shazam
New Member
We built our small, energy-efficient, all-electric home during the winter of 2011-12...ICF walls, energy-star rated...top-notch job by the contractor. Probably 20% $ over 'standard' build, and worth every penny. It sits on a hill with virtually no trees. Solar has always been in the back of our minds...but...priorities.
Before we built the house, we got advice from the OSU building structures folks, one of whom has been an advisor/3rd hand/now friend on all things energy-efficient since the start. Last summer/fall, we traded roles, and I was hand-3 on a 4kW solar install he did at his place. My wife and I got serious about solar.
First order of business...lower our consumption. We went from about 1000kWh a month to 600 by just turning stuff off when not needed, a carafe for coffee instead of heating the pot all morning, stuff that didn't take much thinking, but all helped. We replaced the water heater with a heat pump and went from 5kWh a day to just 1. We heat with an air-tight wood stove with outside air, so that's not an issue for us. Hoping to be under 400 kWh this month.
We talked to the local Hooterville Co-op (I HAD to steal that from the other thread!), who basically laughed when I said I wanted to put up 12kW of panels and connect to them. Among their rules...only allowed the same amount of solar as your pattern of yearly consumption (8k/yr according to them), wholesale rate for sell-back, all drawings blueprinted, engineered and signed...ad nauseum. Contrast this with an article on the front page of the current month's 'member' newsletter by the head of Ohio's energy cooperatives warning about rolling black-outs this winter. Say what?...but I digress.
We put our heads together and wrote a proposal for the local County for off-grid. 16kW of panels, S/A 15K, 25kWh of SOKs. Anticipating approval, I started shopping...enter Current Connected.
I really wanted to deal with only one vendor for most stuff (other than racking), and CC fit the bill. I put the order together, swallowed hard, and pulled the trigger on all of it, plus a C/V...ordering on-line, maybe around noon? Within 4 hours my phone rang...'CC-Dexter". I didn't know any CC OR Dexter, until it clicked..on the forum?...that HighTechLab guy? No way!...but yup the CTO of CC on my phone! Wow!
Dexter introduced himself, and said there was a problem with the panels I had ordered. They were currently unavailable for an indeterminant time and an (even-by-then-ex) employee had failed, and confirmed the order and charged the card. He promised to make it good with other panels, which he did. We negotiated on some pricing, and the deal was done.
Everything but the panels came directly from CC within days...beautifully packed and palleted (thank you Thomas Strong at CC!). It was like Christmas! Several days later, the 36-panel pallet arrived directly from Bluesun out of CA. We found 3 damaged panels in the bunch. A quick back-and-forth e-mail with CC and replacements were on the way. As I learned later, CC had actually ordered another pallet of the panels from Bluesun, and when they received them, sent the replacements along...amazing! Again, the packaging from CC was flawless, including cardboard between the panels that was lacking in the Bluesun shipment. Well done again, CC!
So...here we are...inverter mounted on the wall, batts down the basement, panels in climate-controlled storage for now. Oh....and we are blessed by the County! Permit approved with some notes that I don't understand, and may ask questions about on the forum!
Thank you to the forum members who share their knowledge! I have learned an immeasurable amount already, and will continue, as will the adventure!
Happy New Year, everybody!
Jim
Before we built the house, we got advice from the OSU building structures folks, one of whom has been an advisor/3rd hand/now friend on all things energy-efficient since the start. Last summer/fall, we traded roles, and I was hand-3 on a 4kW solar install he did at his place. My wife and I got serious about solar.
First order of business...lower our consumption. We went from about 1000kWh a month to 600 by just turning stuff off when not needed, a carafe for coffee instead of heating the pot all morning, stuff that didn't take much thinking, but all helped. We replaced the water heater with a heat pump and went from 5kWh a day to just 1. We heat with an air-tight wood stove with outside air, so that's not an issue for us. Hoping to be under 400 kWh this month.
We talked to the local Hooterville Co-op (I HAD to steal that from the other thread!), who basically laughed when I said I wanted to put up 12kW of panels and connect to them. Among their rules...only allowed the same amount of solar as your pattern of yearly consumption (8k/yr according to them), wholesale rate for sell-back, all drawings blueprinted, engineered and signed...ad nauseum. Contrast this with an article on the front page of the current month's 'member' newsletter by the head of Ohio's energy cooperatives warning about rolling black-outs this winter. Say what?...but I digress.
We put our heads together and wrote a proposal for the local County for off-grid. 16kW of panels, S/A 15K, 25kWh of SOKs. Anticipating approval, I started shopping...enter Current Connected.
I really wanted to deal with only one vendor for most stuff (other than racking), and CC fit the bill. I put the order together, swallowed hard, and pulled the trigger on all of it, plus a C/V...ordering on-line, maybe around noon? Within 4 hours my phone rang...'CC-Dexter". I didn't know any CC OR Dexter, until it clicked..on the forum?...that HighTechLab guy? No way!...but yup the CTO of CC on my phone! Wow!
Dexter introduced himself, and said there was a problem with the panels I had ordered. They were currently unavailable for an indeterminant time and an (even-by-then-ex) employee had failed, and confirmed the order and charged the card. He promised to make it good with other panels, which he did. We negotiated on some pricing, and the deal was done.
Everything but the panels came directly from CC within days...beautifully packed and palleted (thank you Thomas Strong at CC!). It was like Christmas! Several days later, the 36-panel pallet arrived directly from Bluesun out of CA. We found 3 damaged panels in the bunch. A quick back-and-forth e-mail with CC and replacements were on the way. As I learned later, CC had actually ordered another pallet of the panels from Bluesun, and when they received them, sent the replacements along...amazing! Again, the packaging from CC was flawless, including cardboard between the panels that was lacking in the Bluesun shipment. Well done again, CC!
So...here we are...inverter mounted on the wall, batts down the basement, panels in climate-controlled storage for now. Oh....and we are blessed by the County! Permit approved with some notes that I don't understand, and may ask questions about on the forum!
Thank you to the forum members who share their knowledge! I have learned an immeasurable amount already, and will continue, as will the adventure!
Happy New Year, everybody!
Jim
Yeah I know, just one, but it is a SolArk not an EG4}
