An Eclectic Mind

Why we won’t be buying a solar energy setup for our new RV.

Our old RV — which we drove away from this afternoon without a backward glance — had a solar panel on the roof. The panel charged the RVs two batteries, which, in turn could power the lights, stereo, and any devices we had plugged in to the unit’s two DC power ports. This was handy when we camped off-the-grid, as we did numerous times on our way from Washington state to Arizona last summer.

The system didn’t have an inverter, though. That meant that it could not power the AC power outlets or anything plugged into them, including handy devices like the microwave. We learned to do without.

Our new RV is quite a step up from the old one. It actually has rooms. And a desk I can sit and work at. And lots of space.

Of course, we wanted it to have a solar setup, too. But a full-blown setup that would include an inverter and be able to power any of the outlets and devices on board. Okay, well maybe not the air conditioning, but everything else.

My husband, Mike, is a solar guy. He knows how to design solar power systems. He set up the one on our old RV and designed and built the significantly more complex one on our off-the-grid vacation “cabin.” So he sat down with a pen and paper and, using the Internet, researched a solution. We’d use the panel off our old RV, match it with a second panel, add two batteries, an inverter, and a bunch of other stuff, and have a 2KW solar setup. The cost: roughly $3K.

Now $3000 is a lot of money, especially after pouring a bunch of money into a new RV. But I like the idea of renewable energy. And I love the idea of silent energy. So I was willing to spend another $3K. I saw it as an investment in the future.

We were in Quartzsite, AZ when we picked up the RV. There are lots of RV service centers there, including two that specialize in solar power systems. So we drove over to one to get a quote.

And that’s when things started getting funky.

One guy priced up a system for us what was just a bit over Mike’s estimate. That didn’t include installation labor, though. (I insisted on a professional installation.) He quoted us labor at $55/hour for maybe four hours. I took a deep breath and nodded. So the sales guy handed us off to the order writer. She priced everything out. But suddenly labor was $85/hour and we were looking at 10 hours or more. She refused to be pinned down, but I was seeing a minimum of $4400. My “ripoff radar” — developed after years living in the New York area — perked up and started sending me signals. I told the woman we’d sleep on it and we left.

We went to the other solar outfitter. We’d bought all our solar panels and some other equipment from them in the past. They priced out our system and came up with a solid number: $4168. Ouch.

Mike and I talked about it at some length. He’d already suggested a much cheaper alternative for the times we were off the grid: a 2000-watt Honda generator that could be used parallel with an identical model to give a total of 4000 watts. If you needed a little power, you’d fire up one. If you needed more, you’d connect the second one and fire it up, too. With 4000 watts, we could power everything in the camper, including the air conditioning.

At first, I’d resisted the suggestion. I wanted quiet power. The Honda generators were known for their quietness, but nothing would be as quiet as solar.

But the kicker: we could get the Hondas for less than $1,000 each. Just one would provide as much power as the solar setup we’d envisioned. No need for an inverter or charge controller or holes drilled in the RV roof.

Later that day, we walked around the RV show in Quartzsite, where vendors were selling all kinds of things for RVers. One of them had Yamaha generators. The Yamaha EF2000iS did the same thing the Honda we were considering did, but it was 2 decibels quieter and 2 pounds lighter. And a tiny bit cheaper to buy, too.

It was even cheaper on Amazon.com.

So we didn’t go with the solar setup. I just can’t justify the added expense — after all, to get 2,000 watts with solar power, we’d be spending four times as much as the generator would cost us.

And I’m sure we’re not the only people who feel this way.

It’s unfortunate. There are many people out there who want to do the “right thing” and use renewable energy. But it’s difficult to justify the added expense. When a friend pointed out that we’d have to buy fuel for the generator, we replied that $3000 worth of fuel could go a long way at 5 hours per gallon. The solar setup would never pay for itself.

I’m hoping that changes sometime soon.

Days in My Life camping, energy, RV

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Huge windmills on a ridge.

