First Dad needed a shed to house all 18 of his huge batteries, & the big electronic panels that are the 'brains' of his system. He bought a pre-built shed, but this is the cement foundation for it.
The cement truck came and Dad poured cement for the shed floor.
He had a guy come help, that saved him a little hard work.
This is the huge hole he dug for the big poles that the solar panels on are on. They were almost 5 feet deep! Along with all the concrete, he added huge rocks to help make it really strong!
This is the pole with the concrete setting up.
After Dad painted the poles all nice, he started working on the framework that will hold all the solar panels. His system will track the sun and follow it all day long!
This is the inside of his little shed. You can see the huge batteries that store the solar power. Once the batteries are all charged, the extra power the system produces, feeds back into the "grid" so we are building a credit with Navopache Electric, we like that idea!
Now he's got all the panels on and all the wires run from these panels into his main controllers in the shed that monitor everything and can tell him exactly how much power he is generating and how much we are using.
You can see how big they are, 12 panels per frame!
They have an electronic "eye" that keeps them exactly focused on the direct sun.
Now here's the inside of the shed, with the batteries protected inside these big plastic tubs. He had to put in these special vents to help control gases.
These are the two very expensive meters that control each panel. They are so 'smart'!! They read everything and can control every detail.
Here's the main panel that Navopache made him redo. Plus he had to set a new power pole in too. They didn't like the old one or the old board we had everything set on before. You can see it is all pretty major!!
After the solar panels were in LaVerl started on his wind generator! With all the wind in Eagar, he wanted to utilize this resource! This is LaVerl trenching to run all the wires that will run from the generator into the main controls in the shed.
Setting the pole was pretty intense. 40 feet is taller than it looks. LaVerl had to use a "boom" ? truck to raise the pole up. It is hinged at the bottom so it can be brought back down to work on it.
LaVerl built the pole, all the fittings for the 'guy wires' to attach too, everything. He is a pretty handy guy!! Now getting the 40 foot pole up was kind of scary!
His good, very handy friend, Jim Rogers was there to help him. He had to do this on a day when the wind wasn't blowing!
Finally it was up straight and LaVerl could bolt in all in.
Yeah!!! Its up!! It has two sets of 'guy wires' to stabilize it in our strong winds!!
Once it was up, LaVerl had to get his big ladder to take the straps off that they used to raise it. He was way up there! Now we don't mind the wind so much, because we know its making power! This little "Whisper" has really been tested, we had some major winds that were reported at 112 mph out at our airport last month!! It has a safety feature that slows it down in high winds that sound like a truck putting on its air brakes. The neighbors find this a little annoying!
Setting the pole was pretty intense. 40 feet is taller than it looks. LaVerl had to use a "boom" ? truck to raise the pole up. It is hinged at the bottom so it can be brought back down to work on it.LaVerl built the pole, all the fittings for the 'guy wires' to attach too, everything. He is a pretty handy guy!! Now getting the 40 foot pole up was kind of scary!
His good, very handy friend, Jim Rogers was there to help him. He had to do this on a day when the wind wasn't blowing!
Finally it was up straight and LaVerl could bolt in all in.
Yeah!!! Its up!! It has two sets of 'guy wires' to stabilize it in our strong winds!!
Once it was up, LaVerl had to get his big ladder to take the straps off that they used to raise it. He was way up there! Now we don't mind the wind so much, because we know its making power! This little "Whisper" has really been tested, we had some major winds that were reported at 112 mph out at our airport last month!! It has a safety feature that slows it down in high winds that sound like a truck putting on its air brakes. The neighbors find this a little annoying! So that's about it. He LOVES his system and now he can check one major thing off his list of preparedness things. His next project is a rain water retrieval and storage system-hmmmmm?
Our Graduate! First of many to come.
Proud parents - This was a team effort. We worked together to make sure Kaemon made it to school by 9 am Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri with a healthy lunch packed and picked up at 1pm.
My supporters for my big day with guest speaker Captain Knight
