As some of you may know already, I'm the co-owner of a machine shop/manufacturing company. My building is about 20,000 sq. ft. and we use a ton of electric due to the amount of machinery we have, especially CNC lathes and mills. We have explored using solar energy in the past, but the cost has always been quite prohibitive. That changed this year through the confluence of our energy provider, and our local, state and federal governments offering thus before unavailable incentives. For the first time, it seemed doable and we jumped at the opportunity.
I'd like to share the installation and implementation process with you, through pics(I took a lot, as I was fascinated by the whole process) and explanation, in my layman's terms. From where I stood previously, I learned quite a bit about how solar energy works with the existing grid. At times through the process, I couldn't help but to think back to my dad's shop growing up. He had truck fab/mechanic shop. It had the bare essentials. Hot and dusty in the summer and cold as, well you know, in the winter. We had an old rusty salamander heater that we fed with whatever waste oil we could drain out of engines, rear ends, etc. that we had laying around. In my experience, they burned dirty and were apt to "go up" at any time. In my father's eye's, he was spoiling us, lol. Here's a pic of one:
Just kind of made me smile at what he might think of how far things have come, if he was still around. Anyhow, enough about that. Here's some pics of the material delivery. And yes, I asked numerous times if I could run the crane. That thing was so cool! I was told "no". Something about insurance stuff :banghead3 Some pics:
These boxes contain the solar panels.
This photo shows the bottom support rails. In the back are the square cement anchoring slabs. "Saddles" are placed across the bottom rails and loaded with the cement slabs. There are no hard fasteners in the system, just the shear weight of the cement. I was kind of relieved at this, as I just installed a new roof earlier in the year. I was told this system can withstand 140 MPH winds.
These rails then go on over the bottom rail system and the solar panels are then attached to them.
The next group of photos will show the panels installed, the wiring done to tie into our system and the grid, the "brain" and the metering system.
I'd like to share the installation and implementation process with you, through pics(I took a lot, as I was fascinated by the whole process) and explanation, in my layman's terms. From where I stood previously, I learned quite a bit about how solar energy works with the existing grid. At times through the process, I couldn't help but to think back to my dad's shop growing up. He had truck fab/mechanic shop. It had the bare essentials. Hot and dusty in the summer and cold as, well you know, in the winter. We had an old rusty salamander heater that we fed with whatever waste oil we could drain out of engines, rear ends, etc. that we had laying around. In my experience, they burned dirty and were apt to "go up" at any time. In my father's eye's, he was spoiling us, lol. Here's a pic of one:
Just kind of made me smile at what he might think of how far things have come, if he was still around. Anyhow, enough about that. Here's some pics of the material delivery. And yes, I asked numerous times if I could run the crane. That thing was so cool! I was told "no". Something about insurance stuff :banghead3 Some pics:
These boxes contain the solar panels.
This photo shows the bottom support rails. In the back are the square cement anchoring slabs. "Saddles" are placed across the bottom rails and loaded with the cement slabs. There are no hard fasteners in the system, just the shear weight of the cement. I was kind of relieved at this, as I just installed a new roof earlier in the year. I was told this system can withstand 140 MPH winds.
These rails then go on over the bottom rail system and the solar panels are then attached to them.
The next group of photos will show the panels installed, the wiring done to tie into our system and the grid, the "brain" and the metering system.