A fun little sidetracked moment here. This job is directly across from a place called the STAR school. It was the first totally off grid school in the country and is still one of the few that exist at...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.
It was a frosty 31° morning this morning!
It was too cold to work so we turned around and went back inside the trailer and waited for the sun to come up. Things were still frosty, even after the sun came up!😄😄🤷♂️ I wish pictures did justice to...Continue reading
Last Thursday had us working on the job site loading up equipment we were now done with and that needed to go back home.
We arrived home sometime around 9 pm after a long grueling day-but we couldn’t quite crawl into bed. We spent another hour or so packing a suitcase and making preparations to take off early Friday morning. We were finally in...Continue reading
Monday morning had us up early loading the truck.
Hulk followed me around all morning and stood by the back door of the truck, wanting to go camping with us. This breaks my heart every time, as I love taking her with us, and Hulk is an excellent, albeit...Continue reading
That wire goes down to a current transformer around the neutral wire at the bottom of the panel-you…
monkeyswrench said: The ginormous breaker, I’m pretty sure it’s a breaker, looks to have a communication line. Is it a controlled switch type deal, or does it report info to the inverters? On giant inverters, do they still run “master...Continue reading
Yesterday was clear, warm, sunny, with big blue skies and just a pleasant day weather-wise.
We continued terminating panels all throughout the day, slowly chewing through our punch list of wires that needed landed. Denise wrestled this 208/120 panel inside the building while it was still cold and crisp out first thing in the morning....Continue reading
Yesterday morning dawned cold and overcast with obvious scattered showers all around.
Great. Perfect day to commission a power system that needs sunlight to make energy. 🙄 Nevertheless, rain or shine, this show had hit a point where it had to go on. We got busy triple checking all our work, keeping...Continue reading
Well, I can tell you all this: powering up the system was anticlimactic and almost boring-which is…
Well, I can tell you all this: powering up the system was anticlimactic and almost boring-which is just about exactly how you want things like this to go. When it gets exciting is typically when things go wrong and get...Continue reading
So-Thursday and Friday ended up being quite the rodeo.
Thursday morning, we got up fairly early and started making preparations to affect some temporary wiring so we could test the generator and the well pump. This hand hole was tiny and deep, and my arms were barely long enough...Continue reading