Tag Archives: monitoring

New SBS Solar PV Customer Profile

Customer Name, location, system size:
Keegan Eisenstadt, Rattlesnake Valley, Missoula, Montana, 3450 watt solar PV system

What turned you on to Solar?

My father was a solar energy engineer in the 70s-80s in New Mexico.  They have had water heating panels on their house since then.  Additionally, my own work at ClearSky Climate Solutions is related to changing the course of climate change – which is predominantly driven by human demands for energy.  The clear need for more distributed generation of power from renewable sources is the most important element to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, and leaving a more stable world to my children.  Solar is a great way for me to practice what I preach, and also get a great price on power for my house!

What brought you to SBS?

SBS is an innovative, Missoula company that is looking at a holistic approach to analyzing and reducing energy use (and greenhouse gas emissions) of planned and existing structures.  My company works to mitigate carbon footprints with its clients, and a linkage to SBS was a natural for us.  Once I started learning more about what SBS does, I realized that I needed them to install a system on my home.  The solar system install team at SBS proved to be smart, capable and thorough.  I also think they are genuinely as excited about my system as I am!!!  I know they log into my system’s internet monitoring pages to see how it is performing, not daily as I do (which is great fun!), but at least weekly.

Racking system in, panel get ready!

What were your goals for this system?

My goals for the system were threefold: 1) make my house a laboratory for how to mitigate climate change with distributed generation of renewable power (which is something I have thought about, talked about, and worked towards for years), 2) give me a better-than-market price on electricity – which it will certainly do, and 3) provide an educational/outreach opportunity for my community to see just how easy it is to make your own power!

The financial incentives available right now for installing domestic alternative energy systems are good: 30% federal tax credit, $500/tax payer state tax credit, NorthWestern Energy grants, and low interest loans available.  My system will be financially paid off in 10 years, using a 4% fixed loan from federal stimulus money.  The system payback, from the energy created will be between 8-12 years, depending upon how fast prices for energy rise, and the panels on my system have a 25 year warranty.  So, my house will make roughly 1/3 of it’s power for free from about year 10 until 25.  That’s a good power bill!

Josh setting the first panel. Check out the nice lines on those racks and micro-inverters.

What do you like best about your system?

Actually, I’m surprised by this answer.  I had no idea how much more aware of energy use in my house I would become.  I now see/feel the house using energy….literally with the real-time monitoring tools that are part of the installation.  I turn on the stove, microwave, the stereo and I can see the kilowatts used jump.  It is amazing……I know that the mot

or in my refrigerator uses about 95 kW, that a big light fixture in the living room is 225 kW, that the microwave and clothes dryer are huge energy HOGS.  Frankly, I wasn’t really aware of those things before.  I never really internalized the energy demand of things in my house that way.  Even being interested in these things, I hadn’t internalized them in a tangible way.  It is such a surprise, and I am really enjoying it.  I’m sure in time, I will be happier with the cost savings….but right now, I am learning a lot and feeling great about it!

We just finished installing a 3450 watt solar PV system in the Rattlesnake where we employed 16 Enphase micro inverters. Micro inverters offer several advantages over more conventional string inverters.

Micro-inverters, monitoring and mountains...

Each solar module power production is optimized individually so little module mismatching occurs.  As well, if one module is shaded from a nearby tree, this one module will have reduced output, not the entire series string of modules as with the larger string inverters.  This advantage alone makes a huge difference but the pluses don’t end here.

The Enphase engineers designed one of the coolest monitoring programs found in the PV world.  Each individual module reports its power output over the existing AC output wiring to your in home computer or with internet service, this data is directed to the company’s website where current and cumulative data is displayed and stored.

A good graphic says a thousand words so if you are interested check out this link to the Enphase monitoring examples.

For more information on Solar or to talk with Dan:

Dan Brandborg
NABCEP certified Solar installer dbrandbog@sbslink.com

Micro Inverters, Monitoring and Mountains, oh my!

We just finished installing a 3450 watt solar PV system in the Rattlesnake where we employed 16 Enphase micro inverters. Micro inverters offer several advantages over more conventional string inverters.

