Today the guys picked up from where they left off yesterday, prepping the South and East facing roof for the solar panel rails. I have a ton of respect for these guys, I’ve been up on my roof and it’s not something for the faint of heart, over 35′ at the apex and they were working without a net so to speak.
These guys are fantastic, they are electricians, installers and from what I learned today, roofers, they literally have to take the roof tiles out, screw down the custom stand-off’s for the panels, cut the roof tiles to fit and re-install them, pretty impressive, oh and I just found out they are also painters, they asked me for the color of my home so they can purchase the color to paint up the conduit that will run down the side of my house, this is actually an HOA requirement but they could opt to have me do it at my expense.
Here are some pics from today’s work, the panels arrive on site tomorrow, 54 * 205 watt panels for a whopping 11-thousand watts of pure green power!
Today was the big day, the solar panel install began today, the installers arrived at 8am and started work on installing the dual inverters, the PV generation meter and cut off switches as well as some preliminary work in the main house electrical panel.
Day 2 will include more wiring and interconnecting the system to the house panel and depending on progress may also include mounting the roof rails where the panels will be mounted to.
Here are some of the pics from today’s work, clicking any will take you to the album.
Me and a few of the boys from Motorola had an outing tonight and got a chance to enjoy the festivities in Glendale at the 2010 BCS Fiesta Bowl. TCU and Boise State came in both undefeated and I sided with Boise State since they wear Orange, my favorite color is Orange and my beloved Miami Hurricanes also wear Orange, thankfully they won! Final Score 17 to 10.
From my family to yours may 2010 be the year that turns it all around for everyone, stay safe and welcome to 2010!
My resolutions for 2010:
1. To continue my trek to being GREEN, solar panels are just the start, I’m making a difference!
2. To finally get some travel time and visit family in Florida!
3. To continue to be the best dad I can possibly be!
The story behind this video is amazing, if you’ve not yet seen it, it was produced by an independent film maker in Uruguay for a scant 300 dollars (read that again – 300 dollars) he has since been offered 30 million to produce a full length feature! What a great story!
Today is 5 years to the day of my migration to Phoenix, a 2300 mile trek from Orlando with 2 SUV’s, 3 cats, 1 infant and stops in New Orleans, San Antonio and Las Cruces.
In all I don’t look back, I figure that people spend their entire lives hoping to retire to places like Florida and Phoenix, I lived in Florida for almost my entire life and aside from the hurricanes, humidity, bugs the size of kittens and the fact that barely anyone who lives there is actually from there, it’s a great place!
But there was an attraction to Phoenix ever since my first visit here on business back in 1996, and I’m very happy to call this place home.
Like I tell everyone, if you can handle 90 degree’s of HELL, the rest of the year is really amazing, with so much to do and even more just a few drive hours away.
My footage made air on ABC15! This aired on tonight’s 6 O’Clock news and made a web-hit as well. I love this event, this year I even chipped in 30 bucks to buy a little girl a helmet and sneakers to go with her new bike that she got as part of the event!
For several months I’ve been wondering whatever happened to an old friend that I had the opportunity to meet while working at Ace Music in Miami back in the early 90’s, tonight while doing a Google I was shocked to learn that he had died, just last month.
Alan Ogg was a backup center for the Miami Heat and played on the team as a backup to Ronnie Seikaly. Alan became a good friend of myself and my manager Alan Pitter after coming into the store and purchasing some recording gear. He then very generously offered both Alan and I, who were huge basketball fans, his extra seats for the home games.
The video below is from the 1992 NBA Playoffs game 3 in Miami, the Heat were already down 2 and were about to be eliminated. Alan again generously offered both of us his extra seats and we sat with the other players families to watch the game.
After the game Alan’s wife Anita told us to stay in our seats and she would come get us, when she did Alan met us near the players tunnel and said come with me and line up in the hallway outside the players families green room.
The reason he had us do this was because the Chicago Bulls had to walk down this hallway to leave the arena and coming down the hall you could see (and I still remember this vividly) MJ and Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and of coarse Coach Phil Jackson as well as the rest of that seasons NBA Champion Chicago Bulls.
Here is a highlight from that game, where my old friend # 53 takes a shot at MJ.
I just received the blueprints for my solar power system which means, the design of my PV system is complete! In the end, the roof allows for 17 panels on my southern roof over my garage which are the bread and butter of the system, especially during the winter months when the sun is lower and in the southern sky, combined with 37 panels on my eastern roof which provide for true sun-up to sun-down solar generation!
The 54 Evergreen 205 watt panels will generate 11,070 watts of power at peak generation or basically exceeding my power consumption during daylight hours to where I will not be purchasing any power from APS if the sun is shining. Thanks to the design, I will be pushing excess power onto the grid where APS will be giving me a credit for every kilowatt that I supply to them that they can in return sell back to other users under their green energy program, so in the end everyone wins!
Now we move to the permitting phase, followed by the install phase early next year, if the timeline holds, this system will be up and running by March 2010 and I’ll be living off the grid, goodbye 500 dollar electric bills!
Till the next update and as always, follow the progress on the SOLAR page link above.
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