Join The Solar Power Movement

You know that solar module training cart I’ve been talking about? Well we did get the PO from University of Tennessee to proceed with the construction. Yahoo! My very first solar project. While it is not earth shattering and somewhat small it carries great significance for me and for Solar TEK Nashville in particular. You see we weren’t the only solar energy company on site that day at the TVA energy conference at the Opryland Hotel. But it was SolarTEK Nashville that got the high five from Tennessee Solar Institute to bid on a training module for their ongoing classroom solar training program. YAHOO! again.

Here are a few pictures of the project so far. The steel frame fabrication was professionally done by Luke Ash of Impacting Technologies in Lebanon Tennessee. Like did an excellent job of understanding the scope of this project and went beyond just doing the work, he became a partner in the process. I highly recommend Luke at Impacting Technologies for any kind of metal fabrication, be it aluminum, sheet metal or construction steel.

All I am waiting for to finish this solar training cart project are a few components that are on back order from SunWise Distributing. The the customer and I will meet on January 4th for him to take possession of the cart and cargo trailer.

What do you think so far? I am excited to have this little project on my resume’. The client, Tennessee Solar Institute will also display the SolarTEK Nashville logo on the cargo trailer that hauls the solar training cart from city to city. What great advertising that will be for us.

Thanks

Stanley Davenport

Designed by Stanley on Solidworks

I think it was back in early July when TVA put on a solar energy conference at the Opryland Hotel that we got approached by Earl from the Tennessee Solar Institute to design and build a training module for the very same classes I had attended in April of 2011.  Earl was one of the instructors and just out of nowhere he walks up to our booth and asks if we would be interested in the project.  He also offered to put our company logo on the cargo trailer that the training cart would be hauled around in. WOW!  So right away I went to work on a design and all the configurations to make it happen.

I installed a defunct copy of Solidworks, a 3D modeling software program and after modeling up a few of the components, module, inverter, battery and the like, I designed a frame that I thought would do the trick.

Now the PV configuration is to have the following components:

1 -  2225219 WSS Outback Power Center GTFX2524/1, 2,500 watts, 120VAC  GFX2524/1 Pre-Wired Solar Power Center

1 – Outback GFX2524 Grid Inverter

1 – MNE125ST-R Midnite Outback 125amp DC/120VAC

1 -  Outback HUB-4 Communication Manager

1 -  Outback RTS – Remote Temp Sensor

1 -  Outback MATE Remote Monitor & control

* System Monitor Gives Instant Status and “Percent of Full” Battery Info

* ETL and C-ETL Listed Midnite Solar E-Panel

* AC and DC Input Breakers

* Up to Nine AC or DC Breaker Knockouts for Optional Equipment

* AC and DC Lightning Arrestors

* Inverter Bypass Switch Allows Choice of Generator / Grid or Inverter Output

* Easy to Connect Color Coded Buss Bars for AC and DC Connections

* Multiple Available Knockouts for Conduit Attachments

* Knockout for Optional GFCI AC Outlet

* Single System Grounding Point

* Clearly Labeled Connection Points for AC and DC Input and Output

* Fully Assembled and Tested by Experienced Factory Trained Technicians

* All Required Internal Cables and Connectors

Additional components:

1 9541875 Outback Flexnet FN-DC System Monitor

1 3630011 Morningstar Prostar PS-30M Charge Controller

2 8530002 MNEPV-30 30 amp DC Breaker 150VDC DIN, 13mm

2 1977185 Astronergy 185 watt Mono Module Silver MC4 CHSM5612M-185440

1 9999404 MC4 Branch Cable Coupler – 2 Male 1 Female

1 9999403 MC4 Branch Cable Coupler – 2 Female 1 Male

1 9902032 MC4 10 AWG-PV Wire – 30′ cable extension

2 9920013 4/0 – 60″ Battery Cable, Dual Kit (1 red, 1 black)

1 9990030 Battery Bank (2 6V batteries) UPG 200aH @ 12VDC 2,400 watt hours

Trailer

1 Look / Hallmark 6′W x 6′H x 12′L ,Black or White, Cargo Trailer – double axle – road ready.

Mobile Cart

1 Welded mobile steel cart PV equipment ready from above list painted UT Orange.

*2″ square steel tube and 1-1/2″ steel angle construction. Phnumatic wheels each with 200 lb

capacity rating. Two swivel and 2 rigid with brakes.

