🤪🤪 We rolled out of the yard a little past 6 and pointed east into the blinding rising sun towards Flagstaff. A quick fuel stop at one of the new truck stops in Trashfork was our only stop before hitting...
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.
These panels are big and heavy and don’t come with any lifting points.
Some we installed our own temporary points on this first big disconnect. We spent several hours carefully measuring, laying out and installing strut on our aluminum posts to accept the panels that needed to be mounted. Denise also put some...Continue reading
This morning was a frigid 35 degrees out!
We put on whatever jackets we had on hand and tried to huddle together to stay warm in the cold dawn. 😄😄🥶 Look at that fancy breaker and surge suppressor! Measure, and measure some more! 🤪 Denise preparing all her...
Dawn broke on the job site clear, beautiful, and thankfully a full 20 degrees warmer than yesterday.
Today was a high pressure day; we are waiting on parts to show up to complete some necessary work, and we are getting down to the wire time wise to get this system operational or we face expensive penalties, so...Continue reading
The pile of very expensive wire we had delivered today.
Denise putting the final touches on the installation of our gutter. There was one last little panel to install and it proved to be a tricky little SOB. But we worked into the night and got it mounted. Here we...Continue reading
We stepped out of the work trailer just before 6am yesterday morning into a soggy job site with…
We stepped out of the work trailer just before 6am yesterday morning into a soggy job site with rain coming down and lightning flashing off all over the place. The thunder cracking all around just put an exclamation point to...Continue reading
We left the shop just after 5am and headed east towards Flagstaff to pick up parts and breakfast…
We left the shop just after 5am and headed east towards Flagstaff to pick up parts and breakfast before hitting the job site. We hit scattered fog and sprinkles all the way , with the sprinkles turning to real rain...Continue reading
Before you can pull the wire, you have to get everything set up.
Sometimes it’s sorta like painting-lots of tedious prep for a short bit of actual work. Anyway, first we had to load the spools up onto our spool jacks, and while most of the wire in the picture is smaller-there’s a...Continue reading
A bit of a problem. Yesterday when we finished our second 350’ 7 wire pull we discovered that one…
A bit of a problem. Yesterday when we finished our second 350’ 7 wire pull we discovered that one conductor had slipped out of the pulling head and didn’t make it to the other end. Ugg. This is a real...Continue reading
Problem solving, not falling apart, putting in the hours… Man, there are days I sure wish we could…
Problem solving, not falling apart, putting in the hours… Man, there are days I sure wish we could just throw up our hands and declare we just can’t do it and it’s somebody else’s problem to fix. Or maybe we...Continue reading