Solar tour was today, We had our 34 solar panels, skystream windturbine, geothermal, 400 gallon water collection and the Chevy Volt.

Bee keeping

Our first hive waiting for a colony of bees from a split. The wind comes in from the west and we put up a fence to block the wind for winter. This was done last year June 10th 2010.

Geothermal

The Hole Deal connected and sealed all the wells to make them pressure tight.

Last year we had Bratcher Heating and air came out an install a geothermal. I lost the pictures of the drilling of the wells but it was very muddy. They drilled down 160 feet in four places approx 10 feet apart. The Hole Deal did the drilling and attaching all the wells tubing together to go in to the crawl space.

Solar Tour

Tomorrow is the National Solar Tour. We were left off of the booklet but we are going to participate. We are trying to put together information to distribute.
I am looking into getting a meter to be able to keep track of the wind turbine energy generation. I will be taking out the quick disconnet from the back yard and putting in the meter.

High winds and cold temperatures.

Now that we are in the coldest of the Illinois winter with some pretty high winds like we all know and love here, the turbine is stalling. We did have someone already install a new soft ware to make the skystream not stall at 32 degrees F. Now it stalls at 19. We contacted Southwest wind and they are working on the problem and will let us know when a new software/hardware solution has been made. We are not looking forward to bringing the turbine down and may get a bucket truck to do the install.

Winter in Illinois and solar panels

We found out today that the panels don't generate anything with a thick coating of snow. Our roof is about 42 degrees pitch so you can't stand on it in the summer time with out having ropes so it's very difficult to climb up on a 10/10 roof and remove snow off of the panels. We bought a extention rod with a squeegy on it to stand on a ladder and pull the snow down. This works well if the snow is light. We had a large snow fall and was almost impossible to clear. After we did get the snow off the power gernerated was even greater than ever. I think the reflection and the cool temperatures warranted this. We did have a second row of panel on the opposite side of the house and the snow just fell off of them.