Donate to Kyle Rittenhouse

https://fightback.law/

https://www.freekyleusa.com/

Touring around Roswell

This a about as big a PV plant as I've seen.  Rows of single panels on rails, tracking from east to west.  A very large substation in the middle.

 https://goo.gl/maps/v1L7FGoR133jTTPD9

I happened upon it while on the way to visit Bitter Lake Wildlife Refuge:

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/bitter_lake/

Included in photo album:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/6bHtiWHAKMfrFgo17

is a much smaller plant just south of Roswell.  Probably less than 1000 60 cell panels, fixed facing south.

This was my second trip to Bottomless Lakes State Park.  The first, ill fated and in 1967, I completed about half a lap of the 7.7 mile road race course "Los Ochas Millas" (as it was advertised).  This trip, I did 2.5 laps letting the car do most of the driving.

Bottomless Lakes is a series of sinkhole lakes much like the ones in/near Santa Rosa also on the Pecos River but up stream.

See, also, photos of the Iron Cross memorial in Roswell:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/german-pow-iron-cross

Robert Goddard moved to Roswell in 1930 to work on rockets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard

This horrible day seems to roll around every year

 https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?n=marcia-jean-mason-mckemie&pid=159365684

A new PV production record?

 Can't be sure; have not been paying close attention.  BUT, net for 8/19/2020 according to Bluebonnet:

1) Across the Road:     305.34 kwh  ~$19

2) House                       178.69 kwh  ~$11

3) Barn/Pool                   56.51 kwh   ~$1.50

The first two are worth $.0645/kwh to me; the third, only about $.03.  Because of the lower value, I have been concentrating on increasing the first two.  The house has significant demand in this hot weather; estimated to be about -30-40 kwh.

I estimate the capacity of the three transformers to be about 400 kwh/day, about 300 kwh/day, and about 150 kwh/day.  I imagine average production is 70-80% of this unusually good day.

Los Ocho Millas

In my early racing days, I almost ran this race.  I believe my first race car was a MGA Twin Cam.  I bought the car out of Indiana with a blown engine.  "Blown" engines were very common with Twin Cams which were notorious for "sucking valves".  Without trying to resurrect the Twin Cam engine, I fitted a push rod MGA engine.  Since the fancy Dunlop four wheel disk brakes were an option on common MGAs, the car qualified for SCCA F Production class.  Standard for common MGAs were Girling disk brakes on the front and drum brakes on the rear.  Associated with the Dunlop brakes were very heavy knockoff wheels, not the common  and lighter wire wheels but disk steel.

A college friend and I pulled it from Austin to Roswell with my old rusted out 1956 Pontiac station wagon.  That car also from Indiana where road salt had induced severe rust; I think I paid $200 for it.  I had made some progress holding things together and limiting air circulation by applying galvanized sheet metal patches with sheet metal screws.  

As the name implies, it is an 8 mile course so parts of it were quite some distance from the pit area.  I rolled the car about half way through my first practice first lap.  Uninjured, we loaded back on the trailer and came home.

I think it must have been 1967 since I remember the fatal accident where a fellow racer/doctor used a pen to perform a tracheotomy on the injured driver who ultimately died at the hospital.  I was still at least a year from being out of college.

Needless to say, my parents, especially my mother, became quite apprehensive about my developing racing hobby.

I believe the car was totaled; I don't recall what became of it.  But the "tuned" engine and transmission (close ratio gearing) ended up in my first Elva Courier.

 https://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODN/RoswellDailyRecord/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=RSWDL%2F2020%2F03%2F08&entity=Ar01301&sk=16AA2312&mode=text

https://hooniverse.com/forgotten-racetrack-las-ochas-millas-bottomless-lakes-state-park/

https://www.racingsportscars.com/track/Bottomless%20Lakes.html

Those college years were hectic.  Go to class on Friday.  Drive all night Friday night to a race weekend.   150-500 miles. Get back home in the early Monday morning hours.  Make classes Monday.  Work nights the rest of the week preparing for the next race.  That's why it took me 6 years to get a degree.

One memorable long week end, probably the 4th of July, involved going to Ponca City Oklahoma maybe Thursday night, running a race there on Saturday, then pulling to Galveston all Saturday night.  With a stop in Dallas to get some parts from a fellow racer.  Then running a race in Galveston Monday after working on the car and getting in some practice on Sunday. 

Here is another interesting 60s era sports car racing site:

http://www.tamsoldracecarsite.net/index.html#Email

Racing Sports Cars is striving to document the era; data is frequently added.

https://www.racingsportscars.com/

Bluebonnet bill, 8/18/2020

 Credit for the month was $633 with accumulated credit of $2621.  Bluebonnet threatened to send me payment whenever accumulated credit reaches $1k.  But, they have not.  My monthly credits have been $600-$700 for four months.  I have not been making great strides in increasing production.  Though work and planning continues.  I did bring one more rail into production a couple of weeks ago and it should have a larger effect on the current billing period than the past.

