We are Generation Partners

Generation Partners is the program run by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and our local utility, Meriwether Lewis Electrical Cooperative (MLEC) that allows residents to sell back power that they generate with their own power systems.  Every Watt we generate goes directly into the utility grid and TVA pays us 12 cents/kWhr above the retail rate to residential customers (currently 9 cents/kWhr).  As of 8:30am June 19, we are selling power to TVA!!  Randy took this shot of Brent Warf from MLEC and me standing in front of the new meter just after our array was commissioned.  We flipped the switch and the meter started turning.  In the past 72 hours, we have generated 100 kWhr, while we used 48 kWhrs to run our house.  Our net earnings have been about $5.50 per day so far.

You might be wondering what the system cost us to build.  Our total expenditures came to about $15,500 for the 6,160 Watt system.  This is very cheap because we did the work ourselves.  The cost includes $5,358 for the PV's, $2400 for the galvanized pipe, $2675 for the Ironridge rails and components, $2900 for the inverter (SMA Sunnyboy 6000US), $800 labor for Kenny Brown's help, $465 in fees and the remainder in wire, conduit, AC disconnect, meter base, Unistrut, lugs, etc, etc.  But that is not the whole story.  MLEC will be sending us a check for $1000 for setting up the system, plus we will get a federal tax credit amounting to about $4,500.  Thus, the NET cost to us will be more like $10,000.  If we can generate 30 kWhr/day for just 300 days a year we will earn $1890 per year, which would take between 5 and 6 years to pay for the system.  Our contract with TVA guarantees that they will pay us 12 cents/kWhr  above the retail rate for 10 years, but we can break the contract if we should want to at any time.  Watts not to love??

On other fronts, we have purchased some furniture, including a nice slipcover sofa with down pillows (so comfortable!) from sellers on craigslist.  Also, we have tiled the screened porch and we are building a really cute outhouse.  The beautiful quilt on the sofa was a gift from Wayne and Claudia Schumacher (Quiltworks of Orange Springs).

The Solar Panels Are Up!

The panel mounting frame consists of 10 3" galvanized steel posts, 5 on the south side and five on the north side.  They are 3 feet in the ground with cement.  The angle of the panels is 36 degrees (our latitude).  The posts on the north side are much taller because we are building on a north facing slope.  On top of the posts are two horizontal runs of 3" galvanized pipe, held in place with Ironridge top caps.  On top of the horizontal pipes are 14 Ironridge rails, specially designed to hold clamps to easily mount the solar panels.  Below, Kenny Brown is marking the bottom of the rails so the panels will not get out of square as we mount them.

Here is a closeup of one of the posts showing the top cap and the horizontal pipe.

This is a closeup of how the rails mount to the horizontal pipe.

Here, Kenny and I are constructing the mounting system that will hold the inverter, the AC disconnect and meter base for the utility company.

Voila!!  All 28 of the panels are up.  Nothing is connected yet, and we still have to dig the trench to carry the #6 wires from our meter to the power pole.  Stay tuned .  . .

Second anniversary of the flood

May 2 was the second anniversary of the big flood, and the day we moved upstairs into our new house.  I will post below several pictures of how the house looks now.  We don't have much furniture yet.  Below is the kitchen looking west.  The big white box is the fridge, a Sunfrost R19.

This is our propane stove, all hooked up.

The living room waiting for a sofa and recliners.  

The staircase and dining room.  The AC is on the wall.

The dining room with pass through to the kitchen.

Bedroom in the loft.

Study in the loft, waiting for a desk.

Our next project is to get the solar panels connected to the utility grid.  We have ordered all of the mounting parts and will start putting posts in the ground tomorrow.  An exciting thing happened yesterday.  We caught the birth of a large family of praying mantis babies.  These little fellows are about 1/2 inch long and there must be several hundred of them.

Early Spring 2012

This is a sample of today's harvest for the dinner table.  Clockwise from the upper right is watercress, growing wild in great abundance in our creek; then garden sorrel, which I planted around the yard last year, with wild onions on top; then poke salad, which is just beginning to send up tender shoots, with two dandelion flowers on top; then some asparagus from our garden, planted last year as root crowns.

When the poke is this young and tender, I boil it for about 15 min., then rinse twice in cool water.  Poke should not be consumed raw, as it contains toxins.  In fact, it is Phytolacca, a well known and powerful Homeopathic medicine, which I have used to great advantage in the past.  Today I will make a poke and wild onion quiche.  Yummm!!  The watercress, sorrel, and dandelion flowers will be used in a fresh salad. 

This is a beautiful time of year, and our orchards and gardens are coming alive.  The forest trees are about 20% leafed out at this time.  Here are pictures of one of the kiwi vines and a bush cherry, which is full of little cherries.

This year, we have planted two sweet cherry trees, two more apricot trees, two plum trees, three hazelnut trees and three persimmon trees.  Also, scorzonera, ramps and miner's lettuce as perennial greens.  Last fall we planted perennial multiplier onions and scallions, as well as two juneberries and ten more raspberry plants.  (And we were going to lay off of planting so much this year!!)

