Winter 2011 Newsletter

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The Solyndra Saga as Seen From an Insider’s View

Most of us have heard the news about Solyndra going bankrupt earlier this year. So rather than focus on the $535 million in federal aid they got and why they received it, I thought I would focus on what I know and have seen from inside the solar industry.

If you look back at past newsletters you’ll see we wrote a few articles on thin film solar panels. Our look at thin film led us to believe that this product was not all it was touted to be despite the optimistic outlook for this product. In the last year, most of the thin film companies are having problems, as standard mono and poly solar panel prices have plummeted. The reason I bring this up is because two years ago I could have told you that Solyndra was producing a product that just didn’t work in the real world. I remember going to trade shows and seeing the Solyndra Booth and saying to myself, “I just don’t get it. Why is this product better?”

This of course raises the question of why the Obama administration picked this company among many others that are doing well, to be their poster child. I cannot answer that question but I’m sure that it will be sorted out eventually. In the mean time, critics of the federal clean energy bill have seized this headline to make a case that much of the public’s money was being wasted. I disagree and here’s why. New technology takes money and failures to succeed.

According to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuels received $409 billion in subsidies globally in 2010, compared to $66 billion for renewable power. I would rather take a chance with my hard earned tax dollars on companies like Solyndra than subsidize a dying source of energy such as fossil fuel. It’s like what the Silicon Valley venture capitalists like to boast about, they are willing to fail multiple times on the way to their one big success.

In the end we need to ask ourselves do we want to kick our dependency on foreign oil and reduce pollution at home? If the answer is yes, then the only way is to find another source of energy and that takes money.

Websites to Check Out

A cool new website to check out is http://www.civicsolar.com/load-calculator

This website has a great interactive load calculator that works with battery-based systems. There are quite a few solar load calculators out there but most are for a grid tie systems.

Helpful Tips and Stuff We’ve Learned Living Off Grid

I’d like to tell you about what I call the poor man’s solar tracker. I regularly get calls asking about the use of solar trackers. I have always said that I think that a solar tracker has its place, but for most installs I feel it does not make sense. The cost of the tracker and the continuing maintenance costs are far outweighed by the ease of just adding extra modules to the array. This in effect equals the added efficiency of the tracker for the same costs and without the maintenance.

So when does a tracker make sense? When you have a very small footprint of solar isolation available. Let’s say you have a small back yard with just one corner in the sun and your roof is not available. A tracker can work great to harvest the most sun in a limited space.

I have recently started suggesting the poor man’s tracker to my clients. In the last few years we have had the opportunity to install pole mount solar arrays that consisted of two pole mounts of equal size arrays. On a hunch I started to experiment with taking the two pole mounts, dropping the tilt to 20 degrees and facing one of them to the southwest and one to the southeast during the summer months. My suspicions where confirmed through testing that the resultant losses due to not being faced true south were very small, less than 10%.

Remember that in the summer when we have an abundance of power, and when the batteries are charged up, the solar array can only feed to the loads and all other available power is lost. But with our array skewed to the east and west, the overall result, was a dramatic increase in our solar window. What this means is that the southeast facing pole mount would pick up the morning sun much earlier and start recharging the battery bank early in the day and the southwest facing pole mount allows the solar array to power loads late into the afternoon saving the battery bank for as long as possible.

As far as a winter setting, we have found that a south-facing array at 40-50 degrees is still the best option. Changing the pole tops twice a year on the winter and summer solstice is easy and just takes a few minutes to do. This type of setup is only advantageous to an off grid installation and a grid tie system would not benefit from this.

Spotlight on New Products

We have finally finished trial tests on a new wind turbine we erected at our facility last year. You can see a video of our initial experience with the product at our website.

We are very pleased with the outputs from the Zephyr Airdolphin wind turbine. Airdolphin GTO (Grid-Tie Optimized) is rated 1.1 kW at 12.5 m/s (27 mph) with peak instantaneous output reaching 4 kW at 20 m/s (44 mph). The Airdolphin GTO connects to the utility grid via Grid-Tie inverters. They also have an off grid version, the Airdolphin PRO, which will work with battery based systems. The unique Intelligent Power Management System maintains seamless operation from a cut-in wind speed of just 2.5 m/s (5.3 mph) to extremely windy conditions. Our test unit experienced winds over 100 mph last winter so we can attest to the unit’s durability. Weighing less than 20 kg (42.9 lbs.) with a rotor diameter of only 1.8 m (6"), the Airdolphin GTO is the most efficient and easily installed small wind turbine in this class. I wanted to share some of the actual data we collected during some recent heavy winds. This is just a small sample with the watts output and the wind speed highlighted.

We choose this wind turbine above all the other small turbines out there for a number of reasons that include its small footprint, which is easy to install, its high output and the ability to continue to produce power in light to heavy winds. For more information on this product go to the Zephyr website at, http://www.zephyreco.co.jp/en/ If you would like to purchase this turbine or have it installed, please contact us.

An Off Grid Perspective

You can’t turn on the news today without hearing about another weather related story.

One hundred mile an hour winds in southern California, wild fires raging through the western United States, hurricanes pounding the southern states. Forget the snow storms, now we have earthquakes in the eastern states, and then hurricane Irene shuts down the city that never sleeps. What’s going on here? Well the good news is not more than ever before. Weather statistics show that severe weather is not getting worse. The bad news is we are just more aware of it through the advent of global media. The other factor is, with more of us living on the planet than ever before and more of us building in flood plains and coastal areas, weather is affecting us in ways we’ve never seen. It doesn’t even matter if you believe in global weather change or not, with more of us to affect, weather will become a major factor in our lives sooner than later.

My personal off grid perspective is that I have one major concern out of the way when disaster strikes. Power. It all comes back to this when things get bad. Without electricity things get worse very quickly. Lack of water, food, communication, heat and air conditioning rule the way we live today. All of these basic needs are dependent on electricity. If you’re living off grid this is easy, but what if you’re connected to the grid and the power goes out?

We have the solution. For the past two years we have been installing and selling systems that we call hybrid solar that allows the solar electric system to continue to operate after the grid goes down. This hybrid solar market is becoming very popular with folks who want to be prepared for emergencies, when the grid goes down for a few hours or a few weeks.

Last week we were given a test inverter a new product from Outback called the Radian, that bridges the gap between grid tie solar and off grid solar systems. As you may or may not know when a standard grid tie solar system is connected to the grid and the grid goes down so does your expensive solar electric system. With the new Outback Radian inverter your power is not dependent on the grid. The Radian inverter was developed to be used in just this type of application. I plan on writing a review in the near future. So for me, when disaster strikes I hope to hunker down and ride it out with my lights ablaze and a cold beer in the fridge.