* 3/4″ thick cabinet grade component mounting area.

After several days of mulling over what I had learned from the NABCEP training and digging around in my solar text book I came of with the price to build the system.

I shot them a price and waited.  After about three weeks I sent Earl an email asking about the status of our quote and if they were still interested. Guess what?

They accepted my full bid and even said that they wanted to add a couple of more items to the mix so were asking for more money to do this.

MAN O MAN!  My first solar powered sale. Cha Ching$.

First of all I need to let everyone know that I am about two fries short of a happy meal when it comes to having a good grasp of some types of information. When I was  tested through the local Workforce employment center to take some solar training back in the summer I had to make a grade of “GOLD” to qualify for the training.  Well I only got a “Silver” so I had to retake the low score tests again. That time I passed and was allowed to go through the week long training course.  At the end of the week we had a 100 question exam. Guess what! I failed. I only needed a 65 but I failed.  I had to wait until a couple of months later to retake the final exam again and this time I passed.

Which brings me to the BPI segment of this post. Again I went into training for a certification. The type of certification is such that I would be qualified to conduct a home or commercial energy audit. Complete with blower door test and evaluations of envelope recommendations.  It was a week crammed into a small hotel room with the instructor and 6 other students. Of course you can’t say that you understand the information you have to take a friggin’ test to prove it. So I took the first 100 question test and barely passed by just 2 points.  A couple of days later I took yet another exam and passed by ZERO. I mean you had to get 70 and I got exactly 70. I think it may have been rigged because they want a high pass ratio. I don’t know.  Now on the field test portion of the BPI training I did very well, 98 and 96.  So I will soon receive my certification documents in the mail and proudly display them with the other energy related certifications I have stumbled through and keep on trucking toward my own solar power business.

Are you reading this post because you want to be in  the solar business? It is very interesting but challenging.  It does require a good grasp of certain levels of math. Mostly how to convert volts into watts and watts into amps and so forth. What kilowatt hours are and what role they play in sizing a PV system.

I’m no expert yet, but I have come a long way in the past 16 months. You can too if you want it.   Thanks,

Stanley

Are you working on getting into the solar energy business? Leave a comment and if you have a good post about it I would be glad to let you use it here.

Later.

Stanley

As far as the hotel PV project is concerned, it’s dead. On my last visit I was told by the manager that he had gotten a couple of PV quotes from solar comapnies out of state.  I am sure that was a lie because I asked him to lay them out on the table and I would try to match within reason something that he could live with price wise.  He said that he would call me, but never has and that has been months ago.

Now later in the solar game I have become aware of a pattern protrayed by certain business persons from another country, say India, that have sort of a mofia mentality in that if you want to do business with them you must somehow come in face to face contact with the Grand PooPaa.  So it turns out that I have been talking to the wrong person in the command chain.

Oh well.  Live and learn.

Thanks

Stanley

The hotel project I was writing about is also making progress. We are at a point of revising how he heats the indoor swimming pool. Currently there is a large capacity on-demand electric water heater doing all the work. I am proposing that we take this out of the equation and replace it with a gas fired on-demand water heater coupled with some major overhaul improvements.

I want to avoid going solar thermal by adding pool heater modules on the roof. This would only take away from the hotel looking at the overall solar PV possibilities. So I am sacrificing that potential sale for an even greater ROI on my involvement.

The proposal is to do the above switcharoo on the water heaters but re-plumb the pool through and existing unused 120 gallon gas fired water heater just sitting in the mechanical room.  Providing it is in good shape this would heat the pool water up to the state specified temperature and then as it passed though the on-demand gas heater it would get and extra boost before mixing with the body of water in the pool.