I eagerly await the announcement of the new rate Bluebonnet will be paying for the next 12 months.  Current rate is $.0645/kwh.  If new rate is above $.06, I will proceed with plans for a new 50kw meter/transformer.  I will plan to have my accumulated credit applied to the cost of the new meter/transformer; I think that will be about $5k.

Downward spiral

 https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/california-set-pass-nations-first-wealth-tax-targeting-ultra-rich

https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-bernie-sanders-one-time-tax/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8631063/Hollywood-Apocalypse-rich-famous-fleeing-droves.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8635857/Why-NYC-WONT-survive-coronavirus-Entrepreneur-outlines-city-forever-changed.html

https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/california-dems-wealth-tax-follows-people-who-move-out-of-the-state/

UAE position

 A good synopsis of the current UAE situation.

https://www.debka.com/the-uae-israel-normalization-deal-upends-rigid-arab-conventions-on-mid-east-peace/

Another take on E/W panels

https://s93.photobucket.com/user/bcroe/library/ENERGY%20CONSERVATION/East%20West%20Facing%20Solar%20Array?sort=6&page=1

VERY nice compared to mine.  Nice and level with easy grass/weed control.  Though I imagine pretty costly with very high labor and material content.

8/1/2020

I think I'll use this post to expand on my love affair with E/W steeply sloping two faced rails.  I've had to go over the points several times to different people/groups.

I first started using single face rails, not steeply sloping, with rather random orientations.  Mainly pointed away from shading.  I've long been aware that almost any pointing direction can give 90+% of total energy as optimal pointing.   I had considered N/S rails with E panels on one side and W on the other.  I first rejected the idea because of the limited access to the microinverters which hang from the rails.  But, finally, I was swayed by the near half cost of mounting.  Using used oil well pipe, about $20 worth will support 9-10 panels on one side.  OR 18-20 panels on both sides.  So, my ground mounts can cost as little as about $1/panel.  A negative: since the lower ends of the panels sit on the ground,  the strings of panels never look straight due to ground surface variations.  I accept that negative as a good cost trade off.

I was further swayed by the need to "flatten my peak".  Even though E or W panels produce less energy than S panels, the sum of one E plus one W is considerably more than one S.  AND the through the day power curve is significantly flatter.   I typically produce more than 80% of the peak for about 9 hours during the summer.   If the peak is near the capacity of a transformer (or wiring to the transformer), total energy production capacity is increased with E/W panels.  That is, E/W panels maximize the use of the transformer and the wiring between transformer and panels.

In the good old days when Enphase M215s were going for $35 plus $15 for cable, my installed costs were about $110 per 245-250w panel.  The M125s disappeared from the market and I was forced to consider string inverters which are much more difficult to install and much more prone to "getting working right" problems.  But, the potential is for cost to be as low as about $15/panel.  That puts my cost per panel down as low as about $70 even considering the increased wiring cost for strings.  Working with string inverters and E/W panels illuminated the possibility of inverters doing "double duty".  That is using near the full inverter capacity on two sets of panels.  Producing from E panels in the mornings and the same inverter producing from W panels in the afternoons. 

A single E or W panel can be expected to produce about 1 kwh on a good day.  Under similar conditions, an optimally pointed S panel might produce 1.1-1.2 kwh.  Observed average day (over several weeks over about 100 panels) is about .7 kwh/panel/day for string inverters and .85 kwh/panel/day for M215 micro inverters.

I have recently failed to produce similar "double duty" results from micro inverters.  That is, having a single micro inverter serving both one E panel and one W.  Preliminary results are that SolarBridge inverters work fairly well while M215s work poorly.

My goal is to get a ~5 year payback by selling energy for $.06+ per kwh.  It will take a few more years to see if I can achieve that but results are so far very encouraging.  My monthly income is approaching $700 and climbing.   Investment has been $60k+.

Take away points on my E/W panels mounted on rails on one end and and resting on the ground on the other:

1) energy production is not greatly less than optimally pointed panels

2) mounting costs are minimized, indeed, mounting cost savings are huge

3) use of grid connection is maximized

8/31/2020

Yet another turn around on doing double duty with M215s.  More recent experiments indicated that the M215s may do a little BETTER than the SolarBridges.  I'm in the process of converting the first of three rails near the RV building from 18E+18W with 36 M215s to 19E+19W with 19 M215s.  Preliminary results are that the shared inverter panels are giving about 700 wh/day.