Photovoltaic (solar) power system

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

At 08:57 PM 9/11/00 -0700, Michael Sherrell wrote:
>Where'd you get that photovoltaic system you're using now? Tell us about it.

When we first moved here, we met some great people living in a straw bale 
house.  We found them through Real Good's annual alternative housing 
tour.  They're only about 85 miles from us, which here is considered pretty 
close.  Anyway, we fell in love with straw bale construction that day (had 
read books on rammed earth, cordwood, log, used tire and other alternative 
construction as well as straw bale prior to that & were undecided).  Turns 
out these people, Gary & Carol Hegg (www.solarstraw.com), also were 
starting up an alternative power business too.  Around here, with few areas 
near power lines & the power company charging (then) $18,000 per mile to 
bring power to your property (now $23,000), with lots of out of the way 
stock wells & people who are antiestablishment types, that business would 
(and does) really work.  So we had them set up our first system and it has 
changed over the years.

Right now we have 3 separate systems - one for the well, one for the horse 
trailer & one for the house.

  The well runs on a 24v (convert able) DC pump on two 55 watt mode solar 
panels hooked up in 24 volt mode.  It's on a tracker, but because we don't 
have lots of water storage capacity we don't use the tracker yet, just turn 
the system on & off manually.

For the horse trailer we have a 30 watt solar panel, a charge controller & 
an inexpensive ($70) deep cycle battery, the kind commonly used for travel 
trailers.

For the house we have (in the order they're connected) six 55 watt solar 
panels (which could se a tracker but we don't have one yet), a lightening 
arrester (which is grounded), then to a charge controller (makes sure the 
batteries don't overcharge) then to two 150 lb. sealed acid batteries which 
are designed to work with photo voltaic systems.  All our house lights 
(except one) are 12v & come directly off the batteries.  For everything 
that needs 110-120v (computers & peripherals, sound system, TV - we don't 
get TV reception but do rent movies - blender, and stuff like small power 
tools) the power goes from batteries to the Trace 1500 watt inverter which 
converts DC to AC (a ground comes off the inverter too).  We also have two 
meters to read the battery power, one of which is just a series of LEDs 
that give us a reading at a quick glance from across the room (if it's got 
3 greens it's fully charged, less greens mean less charge, orange is 
warning and red of course is too low).  The other is real fancy, has a 
digital readout that tells us the exact amount of voltage in the batteries, 
cumulative hours of use (fixed),  cumulative hours of use (resettable) and 
array/load current.

As time goes on, we will add more batteries to the house system although 
for our present usage the two we have are adequate.  We also experimented 
last year with a wind generator for those inevitable cloudy days, and 
really liked it.  Unfortunately we had to return it, so a wind generator is 
on the list of "someday stuff".  For backup we have a small Kabota 2500 
watt generator and a China Diesel 13,000 watt generator which is only used 
for heavy tools, like arc welders & that sort of thing.

Do understand we live in the sunbelt of the US, and in a smog free area to 
boot.  Anyone living with less days of sun or more constant wind, or maybe 
access to a stream would have a different setup.  Anyone with more 
questions should contact the Heggs directly, since I have just reached the 
end of my photovoltaic knowledge!   Lif


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             Lif & Paul Strand  STRAND ENTERPRISES www.fasterhorses.com
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