Ohio Senate Bill 58 puts solar RPS at risk

If you live in Ohio and own or are considering installing residential or light commercial PV solar, please contact Governor Kasich at his office and tell him you want him to oppose SENATE BILL 58, currently in discussion.
I’ve encouraged everyone I know to do so, and I emailed his office last week. Below is the email response I got:

Dear Joseph:

Thank you for writing with regard to Senate Bill 58. Your letter has been forwarded to me for my review. We appreciate that you took the time to share your views about this important piece of legislation.

Senate Bill 58 is currently being debated during the 130th session of the Ohio General Assembly. Please be assured Governor Kasich will keep your views in mind if Senate Bill 58 is passed by the General Assembly and forwarded to the Governor for his signature. I encourage you to share your concerns with your legislators, as your input will be important as they review this legislation.

Once again, thank you for writing to Governor Kasich. Please do not hesitate to contact the Governor’s office if we may assist you in the future.

Sincerely,

Dave Ward Director of Constituent Affairs

We must all pull together to RAISE the percentage of the RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) upon which the Solar SREC values are tied, if we want to preserve the extra value that this represents to the smaller producers of solar energy!! It’s currently pegged at a max of 1/2%, and should be more like 2% of the total 12% renewable energy long term goal.

Thanks!
Joe

Our power costs are CHEAP here in the MidWest!

I just read a blog at my friend’s website (www.runonsun.com) and learned that folks in California are paying 22 Cents/Kwh for their electricity. That’s over TWICE what we pay here in the MidWest. This is very likely the reason there’s so much residential solar built up out West. Our energy prices here in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Pennsylvania are all around 10 cents/Kwh, and we are blessed. But don’t think that our prices won’t go up. Coal fired plants are being closed every week because they are old, obsolete, or simply can’t meet the new EPA standards for particulate emissions. Yes, there are new gas turbine power plants being built, and yes, we are using LESS electricity (as a Country) than ever before, but this is not a balanced equation. Our prices have been held low due to coal subsidies from the government, and these will disappear with the coal plants. Solar panel pricing has bottomed out and prices are stabilizing in the 79 to 90 cents/watt range. We might squeeze a few percent out of inverter costs, but for now, we are riding near the all time price lows for residential AND commercial solar PV systems. It might be time to plan on installing that dream system in the early Spring, before demand begins to force component pricing to rise…

Best wishes and sunny days!
Joe

Warrantee work at East Fork

Had a small problem with an SMA Sunny Island grid backup inverter (6KW). After sending SMA the Smart Card data, they promptly sent out a replacement and even included return shipping! Back up and running and customer is a happy camper once again. Based on this event, I would highly recommend you look at the SMA Sunny Island if you’re planning a Grid backup or even OFF-grid system! Sorry, I forgot my camera this trip!

Finish phase 2 expansion at East Fork Stables

Racking goes up at East Fork Stables

Cinci Home Solar works with EFS to get racking up using 50% on hand materials.

Missed this photo on the first part of this adventure. The owner had materials on hand, and made the posts of Steel L channel, the beams from Steel S-channel, and the barn support brackets from 2 inch steel L material. The owner (George) is a VERY resourceful fellow – some might call him a scrounger, but I call him SMART! I passed along a great vendor deal on the solar panels and he purchased them direct. The BOS (balance of system) materials was purchased through Cinci Home Solar at great pricing, bringing the whole project in at about $3/watt, and this includes the battery bank and backup power inverters in addition to the Enphase micro-inverters behind each panel. The work was spread over 4 full days, with the helper crew varying from 1 to 3 guys and myself. Plenty of manpower to get this rather large project done in a timely fashion. Winter is really variable in Cincinnati, and whenever the weather was predicted to be above 40 and sunny, George called and we got the job done. Fortunately, this job was a quick drive from my home, and it wasn’t a problem. Normally, these 3 or 4 days would have been all condensed into one extended visit! I aim to please, whenever possible…

 

DIY Solar array expansion by Cinci Home Solar

DIY Solar expansion -adding 2 more rows to bottom of 32 panel array.

