind-the-scenes look at how these systems actually get built — plus a bit of life on the fringe along the way. Originally posted on the River Daves Place forum; you can read the full thread here.
This is actually a great question-and one I ment to address earlier but haven’t had time.
t&y said: @The Chicken I’m assuming you have a scematic of how you lay the pipe out prior to the install and it looks like some of them are just loops between two different locations. Are these all going to...Continue reading
This week has been another challenging week so far.
Monday had us working pretty close to home on a small job that I totally forgot to get pictures of, along with some work in the shop that needed done. We were back on our big job by early Tuesday...Continue reading
This week, we have been doing something kinda fun for a change.
We have been in Vegas at the RE+ convention. Think of it as sort of a SEMA show for renewable energy. It’s massive and mind-boggling. 50,000+ attendees swamp the entire Venetian and Caesars conference center. It’s a chance to get...Continue reading
Agrivoltaics is an emerging field trying to develop equipment and methods to combine agriculture with solar.
From specially selected seeds and plants that do well in the conditions under arrays, to methods to run livestock, to specialized arrays designed to work with livestock-there’s a whole bunch of emerging technologies and methods. I forgot to get some...Continue reading
We left the shop at 3:30 am to make a bonsai run to the job outside of Flagstaff to make sure our…
We left the shop at 3:30 am to make a bonsai run to the job outside of Flagstaff to make sure our conduits were undamaged and un moved ahead of today’s concrete pour. We rocked Denise’s lesbian-mobile, I mean Scissor...Continue reading
After spending Monday and Tuesday making preparations, we lit off the old Freightshaker in the wee…
After spending Monday and Tuesday making preparations, we lit off the old Freightshaker in the wee hours of the morning before sunup, and pointed her east to Flagstaff. We have a lot on our plate this week, and the next...Continue reading
By the light of dawn this morning, the equipment pad was a bit of a mess, with parts and pieces…
By the light of dawn this morning, the equipment pad was a bit of a mess, with parts and pieces being staged for installation. The first thing we did was modify and clean up these used heavy duty aluminum posts...Continue reading
Transformers!
More than meets the eye!😄😄 This one is kinda special-it takes the 480 Delta from the old generators and turns it into 480/277 Wye so the inverters can use it. For those of you who don’t understand Delta and Wye-that’s...Continue reading
Saturday!!
Time for a day off, right? Riiiiiiight. 🙄 We hauled one of the SolArk 60K inverters into the shop to do some careful measuring of and build one of our templates. Weighing in at nearly 200 pounds and almost $20,000,...