Here Comes the Sun

[pshaw_raven]

So we built a photovoltaic array.

Shortly after getting home from Disney last time, we decided that, before the tax incentives run out, we might as well get the solar system we've been talking about built. Fox found a company that designed and planned systems for DIYers, and once they got the plans hashed out, we got them approved by the county and got crackin'. We already had that space cleared of trees, but we needed to grade it and do some other site prep.

It's pretty heavy duty. The concrete pilings around six feet deep, supporting a framework of schedule 40 steel pipe. We picked up the actual solar panels themselves (along with all the cables, inverters, and all that good stuff) in Tampa and finally got it all up. It's not switched on yet because our homeowner's insurance is dragging their ass getting the liability increase approved. But Fox fired it up late one afternoon when the sun was almost down - we didn't want it making enough power to alert the meter on the house and potentially cause a shutdown. As it was, it made a little bit of power, but not enough to piss off the rest of the grid. (Ahh! Power is coming in instead of going out! Shut down, shut down!) And everything initialized and worked as expected. There's an app where we can see how much each panel is making through the day and a bunch of other info.

We might even get to turn the thing on before we leave for Disney. :P Not going to hold my breath, since at this point no one seems to be in a hurry to approve anything.

But yeah - the inaugural Springtime Surprise race weekend is coming up in two weeks, and Fox and I are running the challenge. Old-timers say this is what Disney races were like at the very beginning. There's a 5k and scavenger hunt on Thursday night in Animal Kingdom - I've never done anything like this and it sounds like a lot of fun. The finisher's medal is even a working compass that opens and closes. Saturday morning is a 10k, and Sunday is a 10-miler, for a total of 19.3 miles. I assume they're doing a 10 mile race rather than a half marathon so they can continue selling their somewhat generic 19.3 RunDisney merch leftover from the Star Wars and Princess weekends.

In November I'm doing something a bit different, for me anyway. I'm doing a stand-alone marathon. I've never done one that wasn't part of a stage race. In this case I'm running the Florida Legends "Skunk Ape Marathon" down in Debary. At Disney I'm always starting the marathon with a tired body and tired mind, having already done something like 22.4 miles that weekend. Here I get to be fresh - we're staying nearby. I'm spending the summer and fall training for just this race. I want to see what I can really do over this distance when I'm not already worn out. Fox is doing it, too, because he can't let me have all the fun. ;D As we get closer to it, I'll post details about how to track the results, if any of you are curious about that.

Fox is also feeling the itch to try an ultra, and we even found one that's held right here close to home. So we might try a 50k soon, as well. We haven't actually signed up for anything yet, though.

This solar project, along with a lot of little cleanup and maintenance projects that came with it, have eaten SO much of my free time and energy the past two months. It'll be worth it whenever we get to run the system, though.

Comments

[expandranon]

Grats on the sweet solar array! That's yooje and should provide a lot of power. Did you do everything yourself, even the concrete and whatnot? That's an impressive amount of work, and work done well.

[pshaw_raven]

We did everything except mixing the concrete - we hired a guy who lives nearby and has a business called "One Yard of Concrete." He's got a small mixer and can literally just come over and pour one cubic yard of concrete anywhere you like. But we dug the holes, built the support structure, all of it. :D

It's going to provide us, on average, with enough power to run the entire house and use almost nothing from the grid. We're looking at putting aside money to get a small battery backup so that even when the rest of the power grid is down, we can stay up.

[oracne]

I found this really interesting to hear about.

[pshaw_raven]

Thanks :D I'll probably be talking more about it once the system is running. Insurance is still taking their sweet time approving it, so we haven't been able to start it up yet.

[cdayzee]

How awesome! Y'all put in a lot of work with this!

Tax incentives are ceasing for solar panels?? Ugh, did we miss our window of opportunity due to my husband dragging his feet?? Plus, it would be nice to keep things operational during an outage as well as offset our electric bill. But it's actually not too crazy. Everyone I know who has them is well pleased.

[pshaw_raven]

I think the tax incentives go down each year until, at some point, they stop. I don't know when that is. They're still in effect this year, but I'm not at all clear on the details.

If you want to stay up during an outage, you'll need a battery system. The array we have right now, with no battery, looks to the Clay Electric grid for its neutral, and if the grid's down, there's no neutral, and the array won't work. I think there are a few other work-arounds for that, but the easiest is the battery. We're thinking about a smallish one that would charge during the day and then power a few things overnight, like box fans, the fridge, etc.

I think we're going to like our system but our insurance STILL hasn't approved the extra liability for it. We were joking about maybe getting to turn it on before the end of the month, but now it's looking more and more like April.

[yarrowkat]

the incentives got re-approved in the last congressional session! so it went from 26% to 24%, but it's going to hang out at 24% for a few years now.

[pshaw_raven]

Thanks for that - I had been getting my info secondhand through Fox and wasn't exactly paying attention. I'd forgotten they renewed it.

[cdayzee]

Thanks for the info! I know next to nothing about solar panels & all that it entails.

[yarrowkat]

yay, solar! it's such a process, but also so very worth it!

[pshaw_raven]

Holy cow, it is a freaking process. It feels like it's taking a lot longer to get all the approval and everything than it did to actually build the thing.

[yarrowkat]

so, we own a large chunk of land (4 acres altogether) but it's in two legal plats, each with its own house, well, etc. we took the fence in between them down, and it doesn't read to anybody as two properties, but it legally is and we need it to be so that we can legally have two houses & two wells.

but! you can't have electrity generated on one legal property, used to power a house on a separate legal property. so we went through an extensive special use permit process with the county to work through that little hiccup - the solar array is behind the community house, on our south lot, and is powering both houses. in order to do that, we had to go through a hearing that the whole neighborhood was invited to, and a pile of piles of paperwork - but it went! and, now that it is approved, the county took the opportunity to use us as a model for how to permit small-scale community generation of electricity! so now if a block of people want to go in on a bigger solar array, or a wind turbine, together, the county has a permitting process, so the next folks won't have a 6-month paperwork ordeal. so i'm actually very pleased, and proud of us. :)

[pshaw_raven]

That IS cool, good job! :)
We're not quite running into that amount of red tape, but it's been kind of a pain. The amusing part is that once the insurance comes through and we're ready to turn it on, we have one last thing to sign. Clay Electric Co-op's CEO needs an agreement with Fox. They regard solar arrays as power generating stations, and they need an agreement with every station they get power from. Since Fox owns it, he's the CEO.

[yarrowkat]

ha! that's fantastic. so every homeowner with a solar array in your area is now a CEO?