concrete curing

The concrete has been curing for 14 days now and will have 14 days to go. No tower yet, but we're hoping that it will come soon. This picture doesn't do justice to the actual mass of this foundation. The concrete is 4 feet deep by 7 foot square. The bolts are actually 3 1/2 feet long and 5/8 inch in diameter.The l 1/2 inch conduit displayed is for the electical wire. We plan to landscape the area around the foundation with either grass or some kind of ground cover.

Here is the concrete truck right on time. Jay Reynolds' truck will mix the concrete at the site, no waste. Jay is from Mansfield Illinois, Mid State Mobile Concrete, Inc.
We start the pour with Jay's father at the chute. Make sure the pour is done slowly enough that the j-bolts do not shift.













Herschel is using the vibrator to disipate all the air and get the concrete to flow to all the areas.


The forms are almost full, and we are starting to screed to get the concrete level.






Herschel and I now start the finishing of the top and edges.

Rena adds the finishing brooming to the finished concrete.

Here is the foundation all formed up and ready for the bolts to be placed. The 5/8 rebar is 3 inches off the bottom and 3 inches away from the top of the forms. We placed the 1 1/2 inch conduit for the wiring that will come out about 1 1/2 feet down . I placed rebar from the bottom to the top mat to make it so that it was suspended. I had to place 2x4 blocks on each side to keep the top mat centered.


Here are the j-bolts attached to the template. The top of the j-bolts will be 8 inched above the finished foundation.










Here I am in the hole securing the j-bolts so they won't move ( or move much), when the concrete is poured.

Upgrades on the Skystream complete

This is the Skystream windturbine being upgraded with new softwear and testing the radio frequency remote. It will set approximately 50.6 feet in the air so we are hoping all the upgrades are done and we won't have to bring the tower down to do any work on it for at least a year. We plan to purchase a radio frequency monitoring device later to track our energy production. The sky stream information can be found at: http://www.skystreamenergy.com/skystream/

Here are the
Technical Specifications
Model: Skystream 3.7
Rated Capacity: 1.8 kW; 2.4 kW peak
Weight: 170 lbs / 77 kg
Rotor Diameter: 12 ft / 3.72 m Swept Area: 115.7 ft2 / 10.87 m2
Type: Downwind rotor with stall regulation control
Direction of Rotation: Clockwise looking upwind
Blade Material: Fiberglass reinforced composite Number of Blades: 3
Rated Speed: 50-325 rpm Tip Speed: 66-213 ft/s / 9.7-63 m/s
Alternator: Slotless permanent magnet brushless Yaw Control: Passive
Grid Feeding: Southwest Windpower inverter 120/240 VAC 50-60 Hz
Braking System: Electronic stall regulation with redundant relay switch control
Cut-in Wind Speed: 8 mph / 3.5 m/s Rated Wind Speed: 20 mph / 9 m/s
User Control: Wireless 2-way interface remote system
Survival Wind Speed: 140 mph / 63 m/s Sound: 45 decibels @ 40 ft / 12 m.


The True performance of the wind turbine doesn't really take off till it wind speed gets around about 15- 20 mph were it then generates the 2.4 kwh.

Rebar and foundation forms

Here are the 5/8 inch rebar, cut to length to fit 3 inches away from the top and bottom of the tower foundation. This is one of the two rebar mesh that is 78 inchs square with 7 inch intervals between each bar. The top forms are constucted of 2x8's to make the top level at 4 feet in depth. The template will be set later, but here it is placed to give us an idea of where the tower will sit in the yard and where the deadman and gin pole will fall on the back side of the foundation.

With Kevin on the backhoe he starts to make our 7 foot by 7 foot by 3 1/2 foot hole.

Here's Herschel cutting some of the tree roots, after the backhoe started the hole.






Here is Rena in her rough cut hole. Now, all we need to do is a little shaving of the sides of the hole and making the edges as close to 7x7 as possible.

And there it is, though it doesn't look like much. It will be filled with 81/2 yards of 4000 psi concrete.

Digging for the water

For the wind turbine project, first I dug the 4 1/2 foot hole to monitor the water table. I dug it 3 foot wide just in case we could have gone down 10 ft to use a pier (column) foundation base. I had to cut a lot of tree root to get there. Water started to pool at 4 1/2 feet so we decided that a mat (cube) foundation would be better given our shallow water table.

Finished product

All 18 panels are up and generating up to 3600 watts/h of power. Stay tune for the next project, the wind turbine. Our maximum output has been 3400 watts/h and we have an average of 20 Kw/

day on sunny days and 10 Kw /day on cloudy days.

