ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Photos for General Discussion 1st Solar Job

Alternative Energy is fun in a nerdy kind of way. Even today the strictly from the dollar and cents point of view, the cost is hard to get to pay for itself but it is getting there. I am on my second major project. (see sparkyinak's barge a few posts under this one) it will pay for it sell only because we are paying $3.00 per kilowatt to generator our oun power remotley. If you like working numbers solar is where it is at. My brain goes numb each time I start to run the numbers. The poles look good. Which pic are you?

Watch them lines!
Maybe it's just the angle of the photo.

Might look good financially to the installer, but rarely will it be a cost savings to the customer. It's still just obscenely expensive and I can't see it ever being more than a niche application in the long term, what with nuclear ultimately so cheap and effective. So much fun, though, I love playing around with wind, solar, tidal, and the energy storage stuff, too. I tell ya, nothing beats a superconducting electromagnetic "battery" floating in a giant cryogenic vat of liquid helium to bring out the nerd in all of us! Ah, too bad it's not practical for everyday use.

Here in NJ, they POCO/Gov was offering rebates to all who installed PV systems. The Gov, paid anywhere from 50-75% of the cost and the POCO was giving back up to $1,000 per year. (I believe) I have seen about 10-15 PV sytems in the last 4 years, go up around me.

If I remember correctly it was 36 rows 24 wide, strings of 12 panels 180w @48v = 576v ea. then a mirror image of panels (not yet installed in the picture, on the other side of the ridge cap to the left. You can see the unboxed panels on the other side. all USE cable run in gutter also not yet installed at time of photo. the array looks preetty good too from the sattelite photos thru google earth. oakland airport fedex building. We also do small resi jobs 1 to 5k, but this happened to be the first job I assigned to. Chris