The other side of this fix-it equation is to keep the heated water at the pool surface during after hours. The pool closes at 10PM and opens again at 10AM. So I have a 12 hour window to combat the dehumidifier from sucking all that hot steamy air out of the room and replacing it with fresh air.  What to do, what to do.

Well a pool cover comes to mind the first thing. But I don’t want to add the burden of having the maintenance guy going in the pool room twice per day and manhandling 4-6 insulated panels.  I am searching for the idea of having post mounted from the floor to the ceiling at several locations around the pool. In between these post would be a blind or thermal barrier that pulled up and down depending on the time of day.  If I can reduce his pool heating bill from $15,000.00 to $5,000.00 per year then they may be inclined to go solar on the reat of the electric bill.

Now if I could figure out a way to offset those rooms heater/ac units.

What are your thoughts? Any engineers out there that would like to know the the details and offer suggestions?

Thanks

Stanley

Good news. But before I tell you let me fill you in on what happened a couple of weeks ago. On December 27th 2010 I was a guest on our local radio station. It was the talk portion, early morning for about 25 minutes. The host, Mr. Gregory, asked me several questions about solar and I was able to elaborate on the advantages and the great win-win situation that solar power really is. I wasn’t even nervous.

Out of that experience I received a couple of phone calls. One appointment ensued.  An older man that gets up with the chickens was listening and told his daughter who told her husband. Man, don’t you just love word of mouth advertising?  The called and we got together about cutting their electric bill by using solar modules. We are on our second meeting and I am providing education materials and references to help get them over the hump. The husband is ready to write a check for $45,000.00 but wants to see what kind of interest rate we can get him though our sources. That would be Regions Bank.

It’s really looking good and I am soooo excited about making my first solar power sale. What a way to start off a new fiscal year.

A few weeks ago I fond out from the Nashville solar company that I am repping for that someone I had sent out the mailers to called and wanted to have an appointment to talk about solar on his business. (note to self: I really feel like they weren’t going to tell me about it). Anyway. We called the owner and set an appointment. After a walk through of his hotel facility and gathering up 10 months of electric bills we set out to put together a plan to get solar power on this building.

The business is paying out over $5,000.00 dollars per month in electric bills. Most of the problem as we have learned is contributed to 3 areas. They have an indoor swimming pool that must be maintained at certain regulatory settings and the room the pool is in must constantly be dehumidified. With an exchange of fresh air every so many minutes. The other area is the individual room HVAC units. They are heat pumps with resistance strips as backup heat. When you combine all this together you are looking at a good 80KW per month base power demand.

The local electric company charges a higher rate per KWH for anything above 50KW per month. A whopping 13.55 per kilowatt hour. So our mission is to get things under the 50 kw bar. How can we do this?

Let’s start with the pool. An open body of heated water. A large bath tub if you will. It gets heated by what amounts to a industrial size on-demand electric water heater. This uses about 26KW at any given time when engaged.  Cover the pool as much and as often as possible. This would be a hassle for the staff and owner to fool with day-in and day-out. But would save a significant amount of money over a years time. However, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year someone would have to cover the pool at 10:00 PM and uncover it at 9:00 AM. It is doable is put into a daily maintenance plan. How many KW would this save. There is no real street level way of calculating it. Would just have to do it an see.

Next is a more practical approach and that is put a timer on the water heater. Set it so as to keep the pool at the minimum state regulated requirement. So for some time of the day it would be shut off completely. It would be easy to figure percentage wise as to the possible KW that would be saved in this option. The heater is off 30% then they would reduce energy consumption by about 20%. Because there would be an initial draw on current required to bring up the temperature of the water up the savings would not be a 1-to-1 ratio.

Third and best option is apply solar thermal to the equation. I propose that by adding a good sized solar thermal water heating package to the mix the owner would cut the cost of heating his pool by 100% after ROI time of 3 years.

Coupled with a 60KW PV system the whole package would run in the neighborhood of $410,000.00. By using the escalated depreciation schedule plan they would have the system paid out in 5 years.

