Solar Power in Columbia City! We just installed a 2.1 kW photovoltaic system for our house plus a solar hot water heater system.

Download Bob Allen's fantastic powerpoint about our solar systems.

Download his pdf about the systems!

OK, we didn't actually do the work. Jeremy of Puget Sound Solar did the solar hot water heating system, and Jim Bristow (Bristow Enterprises) and Larry Owens installed our PV. Both did a great job. Jeremy has been doing both types of systems for a long time, but I knew Larry through the biodiesel community, and my partner and I wanted to give him the opportunity to do some of the work. He and Jim researched how to get us the most bang for our buck in terms of power, and then installed the system.

Our system is called a grid-tie system, since it's connected directly to the city electrical grid. The system has an inverter (by Sunnyboy from Germany) which converts the DC electricity generated by the panels to AC. When we make more power than we use (which is all day long on a sunny day!), we watch our city meter run backwards! What a great feeling to be that much more energy independent. Our last 2 month electric bill was less than half of last years' over the same two months, and 95% was billed at the lower rate. On a sunny day now in May, we are selling power back to the city from about 8:30 AM till about 6 PM. Plus we're getting paid 10 cents / kW from Bonneville Power for every kW we generate- up to $2000 (Green Tags program). We will also get a similar payback from Seattle City Light, due to the passage of new WA. state legislation that provides incentives to people who generate their own solar power as well as tax incentives for companies that produce solar power equipment.

Here's Jim Bristow (left) and Larry Owens installing our PV system on a nice wet Seattle winter day. For those of you who think it's too cloudy and rainy for Seattle to be a good place for solar, consider that Germany is the biggest country in the world for solar and they get about 70% of the light that we do! Larry is President of Shoreline Solar, which is a great group promoting solar in this region. They're making inroads in the Shoreline School district, with one PV system up on an elementary school already. They're also pushing for biodiesel in their districts' school buses. To me biodiesel is just another form of solar energy capture, so it makes perfect sense! Jim and Larry are licensed to install both solar hot water and the PV, and are looking for clients who'd like to take the solar plunge- do it! They did a fantastic job- very careful and thorough, and they're happy to have you help if you want to learn how it's all done. Jim Bristow's company is Bristow Enterprises and can be reached at jameseb63@yahoo.com. Larry Owens can be reached at: Lowens2@earthlink.net

Jeremy did a fantastic job too- he managed to fit everything into our utility room, including moving one of our cabinets to make room for the expansion tank without even taking the stuff out of it! His system works flawlessly. On sunny days lately, the temperature of the incoming liquid is over 190 degrees. The way the system works is that when the temperature on the roof is slightly warmer than inside the house, a pump automatically turns on that pumps ethylene glycol through copper pipes that are inside the glass vacuum tubes on the roof. The hot glycol gets pumped down to a heat exchanger inside our solar water heater, which is connected to our regular electric water heater. If our solar water tank's water is over 120 degrees, the electric one (which draws from the solar tank) doesn't even have to come on. Over the summer, I doubt we'll be using any electricity for hot water at all!

Here Jeremy explains the solar water vacuum tube system to our son Matiah. To watch video of this, download Bob's powerpoint.

Check out this Solar Car by Mike Nelson! These pics and video clips were taken at Shoreline Solar's Renewable Energy Fair June 4, 2005.

Joelle from Climate Solutions is a kid again! Here she is in motion...

And here's Captain Baba giving a live demo!

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