Unexpected sun

On my way out the door this morning I walked into our garage and was instantly startled. It was light in there! There’s normally light coming through the windows but this morning there was a bona fide sunbeam!

The front of our home faces almost due north. It turns out this is the time of year when the rising sun actually shines on the the front of our home. I hope to leave a little time tomorrow morning for snapping a few pictures during the rare moments the front of our home is illuminated in sunlight.

Fields of electrons

White Post Road solar farm in Bath, NC

White Post Road solar farm in Bath, NC


I found a page about this solar farm in Bath, NC yesterday. It quietly generates 15.5 MW over 85 acres, selling the power to Duke Energy.

Earlier this year, Duke Energy shelved plans to build another reactor at the nearby Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant. The plant property encompasses over 20,000 acres. If Duke were to build a 20,000 acre solar farm on the Shearon Harris property it could generate over 3,000 MW of safe, clean electricity: more than that produced by 3 nuclear reactors. The cost would be about $3 billion, which is 1/3rd of what just one reactor would cost to build.

While nuclear plant construction costs continue to skyrocket solar PV costs continue to plummet. Which technology does it make sense to invest in?

Inverter clue?

Over the past few days we’ve had too much gorgeous sunshine for me to let our power station go idle. I had the inverter on all day Saturday and banked about 18 kWh for the day. Sunday morning had me wishing I had shut down the inverter the night before, though, as its antics woke me up.

I was snoozing in bed around 6:52 AM when I awoke to a loud popping sound from my clock radio. Since this was about the same time the other inverter issues took place, I suspected the inverter had gone offline again.

Before I went outside, I checked the eGauge power graph. It showed power was being generated but, more than that, it showed a very strange anomaly at the time I heard my clock radio pop. All power to the house had been interrupted at that moment: it seems the inverter had malfunctioned yet again.

I let it run the full day yesterday as it seems fine once the sun gets going. I did, however, shut it down overnight last night, and noted no power anomalies.

I’m thinking now that the problem is with the inverter, specifically when the panels produce enough energy for the first time of the day to cause the inverter to resync with the grid. I wondered if the inverter isn’t syncing properly, sending a power surge through the wiring instead. At the time of Sunday’s blip, the panels were up to a mere 100 watts, which is basically nothing.

I’ll leave the inverter shut off until the Southern Energy techs can give it a good going-over. My electronics are at stake here, you know.

Action-packed Memorial Day weekend

Saturday afternoon I went for a 21 mile bike ride on the Neuse River Greenway. Afterward the family and I went to a friend’s pool party.

Sunday the family joined me on another bike ride, this one about 12 miles, lingering in Horseshoe Farm Park. We hoped my brother’s family would meet us there but they ran out of time to join us. We had fun on our own, though.

Three separate groups of people stopped me to ask about the greenways. Something about me must have identified me as the expert! I enjoy helping folks out and am now considering joining the city’s greenway volunteer program.

Today (Memorial Day) we didn’t have solid plans. I went to the dedication of Marshall Park along the House Creek Greenway and was impressed at the ceremony (military honors and all). Afterward, I rejoined the family and hoped we could get out for another bike ride. The kids weren’t interested, however, and so we went about our own projects. Kelly and Hallie picked up vegetable plants at the farmers market and we all planted them. I also sprayed Round Up on the weeds in the garden and then mowed the yard. It all looks very good now.

My day begins at 5:20 tomorrow morning, so we’ll see what kind of week it is. At least it will be a short one!

Walled gardens winning?

I took the time today to install the Tiny Tiny RSS newsreader, a replacement for the doomed Google Reader. Switching back to my own newsreader allowed me to immediately see how many feeds that I once followed have since vanished. It seems many blogs have dropped off the Internet entirely, and many of these only very recently.

Like the word “croatoan” carved in the tree that became the last word of the Lost Colony, some of these blogs left us with a “last post” entry but no real clue where they went. Is blogging dying? Are the walled gardens winning?

I have to admit myself to not posting as often as I once did. Yes, I use Facebook but only post updates there every few days. The job I took in February has sucked up much of what was once free time. And frankly, I’m saddened to see how our state legislature is now hell-bent on destroying this state. There’s not much inspiration there.

I still have a few more observations in me, though, and will post them when they’re ready (or even when they’re not ready – that’s never stopped me before!).

Power failure

Solar PV deck

Solar PV deck


Tomorrow will be two weeks since our solar panels were installed by Southern Energy Management. When we first got them, I jokingly complained on Facebook how the panels only lasted 12 hours and then quit working. Some of my friends caught on to my joke (it was nighttime) right away while others scratched their heads.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer a joke. Twice over the last week the inverter has failed with a ground fault error, indicating a wiring problem in the panel side of system. What’s more, last week the main breaker tripped, indicating a problem with the grid side of the system. A tech came out on Tuesday and wrapped tape around a nick in the AC cable’s insulation which fixed the breaker issue but the panels are still down until the ground fault gets fixed.

For anyone considering getting a solar PV system, the best advice I can provide you is to be patient. It is a long wait until anything even gets put on your roof. Then the install itself can take a couple of weeks, depending on the difficulty, weather, crew availability, and other potential setbacks. Finally, even if all the parts are supposedly in place, there still might be work to do in ironing out the kinks, as we have found out this week.

Inverter ground fault

Inverter no workie

On several days I made arrangements to work from home during this process, taking time away from the office that would have been very beneficial to me in my new position. The same work could have been accomplished in half the time had the communication and coordination been better. I don’t think my time was considered as valuable as it probably should have been.