After we finished the 32 panel array, George saw that some minor grading of the ground near the bottom would allow plenty of room for 2 more rows! A week later he called me and said “Hey Joe, come on out and lets get these 2 rows installed – tomorrow’s weather looks great. So we did!  When I ordered the extra components, we also added 8 more rails – one under each of the 8 columns of the upper 4 rows. You can see them mid-panel in the picture to the right. This provided the extra strength and rigidity that the span required for both wind and snow loading. Splicing the extra rails that extend to the newly installed lower beam also provided a counterbalance to the free span above.
The two missing panels at the lower left were intentionally left off because of a stone access road to the hay barn that George didn’t want to move.

 

DIY Solar install of Enphase M215 Micro-inverters

DIY Solar installation of Enphase M215 Micro-inverters.

This is what the backside looks like after everything is in place. After the rails were set, the Enphase M215 Micro-inverters were mounted. Then the #6 bare copper ground wire was run in series to each inverter. We grounded BOTH ends of the #6 copper, just because we could. Next came the Enphase TRUNK Cable, mounted with stainless steel clips to the rails. Then the panels were added, the micros were plugged in to the trunk cable and the panel leads connected to the micros. One end of the trunk cable is sealed with a weather tight cap, and the other goes to a weatherproof junction box (white) to transition to standard exterior rated 12-3 with ground romex. The romex connects to a breaker box with a 20 amp 2 pole breaker for each string of 16 and 1 string of 14 panels. Then, the entire array is nicely dressed using tie wraps so that all the wiring is suspended between the panels and the bottom of the rails to keep it from whipping in the wind or getting snagged by anything.

 

 

Power panel mounted below array

Power Panel beneath the array, mounted to the side of the hay barn.

Here’s the power panel. Public Utility Commission in Ohio says any array over 6Kw must be metered by a UTILITY GRADE meter. Got one on Ebay for $35. Breaker box on left contains the 3 solar breakers. That feeds through the meter to the master breaker box on the right. Master breaker box connects to the utility grid via a buried conduit over to the other barn that had power in it already. Below the utility grade meter is the Enphase ENVOY monitoring unit that ties all this to the internet so George can watch things from his home computer. He can share a link with his friends as well. I’ll post this link soon as I get it from George! The Utility voltage here is rather high – close to the limits for most inverters, at 254Vac. This causes a few of the inverters to occasionally shut down (to protect themselves). I’ll be looking into this further on my next visit to see how we might correct this…

 

Almost finished array by Cinci Home Solar

Almost finished DIY solar array accomplished with a little help from Cinci Home Solar!

Here’s the finished array. Still need to trim the excess rail length at the bottoms. If you look close, you might just spot some mis-alignment within the array. George got 2 pallets of panels. Same part number, same vendor, but one pallet was 1/2 inch shorter on the long side (out of spec…). We didn’t catch this till 5 were mounted in the top row. George, being a prudent and thrifty fellow, called the panel supplier and negotiated a compromise that didn’t require a return of the panels. The size only affects the esthetics slightly, and a cost reduction is pending!  The Enphase ENVOY normally communicates over the power lines, but there’s a half mile of them back to the house and that’s too far for it to work, so I added an Engenius EOC-1650 at the house as an access point, and atop the array as a client/bridge. It works great – with 100% signal integrity, and also provides WIFI to his customers and visitors! The EOC-1650 is that little white gadget at the top right of the array.

Backup System finished at Little House

Magna Sine inverter and Rolls batteries. Whole house transfer switch also.

Off-grid installation complete at the Bunker!

