Sun o' Sun

We have finally gotten all of the trenching done! The total trench is a little over 500' of which about 350' was a breeze because we had a back hoe come and and do the diggin. The last 150' were dug by hand. Let me tell you something, there is some stuff called "decomposed granite" and I bet normally it is decomposed. Yesterday, not so much with the decomposition. We had to pick, hammer, and jackhammer our way to the bottom of the trench. When all was said and done, it was an experience that I hope to not to have to again. But, we have laid the 2" conduit through the entire length of the trench and tomorrow, we will be pulling the wire! I am pretty excited and I will post some pictures tomorrow, so keep reading and keep coming back!

Back Country Solar: Take Two

It has been about a week since I last updated you on the progress of the Back Country Build (BCB). This was a pretty fun and progressive week all in all. Starting Monday, we rented a two man auger with the goal of digging eleven 4 ft deep holes and eleven 3 ft holes. The bed news is that there was only about 6 to 12 inches of top soil and the rest was decomposed granite. What that ultimately meant for us was that we had to go and rent a Bobcat with an auger to do the digging. Tuesday, after the holes were all dug, the inspector came out and signed us off on that phase of the project. The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, we anchored the posts to there new permanent homes. I wasn't able to make it out to the site today, but the plan was to get the 500 ft trench from the array to the house dug so that we will be able to run the DC electricity back to the inverter. Monday we should be set to continue working on the racking system adding the cross supports to the posts.

We are all very excited about this project, as it is the first that we are documenting on the internet and also because SolaraloS is dedicated to the proliferation of Solar electric systems. I was going to try and make a time lapse youtube about the job, but the camera was forgotten for a few day so I will have to make it up to you on the next site. I will also be getting some more photos of the build posted in the next for days, so until then, Go Solar!

PG and E strikes again!!!

Happy New Year! It looks like the future is starting to look like the past in that PG&E had raised the prices of electricity this year. The good news is that they didn't raise the prices of the higher tiered electricity -tier 3 and up, those we can still expect to pay what we were paying last year. The bad news is, and where we see the price hike, is in the "cheap" electricity. The bottom tiers, tier one and two both went up about $.01-.02 per kWh.

Back Country Solar

We have started a 10.56kW job out in Creston,CA. The job has been on hold because of rain and holidays, but  now the sun has come back and we are a couple of weeks into the New Year! We started taking supplies out to the site on Friday Jan 8, but Jack's truck got stuck (because of all the rain we have had). After a momentary set back, we have continued with our progress. We have delivered a little over 7200 pounds of cement and today we took 16 25' poles out to the site. We also took a six wheeler out to the site to help us get through the muddy bogs. We are underway and should have the customers meter spinning backward in no time at all!