Just as we have tried to evolve as human beings as we age,
the solar panels that power our home have gone through an evolutionary process
in the years that we’ve lived here. When someone asks me, “What’s the biggest
mistake you made when you moved to your off-grid house?” I usually reply, “How
much time have you got?” The short answer to this question is that I wish I’d
invested in more solar panels as soon as we moved in.
Now hindsight is always 20/20 and I forget that solar panels
were a lot more expensive back in 1998. Even so, I wish I’d taken money out of
my retirement savings plan and put up more PV. It simply would have made our
lives so much easier. But of course, at the time there wasn’t a “Renewable
Energy Handbook” (the book by William Kemp that we publish) to refer to, so we had to make it up as we went along.
When we bought this place there were eight 60-Watt solar
panels sitting on the ground held up by two supports, sort of like a pup tent.
In the summer, when the sun is much higher in the sky, I knew that I was
missing some potential energy and so I convinced my neighbor Ken to help me
make a tracker. Ken, the maestro of all things steel and concrete came up with
a great design. He even found me a perfect 12-foot pipe to put into the ground.
I wanted about 4 feet of the pipe to be above ground. Ken suggested that we
could just cut 4 feet off the pipe. I prefer to over-engineer things so I just
dug the hole 8 feet deep. That’s the beauty of sand. And when a huge wind
storms blows through, I’m happy to know that my solar tracker stand is dug in
nice and deep.
Once the post was cemented in to the ground, Ken fabricated
the tracker. He let me do some of the welding, mostly on the parts that ended
up below ground. The tracker is great because it allows us to angle the panels
to capture as much light as possible. But pretty soon I knew we needed more PV.
Our then-teenaged daughters were still living at home back then and they
enjoyed watching a bit of TV and having long showers. So Ken developed a steel
rack that we could bolt to the existing tracker and we added four 75-Watt
panels. As I recall we paid about $10/watt for these panels so they were about
$750 each. This upgrade cost us about $3,000. I like to remind people of this,
especially when someone tells me how “jealous” they are of us not having a
monthly electricity bill.
At that time we were using a propane fridge (as many off
grid homes do) but I didn’t like the expense of the propane or the carbon it
produced or the fact that it was vented inside. So we added another 4 panels to
the remaining spaces on the frame. It was tough to look at those empty spaces
on the rack, but they weren’t empty for very long.
After discovering what a difference the additional PV made,
I decided I wanted even more. At this point in my life I look at solar panels
as being “hard assets” and I feel that they are a better investment than stocks
or mutual funds. We got a deal on four-165 Watt panels and I went back to Ken
to ask for his help building and installing another tracker. He had a new
design in mind for the second tracker which incorporated a car jack so that I
could easily change the angle of the panels as the sun got higher or lower over
the course of the year.
So the next tracker went in the ground with 4 panels, and
room for 4 more. Once again, I hated looking at those empty spots and so it
wasn’t long before more money left my retirement fund and went into more solar
panels to fill up the tracker. This time around Ken stayed long enough to help
me mount and affix the panels (which is a two person job) and then he left me
to wire them into the combiner box myself.
Our first tracker is about 1,000 Watts altogether, and our
second tracker is about 1,400 Watts, so now we have close to 2,400 Watts, or
almost two and half kilowatts of PV at our place.
For various reasons (the recession and the excess inventory
of PV when it hit) you can buy PV panels now for about $2.50/watt, as opposed
to the $10/watt we were paying when we first started buying them. But I don’t regret
a penny of my investment. As an early adopter I helped convince PV
manufacturers to invest and their investment has driven the price low enough
that no one can tell me they’re too expensive anymore.
By adding more solar panels and generating more electricity
we have been able to shift most of our propane loads like hot water and cooking
to electric, so we are using less and less propane every year. We’d like to
pull the plug on propane altogether. Right now it’s a convenient back up for
when we experience extended periods without sun and wind.
If I won a lottery tomorrow, more solar trackers would
sprout up on my property like toadstools! We don’t need more panels, since our
system works exceptionally well right now but if I had money to spare I’d add a
few more anyway. If you’ve been thinking about adding PV to your home, the time
has never been better. The price and availability have never been better. And
the planet has never needed you more than it does right now to get those solar
panels on your roof.
All photos by Cam & Michelle Mather.
For more information about Cam or his books please visit www.motherearthnews.com/contributors/Cam+Mather.