On the house front, we hope to move "upstairs" by the second anniversary of the big flood, on May 2.  The ceiling is finished, the loft floor is down and most of the trim is finished, thanks mostly to our carpenter Kenny Brown, who has been working with us for a month.  The electrical wiring is finished and ready for inspection, and the plumbing is finished.  Here are some pictures.

Update on Solar Panels

Yesterday we received our pallet of solar panels from Sun Electronics. We borrowed our neighbor's trailer and met the trucking company at Duncan's hardware store in Linden.  Not only did the manager of the store allow us to receive the package on their lot, but he personally transferred the pallet from the truck to our trailer.  Country living has it's advantages!  The panels are now neatly stacked under cover below the screened porch.  Sun Electronics still has some of these panels for 78 cents a watt.  This is a fantastic deal.  You can take a look at www.sunelec.com.

The kitchen sink is now installed.  It is starting to look like a kitchen.

Merry Christmas!

A lot has happened since I last posted.  Winter has arrived, and although December has been unseasonably warm, we have had two light snows.

First, we finished trenching and installing water pipe from the creek up to the water storage tank above the house.  We now have 30 psi into the house, gravity fed from the tank.  That is the pressure at floor level in the basement, but it is too low to produce enough flow at the shower upstairs, so we will have to put in a bladder tank and booster pump.  We bought a van to replace our Honda that was lost in the flood.  Here we are camping at Edgar Evans State Park in Tennessee. 

 Our biggest project has been putting up the ceiling.  We bought 1000 board feet of poplar from a local sawmill and had it kiln dried, milled and tongue and grooved.  The ceiling is up, and now we need to put on two coats of polyurethane and install the top trim piece and the trim around the edges.

Here, Randy is on the scaffolding we put up to install the ceiling boards.

In the kitchen, the back splash tile is installed, the window molding is on and the electrical outlets are wired up.  Also, the lights and fans are installed throughout the house.  The big project now is the deep trench and conduit that will bring our underground electric service to the house.  It runs 100 ft from a pole down by the grape vines to the house.  We are hoping to have that done next week before the ground freezes and becomes too hard to dig.

About a month ago, we bought a pallet (28) of 200W solar PV modules at a very good price from SunElectronics in Miami.  They had won an auction of over 5 MW of modules from Evergreen Solar, which went bankrupt this year, and were selling the modules for 78 cents a watt.  We should receive them early in January.  We are in the process of applying to intertie to the utility grid.  In addition to the 30% federal tax credit for all of the solar components, the local electric utility pays us $1000 for installing the system, and TVA buys all of the power we produce for 12 cents/kWh over what they charge to retail customers.  In other words, they charge us 9 cents/kWh we use and pay us 21 cents/kWh we produce.  Pretty good deal, and they guarantee to pay that rate for 10 years!

September Flew By

September has been beautiful.  Plenty of rain with crisp nights and warm days.  We have been working on our water supply.  We bought a Solar Slowpump by Dankoff, which can pump to a maximum of 240 feet straight up with a speed of a little over 2 gallons per minute.  The 550 gallon storage tank above our house is about 120 ft vertical from the creek (60 ft vertical above the house), and with a 175 watt (24 Volt) solar module, we should be able to fill the tank in about 4 hours of sunshine.  Below is a picture of the pump (black round thing) in its housing.  To the left are a sediment filter (the pump is very sensitive to debris - fortunately the creek is very clean) and a priming port, then in the water is a foot valve (check valve) and a screen.  To the right are a check valve, a faucet and a pressure gauge.  The pressure should read about 60 PSIG when the water reaches the storage tank.  The house pressure is 30 PSIG when gravity fed from the storage tank.

 This is the solar panel that runs the pump.  Today we tested the system and found 2 leaks.  One was a joint I forgot to glue (old age sucks).  We have cleared out the path for the water pipe and laid out the pipe.  Next we will rent a trencher and a couple of the neighborhood high school boys to run it!!

On the home front, we cleaned out the screened porch and set up a new chop saw in preparation for installing the ceiling (tongue and groove poplar) and the window and door trim.

Also, the kitchen sink has been refinished and looks beautiful.  This was the sink in the old church that we were working on before the flood.  It is enamel over steel.  I love the two drainboards.  It is sitting on cardboard and is not installed yet.

The bathroom cabinets have been installed.  They are black walnut.  On the right is the cabinet for the composting toilet. All of the kinds of wood we have used in building the house (poplar, hickory, walnut, pine, red cedar) grow in abundance on our property.  We are preserving the forest to replenish what we use and much more.  

 

Finally, Randy painted the basement walls.  He put on two coats of Drylok (white), then one coat of green that matches the rest of the house exterior.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of our buying the property and the first anniversary since moving into the basement.  We were hoping to be moving "upstairs" by now, but it still will be a few months at least.