A few days ago, we managed to squeeze in an installation of a custom off grid home’s main and sub panels for one of our customers who have been building their dream home. We installed the solar power system a...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’s been a crazy busy time lately.
Which is actually normal. Last week, we did a project that has been 5 years in the making. When @wash11 and Amy got their house, one of the things that really needed upgraded was their kitchen lighting. It consisted of...Continue reading
Last week, we headed back up to the camp on Mingus Mountain for another week of work.
We had loaded up both trucks for the run up the hill the day before, and in the pre dawn hours, we fired both trucks up and hit the road. The sunrise found us on the last portion of our...Continue reading
This is it. We have pretty much reached the end of our adventure at the camp up on Mingus mountain….
This is it. We have pretty much reached the end of our adventure at the camp up on Mingus mountain. This will be our final week of work there. Things are starting to freeze over up there, their budget is...Continue reading
Tuesday morning it was time to finally tackle the snake pit of wiring and subpanels that infested…
Tuesday morning it was time to finally tackle the snake pit of wiring and subpanels that infested the camp’s original generator shack, which had ceased to house a generator decades ago and had become a storage shed and home to...Continue reading
Wednesday morning greeted us with a dusting of snow, reminding us that we needed to keep up the…
Wednesday morning greeted us with a dusting of snow, reminding us that we needed to keep up the pace and GTFO before it was too late. For some reason I woke up at about 12:30 after only about 3 hours...
Thursday morning was crisp and cold, but thankfully the wind had died down.
We started by pulling in about a hundred feet of 4/0 aluminum feeders in three different pulls. All done totally by hand, all in awkward and difficult to pull in locations. But before we could even do those wire pulls,...Continue reading
Friday was a flat out race to the finish line.
Did we make it? Well, pretty much-there is one 10’ run of conduit with wiring we need to do still, and that’s it. Seeing as Saturday is clean up and load up day, we will address that real quick first...Continue reading
Saturday was clean up and load up and leave the job day.
The first order of business was that short conduit run/circuit install I mentioned. It was just one stick of conduit, although it was in a tricky spot and needed a couple 😄😄 bends in it. Once that was installed, we...Continue reading
Not a stupid idea at all.
monkeyswrench said: @The Chicken , this will sound stupid probably for those that deal in this stuff. Could a large capacitor, or bank of them, be used to soften the load impact? I only ask because back in the old...Continue reading