Wow, it’s taken a while to get this posted, but I’ve got the grid-backup system completed at our little house (we fondly refer to it as THE BUNKER…). I was recently out there during a freak snow storm that dumped 5 inches of wet snow in about 2 hours, and when the power went out, there was just a slight flicker of the lighting as I was sitting at the computer checking my email. The UPS on the computer didn’t even get a chance to kick in! I excitedly went downstairs to the basement to check out the inverter, and sure enough, it was on line, quietly humming away, providing full power to the main electric breaker box for everything that was presently on in the house. The Magnum MS-PAE 4024 inverter can provide about 4,000 watts of continuous power until the batteries discharge 80% of their capacity. Since the house normally consumes only about 500 watts (average) power, this represents about 20 hours of run time. Fortunately, when the backup system is in operation, the solar PV system can “back feed” through the breaker box and provide the power the house needs as well as re-charge the batteries, so this setup can run pretty much indefinitely, as long as there is a few hours of sun each day. Even on a cloudy day, the 2.4KW (Twelve 220 watt panels) solar array provides about 500 watts, so that extends the capacity of the system pretty well.

 

Home Brewed Genset simulator for transfer switch activation

In order to make the TRANSFER SWITCH operate, I had to build my own little GENSET SIMULATOR. It connects to the output of the backup inverter and provides the necessary voltage and control signal to the transfer switch to make it kick over when the power goes out. These TRANFER SWITCHES are designed to normally work with a gas or diesel GENERATOR SET, as they are called.

It took a little studying and research, but I figured out how to SIMULATE the voltage and signals that normally come from a GENERATOR SET that would connect to a WHOLE HOUSE TRANSFER SWTICH on the V+, GROUND, and PIN 23. These are the 3 wires that are standard on any gas or diesel generator. Since I’m using an electronic inverter (Magnum MS-PAE 4024), such signals were not available, so I came up with a little box that has 2 relays in it. One is standard and the other is a 5 second delay unit so the system won’t “chatter” if power drops in/out rapidly. If you’d like the details on how to build one, I’ll be glad to send you a schematic. Just drop me a line at: Joe@cincihomesolar.com

back up system Battery Bank

ROLLS 520 AH 6 volt batteries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the batteries I chose. Since I’m on a tight budget, I chose the best bang-for-the-buck, and it ended up being the Rolls 6 volt 520AH model. I splurged on the funky looking RECOMBINATION CAPS, rather than the normal vented caps that come with the batteries. By installing the RECOMBINATION CAPS, the hydrogen gas generated during charging is sealed inside the battery 99%, and the battery loses MUCH LESS liquid over time than a VENTED battery would. A box and vent fan are still required for safety though, and I will add this to complete the project very soon. Without these special caps, in just 30 seconds of charging at 90 amps, the hydrogen gas coming from the batteries would reach 4% concentration and become highly explosive, so this is nothing to fool around with! VENT YOUR BATTERY BANK TO THE OUTDOORS!

Electric Vehicle Seminar at IBEW training center in Cincinnati

I went to the GEO (Green Energy Ohio) EV Seminar at the IBEW Training Center on Cincinnati’s West side yesterday and it was a relaxed, fun time. I got to drive the worlds 1st and only 100% electric Jeep Cherokee as well as several different Chevy Volts!  Several speakers gave great presentations and there was a great deal to absorb in a short time. I did meet the admin for the EV program at the center, and I made the decision right on the spot to sign up for the fall class in EV Technology and to get my EV Certification by the end of this year! I’m already NABCEP certified for PV Solar installation and Technical Sales, and the electric car market is a good BLEND with solar, so I feel this is a great direction to grow in!

Chevy Volt in full advertising paint job

Fully decorated Chevy Volt is a rolling billboard!!tion to grow in!!!

Owner and DIY Solar Consultant prepares for test drive of Jeep Cherokee Electric Conversion

Joe prepares to test drive the new 100% electric Jeep Cherokee for the 1st time!100% Electric tag on this Jeep Cherokee