The American Solar for Energy Society helps local organizations and homeowners publicize an annual tour of homes with solar electric (PV) and solar hot water systems.More than 3,000 communities across the U.S. will host solar tours on Saturday October 2.
A 52-panel PV array at the Book Exchange. This is one of the solar electric (PV) projects that will be on the Morgantown Solar Tour.
This year ASES Nationa Solar Tour sites include a solar hot water system in Naoma, West Virginia as well as several solar electric and solar hot water systems in Morgantown, West Virginia.These tours give the public a chance to see renewable energy technology at work within their own community.
To learn more about the Naoma, West Virginia solar tour contact:
I was over in Highland County today and was again reminded about how truly beautiful that area is. The following video shows a 2.5kW turbine that is located on the flank of Snowy Mountain. You can read more about this turbine by clicking here.
The video shows the turbine coming to life and then reaching a fairly good speed. It is a nice progression and the video shows the same machine from a couple of angles. The machine weight is a bit more than 300 lbs. It is an ARE110 with a blade length of about 6'. The nameplate rating of 2.5kW denotes the amount of power that the machine can output at peak wind speed (~26mph). If the wind speed is less, then the resulting power will also be less.
This turbine was originally installed in the Spring of 2009 by PIMBY Energy. It is on a 100' tower and uses an 8' stub tower to provide additional clearance for the turbine blades
Shortly before New Years I got a call from Keith saying that he'd gone out that morning only to find his wind turbine on the ground - 100' lower than it should have been. That's a problem.
Keith and Polly are customers of mine who live off the grid in Highland County, VA. Here's a photo of Keith (left) and his neighbor Dave as they work on disassembling the wrecked machine. We spent the first day of 2010 cleaning up this mess.
Keith and Polly have authored a great article about their winter and how losing the turbine affected their off-grid lifestyle. It is a nice read and it was originally printed in the Highland Recorder early in June.
The tower manufacturer had under-engineered the stub pipe (seen in the photo above) and this resulted in the failure. It also put Keith and Polly in a tight spot because they depend on the wind turbine for a greater portion of their electricity in the winter months. Needless to say, I was relieved to get a new turbine back up on the tower and so were they.
Below is a photo of Chris bolting up the new machine in preparation for the crane. Note that things are much less snowy on Snowy Mountain. You can see Keith and Polly's home in the background as well as the lowest section of their 100' turbine tower.
Keith took the following photos of the actual pick..........................................
Many thanks to Beth at Taproot Farm in Hampshire County, WV who reminded me that blogs don’t have to be great literary works – they just need to be consistent and interesting (or consistently interesting?!?!). Thanks!!!!
Taproot Farm is poised to come on line as one of West Virginia’s newest solar power plants. Beth and her husband Tim contracted PIMBY to install a very nice 5-kW PV system on a pavilion adjacent to their home on the banks of the Cacapon River.
Allen, Beth and Tim’s youngest, worked with us on the install. Allen is just back from a 2-week course at Solar Energy International (SEI). There’s no better way to apply all of that learning than to get right into an installation.
Sun at Work (almost)
Son at Work Guys on the Roof at Work
PIMBY Truck at Work
Bees (really) at Work
More Bee Work! Meet the newest hive at Taproot Farm.
Bird and bat kills are an issue that utility-scale wind farms deal with.Small residential-scale wind turbines do not pose a similar hazard.But recently I witnessed a situation where a small wind turbine in West Virginia became the victim of bird activity.
In an ironic twist, I went to see the wind turbine that was out-of-order owing to an infestation of starlings.I’m calling it a “turbine kill” and I think that I might encourage my friends at the USFWS to investigate the incident.
More often we hear about bird or bat kills occurring at utility-scale wind farms.Bird and bat kills are real problems associated with the location of wind farms along routes that are traditionally used for migration.These kills can number in the hundreds of animals.They’re bad news.
Small wind turbines don’t pose the same threat to birds and bats.I have yet to talk with a customer or a long-time wind turbine owner who can recollect a bird or bat fatality at their site.Small turbines are sited differently and are simply a different scale.More often they serve as perches for birds…………………………………..and evidently that can be trouble for a turbine.