The weather pattern here these days has been mostly sunny in the morning with increasing chance of showers in the afternoon. Because I have to fly after it rains (see “The Life of a Cherry Drying Pilot” for details), I need to be near the helicopter when it’s most likely to rain. That means the only time free for running errands and exploring my surroundings is when it’s least likely to rain. Lately, that means in the morning.

So yesterday morning I set out on a trip to the Wild Horse Wind Farm on a series of ridges northeast of Ellensburg. I can see the windmills from my camper down in Quincy and I visited them once before last year. This year, I bought along my Sony HD Handycam video camera and my new Flip Video. I wanted to capture the movement of the windmills, as well as the incredible “wooshing” sound the blades make as they cut through the air.

The Visitor’s Center at the Wild Horse Wind Farm.

I stopped for quite a while at the Visitor Center — mostly because it was cold outside. Wild Horse Ridge is quite a bit higher than it is in Quincy and, as you can imagine, it’s usually windy there. I threw a long-sleeved shirt on over my t-shirt but was still chilled. So I started out in the Visitor’s Center. Last time I’d been there, it had been crowded with kids, so I’d cut my visit short. This time I was able to look at the exhibits and video clips they had playing. One of the video monitors was playing a Nova episode about the Missoula Floods; I added it to my Netflix queue this morning. I especially liked the status monitor display which showed a video screen with a map of all 127 windmills, indication of which ones weren’t operating (two of them), and total power output of the operating generators.

I do recommend stopping at the Visitor’s Center if you ever go up there. There are plenty of easy-to-understand exhibits about the wind farm and energy, including some hands-on exhibits for kids. It’s also a great destination for school groups. The last time I was there, a busload of kids was on hand. They offer free tours of the facility that visit the controls in the base of one of the nearby windmill towers. I took the tour last time, so I skipped it this time.

One of the windmills near the visitor center. This view faces out toward where I’m staying in Quincy.

When I was ready to go out and brave the wind, I took a short walk with my still camera before heading back to the truck for my Handycam and tripod. Even though the camera is tiny, I always put it on a tripod to shoot. I simply can’t hold it still enough to create good video on my own. I walked along various pathways and framed up what I think might be good shots. Then I took a series of 30-second clips, using my body and top shirt to shield the camera’s microphone from the wind. My goal was to capture the sound. I haven’t seen the clips yet, so I don’t know if I succeeded.

Afterwards, I stowed the camera back in the truck and brought out my Flip Video camera to do a few clips for use on my blog. I bought the Flip the other day as a birthday present to myself. I find that if I don’t get a new toy at least once every 6 months, I go nuts. I’ve been fiddling around a lot with video lately. My Sony takes amazing quality shots, but getting it Web-ready is a time-consuming, grueling process. I wanted an easier way to create Web-ready video at a better quality than my Blackberry Storm offers. When I saw the Flip while wandering around a mall the other day, I sprung for it. It certainly can’t be any easier to use. The video quality is so-so, but certainly good enough for the Web.

I shot the following three narrated sequences; I’ll let them speak for themselves. The second one, which shows off a blade on display, can give you an idea of the real size of these things — they’re huge.

Want some information about the Wild Horse Wind Farm? Here are three good links:

• Puget Sound Energy’s Wild Horse WInd and Solar Facility page
• Access Washington Wild Horse Wind and Solar Power Project page
• Horizon Wind Energy Wild Horse Wind Farm page

Or find other links by entering “Wild Horse Wind Facility” or “Wild Horse Wind Farm” in Google.

Multimedia, Travels with Maria energy, travel, Washington

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A visit to Washington’s other source of alternative energy.

Washington state is widely known for its cheap, reliable electric power. One reason it’s cheap is because it’s hydroelectric — the Columbia and other rivers in Washington have been dammed up with numerous hydroelectric plants, many of them built as part of the New Deal in the 1930s. (An interesting side note here: we visited the Grand Coulee Dam and learned on the tour that power wasn’t one of the reasons the dam was originally built. The two primary reasons were irrigation and flood control. I really ought to write about that tour in another post.)

