Off-Grid Solar Installations in Northern Arizona
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.
Friday, week two: There wasn’t much visual progress on Friday, and a considerable amount of time was spent in some meetings, and figuring out the logistics of getting the last load of parts onsite for next week’s push. Around noon,...Continue reading
Lots of battery cables. Once we figure out what length of cable is going to work for the batteries-they ALL have to be the same length, which makes it hard to make them look nice, which drives me crazy-then we...Continue reading
So I’d like to take a moment and talk about a couple that a bunch of you here may recognize. That couple is Joel and Amy. You may know them as Fort Rock Farms or Wash 11 and his wife-but...Continue reading
Thursday morning-now that we’ve finally managed to finish all the conduit on the roof, it was time to pull in the 15 solar circuit home runs. So early in the morning as soon as it was light enough to see...Continue reading
Friday. Today’s the day we become either heros or zeros. If we can get this big expensive mess to power up and make electricity-we’re heros. If there are issues three weeks worth of work comes to only frustration today. And...Continue reading
It’s Saturday, nobody works on Saturday! Reminds me of something someone said to me once: “It’s nice being an entrepreneur; you only have to work half days. Just pick which 12 hours you want to work!” LOL. There’s more than...Continue reading
By our original schedule, we were supposed to be done with this job the previous Friday-but we all know how that went. We pushed through a long weekend of office work so that we could head back up the mountain...Continue reading
Tuesday morning. Big day. We need to finish the 2” feeder conduits for the inverter and generator outputs that connect the two systems together and to the whole camp. Yesterday we had loaded everything into the Freightshaker that was needed...Continue reading
Cue another cool tool… This little Milwaukee 12v cable cutter speeds things up and saves my worn out wrists and hands. As someone pointed out earlier, something about these “300 dollar” tools weighing you down and not being very portable…there’s...Continue reading
Wednesday, week 4. While the camp was, indeed, up and running on the new power system, there was still a ton of details to take care of. Wiring needed cleaned up, the generator t taps and panels needed finished, the...Continue reading