I’d evicted a nest of birds from this same machine more than a year ago.They made it back in and set up house (probably while the wind turbine controller was in the shop this past November).Unfortunately for the birds, turbine owners, and myself the nest that was constructed was built on the main terminal block in the head of the turbine. Once the upgraded controller was placed in service and the machine began to again operated things in the new nest got hot.Things got hot enough to smolder and melt the terminal block and short circuit the wind turbine.
What a mess!
Here are a couple of nest shots
And here's the melted terminal strip
The machine is up and running again. I captured a short video while I was down at the farm.
Sarah didn’t like TED when he first came to live with us. I think she found him to be a bit of a nag. However, yesterday TED left for an extended vacation at a friend’s home and Sarah, only hours after his departure, stated, “I miss TED”. I do too.
TED is our indoor electric meter. We keep him on the stove in the kitchen when he is in residence. This is a good location; one where he can frequently remind us about our energy use. If we turn on a light or a computer or take a shower TED immediately starts counting the kilowatt-hours. He is pretty sensitive (10-watts or more). TED tells us how much power we lose to phantom loads each day. He knows how much energy it takes to run an on-demand electric hot water heater (1 shower = 1 kWh). As the day moves along TED keeps adding up the kW and keeps track of our running monthly total as well.
TED is an example of what all houses should be equipped with. Traditionally electric meters are on the outside of a home. Electric meters on the outside of a home are somewhat akin to having a gas gauge in your car’s trunk. If you can’t read the gauge while driving then you can’t hope to efficiently operate the vehicle – you’d have to keep stopping and getting out to check the fuel level!
An electric meter on the inside of the home should be standard equipment. Managing use is dependent on understanding demand. TED helps us understand our day-to-day and month-to-month energy use. He helps us to be better consumers. That’s why we miss TED. For us, it is important to see a real-time record of our consumption – it helps us exercise better use of electricity at home. The feedback from TED when you turn off a light or turn on an appliance is immediate and quantitative. Without this kind of reinforcement we are simply acting on intuition – driving a car without a fuel gauge?
More about TED is at http://www.theenergydetective.com/index.html We use the 1001 model, but there are now several enhances versions available.
We just sold our first SREC and I’m stoked. It looks like we can afford to buy the cats another package of toy mice to keep them enthralled during another long West Virginia winter. SRECs are Solar Renewable Energy Credits. These are also called, “RECs” for short. The market for RECs is growing thanks to the institution of aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standards or RPSs. That’s a lot alphabet soup, but the upshot is that ordinary homeowners like ourselves can receive payment for the clean power that we make with our PV system. A SREC is equivalent to 1,000 kWh. The value of a SREC varies, but this most recent sale saw the price at $290/SREC. SREC sale value will differ from state to state and sale to sale. Some states, like New Jersey, see a SREC sale price that can be closer to $650. Companies who purchase SRECs are really purchasing the positive environmental benefits that go along with clean power generation – they are obliged to buy these to offset some of the pollution that traditional fossil fuel sources produce. The clean energy we produce is worth more than the fossil fuel power that our local utility sells. Our SREC revenue represents $0.29/kWh while retail rate for utility power in our region of West Virginia is $0.07/kWh. The power that we produce from solar is therefore worth the avoided cost ($0.07/kWh) + SREC value ($0.29/kWh) which equals $0.36/kWh – more than five times the retail value!
Our SREC sale was handled by SRECTrade.com. This company holds a monthly auction to sell SRECs in a variety of different states within the regional PJM grid network. The SREC market is one that is still fairly new, but may become stronger as state RPSs ramp up and require utilities to provide a greater and greater portion of their power from clean sources. Even at this early stage, the sale of SRECs is providing a revenue stream to home and business owners who have taken the initiative to produce some, or all, of their power with solar technology.
I own/run/empty-the-trash for PIMBY Energy, LLC. Renewable energy is my bread and butter. This blog is simply a good place for me to share some of the day to day photos and ideas that I run across in my work.