Anyway, Washington is also on the leading edge of renewable power generation from wind generators or windmills. Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has two facilities, one of which is on a series of ridges in Kittitas County, 18 miles east of Ellensburg. This Wild Horse Wind Facility is clearly visible from my camp just south of Quincy, about 20 air miles away. It’s also open to the public for tours. So on Saturday afternoon, feeling a dire need to get away from the book project I’m working on, I headed out to see the place close up.

It’s easy to get to. From I-90, take the exit for Vantage, which is on the west side of the Columbia River. After stopping for a burger at Blustery’s, head up the old Vantage Highway. You’ll get to the turn for Wild Horse about 12 miles up the road. It’s hard to miss — the road is clearly marked and you can see lots of windmills from the main road.

Follow the entrance road about three miles as it winds up a hill. You’ll pass a bunch of windmills along the way — the road actually passes quite close to a few of them. Eventually, you’ll see the Visitor Center at the top of the site. Behind it are a few windmills that, when seen with the building in front, look absolutely enormous.

When I arrived, an all-girls camp group was there. The girls were in their early teens. I managed to latch on to one of their tours, which included a walk up eight or so steps into the tower at the bottom of one of the windmills. Afterward, I wandered around a bit, got technical information about the facility, and took plenty of photos.

Want some stats? The facility is on a 9,000 acre site overlooking the Columbia River Basin. It was started up in December 2006 with 127 wind turbines. Each turbine is capable of producing up to 1.8 megawatts of power in 31 mph winds, for a total of 229 megawatts. The turbines start generating power at 9 mph of wind and are programmed to feather their blades and basically shut down when winds exceed 56 mph to avoid damage. Since the site is usually pretty windy, the facility does a pretty good job generating power.

Each turbine sits atop a 221-foot tall tower. (See the flight of steps at the very bottom of the tower in this photo? It has about 8 steps. That should give you an idea of scale.) The foundations go down 25 to 32 feet and each have 120 anchor bolts around the 13-foot wide tower base. The bolts are huge, as you might imagine.

The turbines, which are manufactured in Denmark, generate power at 690 volts. A transformer inside the turbine housing, steps up the power to 34.5 kilovolts. These turbines are atop the tower (of course) and are about the size of a typical RV or motorhome. They’re reached from a ladder inside the tower.

The blades are also huge. There was one on display outside the visitor center and I snapped a photo with my fisheye lens (which explains the distortion) of the girls gathered around it. Each of a windmill’s three blades is 129 feet long, 11.6 wide near the hub, and 1.6 feed wide at the tip. They’re made of composite materials, are hollow, and weigh 7 tons each. When you figure the length of the rotor blade into the total maximum height of the windmill, you get 351 feet.

It’s no wonder I can see them from 20 miles away.

We all know that the environmentalists are concerned about windmills and their impact on birds and bats. I asked about this. I was told that the facility averages 2 dead birds per turbine per year. I think more are killed being hit by cars. The folks at Wild Horse take the situation seriously and collect and bag all birds found. Bats are not an issue there.

For me, the most amazing part of visiting the windmills was the sound they made as they were spinning. I used my CoolPix camera to record a video. There’s a bit of wind noise, but you should be able to clearly hear the sound, should you decide to play the video.

After my tour in the Visitor Center vicinity, I hopped on the truck and followed the dirt road around the facility. I was out to take photos and I got a few interesting ones.

If you’re in the area, I recommend a visit to the Wild Horse Wind Facility. Try calling 888-225-5773 if you need more info; I can’t seem to find the official Web site for the facility.

And if there’s a wind or other alternative energy facility open to the public for tours in your area, make it a point to visit with your kids. It’s a great way to learn about energy options.

About the Photos, Travels with Maria energy, Washington

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One solution for off-the-grid living in Arizona.

Our little off-the-grid vacation place has solar power. It’s an extremely simple system that consists of two 120-watt (I think) solar panels mounted on the roof and four deep cycle batteries in a little cabinet. The panels are attached to the batteries with a charger. Whenever there’s sun — which is just about every day in Arizona — the solar panels charge the batteries. All we do to maintain them is make sure there’s enough distilled water in the battery cells.

