Sunny Days Ahead

• The Tale of a PV Installation: Part 1 August 26, 2010
  Back in July,I received a phone call from a couple interested in PV net metering. They were at a local HVAC business called Total Tech in Frankford, WV. As it turned out, they were finishing business concerning a geothermal heatpump system just installed at their new house. Wayne at Total Tech referred us as solar installers. I said sure, come on up, its onl […]
• Proof of concept, Labor of love August 24, 2010
  When we first installed our evacuated tube solar hot water system, it got me thinking about the heat we had to dump because we had to keep the water tank below 170 degrees F. The other piece of intriguing information is that these tubes could attain a temperature of 375+ degrees if the glycol solution was not flowing.As we were enjoying the abundance of sola […]
• Progress report, net metering August 23, 2010
  The above photograph is our meter taken on August 20, 2010. This meter was installed on June 8th of this year. When it was first installed it read "00000". Now it indicates we have 182kwh in credit with Allegheny Power. Considering for the past 40 days we have been into a lot of cloudy and partly cloudy weather, we're doing OK. This number sho […]
• What does power mean? Or, more #@%* math August 1, 2010
  Many times when I describe how much power a solar array makes, the common question is "just what does that mean, how can I relate to the amount of power produced?"When talking about power, there are two basic types of power measurement. One is the solar array rating and the other is what it makes over time.The array rating is usually stated as watt […]