What do you think? Is this something you are familiar with? Do you have experience with hotel facility energy consumption? I wold like to hear what your think. Leave a pertinent comment.

=======================================================

=======================================================

Back when I was sending out mailers to various members of the Chamber, I encountered a person that was on the local electric company board of directors. He sent me a friendly email about how they were in favor of clean coal and sort of suggested that he had done enough study on solar to “know it won’t work”. That suggested to me that within the foundation of the local electric company there exists opposition to people going solar. I hope this just isn’t true but I am experiencing difficulty with my very first encounter to help a local hotel client get started in the energy evaluation process. It looks like the local electric company is dragging it’s feet. A hotel has lots of variables and I want to get the best over all picture of how their energy is being used.

So with permission from the client I went over to the local electric company and inquired about billing and formulas for determining peak charges and so forth. In the process I learn that they would put a monitor on the clients transformer and help see how much power is being used at different times of the day.  In addition to the monitor I learned that they would do a total energy audit through TVA and it could result in KWH credits being given to the client under certain conditions. So I passed this “good news” onto my client and he proceeded to make phone calls to his account representative in order to get the ball rolling on these services.

Well, that was over a week ago and my client has made repeated calls and left messages without any acknowledgment from the local electric company whatsoever. Now yesterday 11/8/2010, my client called me frustrated about the situation. He already feels like he is getting shafted by the electric company and is being over charged for power.

Do I get involved between my client and the electric company? Should I cry foul play and see if  the Tennessee Valley Authority knows about local utilities dragging their feet?

What do you think.

We, the solar energy company I represent, is putting in a call to a higher up personnel to get things moving. Sometimes you just gotta know who to call.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IS YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY BUSINESS.

This past week we kind of got back to normal at the solar power office I’ve been writing about. You may remember that several weeks ago I sent out sever hundred letters to many members of the local Chamber of Commerce. Well one such member kept my letter and recently called the office wanting to get acquainted with us and see how much solar power it would take to offset his monthly electricity bill averaging $4,000.00 per month. He has a hotel business and it is painfully obvious that after taking many steps to lower his bills, nothing seems to be working. So we are now at the point of examining what can be done to help him up the path of “Going Solar”.

Which brings me to my purpose of writing this post in the first place. I stumbled upon a program called PACE. It is a way for “home owners” and “business owners” to get solar power on their building without the outlay of a great amount of cash upfront. Here is what the PACE website says about the program:

A Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) bond is a bond where the proceeds are provided to commercial and residential property owners to finance energy retrofits (efficiency measures and small renewable energy systems) and who then repay the financing over 20 years via an annual assessment on their property tax bill.

PACE bonds can be issued by municipal financing districts or finance companies and the proceeds can be typically used to retrofit both commercial and residential properties.

What do you think about that? It means that if I own or have a mortgage on my home or business building I could get the local city government to foot the bill for me to get a solar power system on my building. With little or no out of pocket expense. I urge you to read more about this at the PACE website. Get involved and bring this excellent tool to your community.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IF YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY BUSINESS.

When I approached the solar company I am selling for I was optimistic they would welcome the new door of opportunity in my county area. I thought so because there is not another solar power company here in a county of 95,000. But the events that have transpired over the past month indicate to me that the small Nashville based solar company is going down fast. What a #@%//*! problem this is for me.

First of all they cut my potential commissions in half. Next came the termination of the main office manager, because his salary was eating money needed for marketing. Then they cut the full-time plumber to part-time. He is now looking at going back to school for an IT degree. Hope for the best because the IT market is saturated with new graduates.

We’ve had three sales meetings and nothing tangible has come from them. It has taken a month to get an order in for more business cards. I’ve sent out 400 emails to the chamber of commerce and gotten NOTHING from it. We can’t get the lower priced American made solar modules due to all possible product being sent to Europe.

I am for sure looking at joining up with another company but I don’t need to approach them empty handed. Sure would be nice to make a sale.

Later.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IF YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY COMPANY.