The building has both AC and DC power. That’s a weird thing that we decided on when we first set up the place. It’s a very small place with just one room, a loft, and a bathroom alcove. There are very few electrical appliances, and they’re split between AC and DC. On the AC side is an iHome clock radio (the kind you can put an iPod in), a 700-watt microwave, and a 600-watt single cup coffee maker. There are also outlets that can power a small ShopVac or laptop. Everything else is powered by DC power: 9 small light fixtures, the water pump, and a ceiling fan. (Do you know how hard it was to find a DC ceiling fan?) There are round DC power outlets everywhere there’s a standard AC power outlet. The fridge, stove, water heater, and furnace are all propane gas.

Theoretically, we can run the whole place on DC power with gas. On very short stays, we don’t even bother with the fridge. But since the batteries are hooked up to a 2000-watt AC inverter, we usually turn on the inverter so we can use those AC appliances and outlets when we want to. We have a little meter that plugs into a DC outlet to monitor the amount of juice in the batteries. At night, the power level gets low, but never too low to run lights or watch a movie on a laptop with power connected. And, in the morning, even before dawn, there’s always enough power to run my coffee maker.

It’s a great system. It cost about $2K for Mike to design and install and it meets all of our limited needs. I’m certain that if we built a house up here with more conveniences, a system just three or four times the size — perhaps supplemented with a small wind generator — would easily meet those needs. After all, it’s cool enough up here that air conditioning is not required in the summer — especially if the house had an energy efficient design that kept the hot air out. And if the sun isn’t shining, the wind is probably blowing.

Today, while relaxing with a book, the radio suddenly died. I checked the little DC meter and saw that we had plenty of juice — 15.4 volts, in fact. That’s the highest I’ve ever seen it. I went out to check the inverter and found lights blinking on it. Consulting the manual revealed that we had too much power for the inverter to use. The system is designed to shut down when available power exceeds 15 volts.

Oddly enough, to get the AC power to work, I had to come inside and turn on a bunch of lights and the ceiling fan and run the pump for a while. In other words, I had to throw away excess power. Once I got stored power down to 14.8 volts, I went outside and turned the inverter back on. Everything worked fine.

Keep in mind that this is a very small system and there’s no tracking on those solar panels. The panels are fixed to the roof, pointing southwest. (Imagine how much power we’d pull in if the panels were set up to track the sun?) It was about 2:30 PM when the problem occurred; it’s now almost two hours later and the sun is lower, so I don’t think the problem will reoccur.

My point is this: Arizona is a perfect environment for solar power, especially for small to moderate use. There’s no reason why solar can’t be set up to at least supplement power coming into an on-the-grid home. And for an off-the-grid home with modest needs, it seems to be a perfect solution.

So why aren’t more homes built with solar as part of the standard builder package?

Days in My Life, Off-the-Grid energy, Howard Mesa

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It’s getting closer!

My WebCam has been faithfully making timelapse movies every day. I’m trying not to bore you by showing you all of them.

Yesterday’s sky was extremely active. Cloudy then mostly sunny then cloudy with an approaching thunderstorm. This video shows an excellent example of a typical monsoon summer day here in Arizona. The storm was fast approaching and Mike and I really thought we’d get poured on. But when the sun sets, the storm’s main source of energy is removed. It dissipates quickly — usually within an hour of sunset. And although yesterday’s storm got close — probably within 20 miles — it died before it reached us.

Darn!

Here’s the video from the day. I’ve tweaked the settings to shoot a new frame every 8 minutes and create the video at the framrate of 5 frames per second. That stretches out the video to 20 seconds without making a major increase in the file size.

Remember, after clicking this image, you may have to wait a few seconds for it to load before it starts playing. Be patient and click only once. It’ll play right in this window. QuickTime is required.

Days in My Life Apple, Arizona, energy, movies, sky, summer, time, timelapse

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