In order to get credit from Ameren for the surplus electricity that we can't consume, we had to sign an Interconnect Agreement. Our local Ameren web site will give you details of who to contact and requirements needed. http://www.ameren.com/ENVIRONMENT/ADC_EV_WindSystemsRequirements.asp

We also went to the Depatement of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for information on the solar energy rebate program.

http://www.illinoisbiz.biz/NR/rdonlyres/10C37851-6A33-492C-A8BC-88FE356CACCA/0/FY07SolarEnergyRebateGuidelines.pdf

Everything wired and ready to generate power

Sunny Boy connections were made by Dave. I recommend either a proffesional installer or certified electition perform this step. We only had one positive and one negative coming in from the combiner box. But if we were going to have only 3 stings of 7 or less panel the Sunny Boy could have accomodated it this way. The power out on the Sunny Boy has two wires coming from the L1 and L2 to the A/C disconnect box, then to a 30 amp breaker in the breaker panel. The neutral and ground go through the A/C disconnect and into the breaker panel to the grounding/neutral bus bar.

Combiner box and panel up

Here is Jarred (Dave son), getting ready to place the combiner box and wire all the panels together. He also added grounding lugs to each of the rails and grounded it to the combiner box. There are three fuses in the combiner box with each string(row of panels) wired to each of the fuses. All the power is still D/C and combines all the strings to one single power line that runs down the side of the house into the D/C disconnect and in to the sunnyboy. The wires that are used to connect the panels to the combiner box are 10 gauge outdoor rated. There are wire clips that can be attached to the underside of the panels that hold the wires off the roof if needed. The wires have a male (+) side and Female (-)side that are easily connected and water tight.

Sunnyboy placed and wired

Sunny Boy inverter:

( http://www.sma-america.com/) is mounted on an exterior wall next to the meter and DC disconnect box. The Sunny Boy is a 6000 kw system and weights in at 84 lbs. The Sunny Boy has directions with it to show how to mount it. It has a T bracket that mounts to a wall stud, then the Sunny Boy is hoisted and placed onto the tab of the T bracket. A lag bolt is screwed into the bottom hole of the Sunny Boy and T bracket. The DC disconnect has a wider space between the wire connections to prevent arcing. The positive wire goes to the disconnect and the negative and ground go directly into the Sunny Boy.

first row of panels are up.

We're finished with the first row of panels. The wiring of the panels is pretty simple. The panels have a positive and negative end that have male/ female connectors. One panel's negative end connects to the next panel's positive end until reaching the end or the 7th panel which ever comes first. The negative end connects into the combiner box to the ground bus bar. The positive end will go into the combiner box and connect to the fuse. If you are only using up to 3 series of panel rows, you can connect directly to the Sunny Boy inverter. There is a small grounding clip that goes between each of the panels that fits on the top mounting clamp. At the end of the panel a grounding clamp needs to be placed to fasten the grounding wire that goes into the combiner box and clamp onto the grounding bus bar. Each panel has 4 top mounting clamps, two on each side of the panels that a nut is secured onto the the bolt that is in a channel on the top of the rail. The first and last panels on the outsides are only holding the one panel on, but all the ones in the middle secure adjacent to each other.

Panels going up

Here I am taking up one of the Sanyo panels and handing it to Dave. We have 18 panels that are rated at 200 watts per panel that are wired in series to the combiner box that will be attached to the roof. Each of the panels weight in at about 35 lbs. We first got all the panels up on the roof for the first row before they started to bolt them on. The panels can go into a series up to a maximum of 7, we only did 6 due to the length of our roof and the rail that we purchased. These rails can be joined together to make a long continuous row or cut if needed.

Solar panel rails.

June 8th, (while were having a garage sale!) Dave Merrill and his son came to install the solar array. Since our roof is a 10/12 pitch, (approximately 42 degrees), they used ropes tied onto the trees on the opposite side of the house and then to themselves to place all the rails and solar panels on the South side of the roof. I had to go into the attic to make sure all the rafters were at the correct distances. They place all the L brackets into the roof and sealed them with caulk. This picture shows the solar panel rails going up. The Uni-Rack system has a bolt that slides into the rail and a nut secures the rail to the L bracket. Each of our rails are 18 feet long which will accommodate 6 panels across. The rails are spaced with 1/4 of the length to the top and bottom of the rail and 1/2 the length between the rails in the middle.