Racking system in, Panel get ready!

Each solar module power production is optimized individually so little module mismatching occurs.  As well, if one module is shaded from a nearby tree, this one module will have reduced output, not the entire series string of modules as with the larger string inverters.  This advantage alone makes a huge difference but the pluses don’t end here.

Josh setting the first panel. Check out the lines on those racks and micro-inverters.

The Enphase engineers designed one of the coolest monitoring programs found in the PV world.  Each individual module reports its power output over the existing AC output wiring to your in home computer or with internet service, this data is directed to the company’s website where current and cumulative data is displayed and stored.

A good graphic says a thousand words so if you are interested check out this link to the Enphase monitoring examples.  http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/BxqT67#.

Micro Inverters, Monitoring and Mountains.

PS – don’t those snowy spring peaks just look great in the distance?  It sure is nice to be working Solar in Montana.

Dan Brandborg
SBS Solar guru
dbrandbog@sbslink.com

Testing TED

They say that knowledge is power and in an attempt to expand my own knowledge and conserve power (literally) I recently installed an energy monitoring device at my home.  This monitor is named TED and since his installment in our home, my wife and I have become quite fond of him.  TED is short for The Energy Detective and true to its name the device has the ability to shine a clear light on how electrical energy is consumed in our home.

SBS purchased two of the TED 5000 devices to try out and see how well they functioned and whether they could be of service to our clients.  The package came with two sets of current transformers, an MTU device, a gateway to route data to a home’s wireless network and a remote display.  The current transformers (CTs) clip over wires delivering power to home electrical circuits and through the magic of magnetic induction register the current moving through the wires.  The MTU sends information gathered to the remote display and to the gateway which allows it to be accessed through an intranet connection on a home computer.

The remote display is a great tool for checking on the instantaneous electrical consumption in the home at any point in time.  You can use it to watch the draw of particular appliances as you turn them on and off while following the numbers on the live dashboard (expressed as kWs, dollars, and pounds of emitted CO2).  It’s quite fascinating in a sort of morbid way.  (Oh that clothes dryer sucks the juice more than I ever imagined!)  The internet option that comes with the TED 5000 allows data collected about energy consumption to be logged and displayed as a series of graphs and tables.  It has the ability to learn certain load profiles and keep a tally of the energy consumption of that particular load.

Our Friend TED - the 5000 model

Long story short…I’ve learned some very revealing facts about how we use energy in our home.  For instance, I used to fret considerably about the energy gobbled up by our well pump.  What I’ve learned is that while it does draw significant power (1.5 to 2.2 kW) its run time is short enough that its overall energy consumption is small compared to other devices in the home.  As mentioned earlier, the clothes dryer is an energy hog of grand proportion and now our outdoor clothes line is gaily festooned with laundry full time come rain or shine.

My load profile shows the steady staccato punctuation of our cycling refrigerator and has definitely sharpened my resolve to bite the bullet and purchase an Energy Star Rated appliance.  More than ever we are careful with lights, the TV, even the coffee maker.  It lends new significance to all the little energy services we tend to take for granted.

Another nice feature of the TED 5000 is its ability to export data to the internet and display it on the power gadget on my Google search page.  I now know even when I’m at work when the dishwasher is running or laundry is being dried.  It’s not my desire to become the “Big Brother” of my own household, but it is a nice feeling to look at the graph and see a nice flat profile.

my usage over the day.

Here’s a the graph from my Google power gadget showing our power consumption over the last 36 hours.  The double humped peaks are our dishwasher (an Energy Star rated device by the way) and the tall spike at about 4 o’clock yesterday was a brief episode with the clothes dryer.  See the teeth at the bottom of the graph?  Our refrigerator takes a bite out of our energy budget.

So you can see the impact TED’s presence has on our awareness.  Maybe ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power- the power to conserve.  Now I know that for us an 11 kWh day is a pretty good one while  17 kWhs feels pretty indulgent!  TED is a good guy…but he’s brutally honest.  If you decide to bring him into your house he’ll certainly give insights to the grid.