Communication was also a problem. We got handed off to various crews who evidently don’t talk to each other. The first technician who came out to scope out the project needs didn’t tell the next technician (who ran conduit) what the plans were. The conduit guy had to start from scratch. He did a very good job, mind you, with what he had to work with but ran the conduit to the wrong place relative to the future panels. The team installing the panels replaced half the conduit and moved it further up the roof.

We were handed off to a project coordinator, which would ordinarily be a wise move and cut down on confusion but in our case was of little help. Day one of the panel install I was assured the team would only be there for “a few hours and gone by lunch.” Um, no. It took multiple days to complete the roof deck installation.

Once the gear was in place, the project coordinator scheduled an electrical inspection, which (understandably, this time) required me to be home. We needed two inspections, however: electrical and building, and a city building inspector showed up a few hours later thinking he would be doing the final on the project. By that time the SEM tech was long gone, and the inspection had to be rescheduled for this morning. The inspector required the consulting engineer to seal his building plans before the inspector would sign off on the project. I was told by SEM this was highly unusual.

Then the ground fault issue hit us last week. I let our project coordinator know about it and asked for a tech to be sent out to fix it. The tech who arrived knew nothing of the problem and had to be told by Kelly what the issue was.

Yesterday morning, I wrote the project coordinator about the latest ground fault and asked that a tech look at it today. The coordinator came out this morning for the final building inspection and, after the inspector had departed, asked to see the inverter, declared it needed fixing and that a crew would be out on Tuesday, and then left. I essentially wasted a day I could’ve spent in the office for something I could’ve accomplished with my smartphone’s camera. It was very frustrating.

Oh, and our project coordinator was not aware that our “certificate of completion” had been sent this week to the power company. If you’re the project coordinator and you don’t even know when a project you’re supposedly coordinating is complete, you might not be doing your job right.

The only bright side to this is how quickly Duke Energy Progress came out and installed our new bidirectional meter. My fellow solar PV owner, Jason Hibbets, said it took Progress Energy eight weeks to put in his meter. Ours came well within a week of filing our completion papers. That’s the way to underpromise and overdeliver!

So, what would we do differently?

Better project management. I chose Southern Energy thinking they would provide us with expert service. I’m not sure what we got was expert service. Too many pieces seemed to fall through the cracks, so to speak, to give me confidence in them. Having a real project manager would have made all the difference in this regard. There are other solar installers out there, so find one that also excels at customer service.

Better contract terms. We paid the full price near the front end of the project. The SEM salesperson told us they needed the 12-months same as cash loan signed over at the start yet the bank providing the loan stressed to pay it only at project completion. Thus our “12 months same as cash” was whittled down by two months. Also, we wrote our last check at the completion of the “material installation” stage but in hindsight should have insisted that the last payment occur only once we were fully satisfied and all inspections had been completed and passed. Dumb, dumb, dumb. You should treat getting solar PV system like closing on a house: only when you’re completely satisfied with the work should the bill get paid in full.

Overall, we’re pleased to be joining the solar revolution. We’re the envy of the neighborhood, with many neighbors contemplating their own moves to solar. No matter what promise our panels bring us, though, they’re just very expensive roof ornaments if they’re not creating electricity. The thrill of going solar will start flowing as soon as the electrons do.

Turner Power Station approved

Solar panels

Solar panels


We got this email in today from Duke Energy Progress. We got our bidirectional meter on Tuesday and are officially authorized to generate electricity!

We have received the Certificate of Completion verifying the installation of your solar PV system, and your residential meter has been exchanged with a bi-directional meter. You are fully enrolled in the Duke Energy Progress SunSense Solar PV Program effective June 2013. This 60-month commitment requires your participation on our Schedule R-TOUD, Net Meter and SSR riders in order to receive a monthly SunSense bill credit. Here’s what to expect:

Your next Duke Energy Progress bill statement will reflect your previous rate structure (i.e. Residential rate or TOU rate if previously enrolled) from the time you placed your system in service until your next meter read date. Any excess solar production will be tracked for net-metering purposes, and will be displayed as “Energy Received by Duke Energy Progress” on a bill insert.
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Dog restrictions

I was at work Friday, working my way through an increasing pile of work when I took a brief moment to check my Twitter account.

Yikes! WRAL’s Twitter feed had the headline “Raleigh considering pet ban in parks, on greenways.”

That’s just ridiculous and wrong.

The news media had latched on to a city press release that had a similarly-misleading headline: “Parks Committee Seeking Input on Possible Pet Ban in City Parks.” Though the gist of the press release was correct, the media saw “pet ban in parks” and assumed the worst.

Working as fast as I could, I tweeted back to WRAL that their headline was wrong and their story was misleading. To their credit, they promptly corrected the story but not before many, many of their Twitter followers had a tizzy.
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Raleigh police officer takes out the trash

I submitted this letter to the editor for the N&O today, hoping the word gets back to the officer involved. This 30 second interaction made my day.

As I drove south on Capital Boulevard Monday morning, I noticed a Raleigh Police officer a few cars ahead of me. Suddenly, traffic came to a halt as drivers avoided a bag of trash in the road. Though it was raining and the traffic was heavy, the officer took the time to stop, walk back to the trash, and remove it from the roadway.

It was another example of the pride and dedication shown each day by our men and women in uniform. Thank you, officer, for a job well done!

Flying spaceships

The International Space Station over Raleigh, 16 May 2013.

The International Space Station over Raleigh, 16 May 2013.


NASA’s Spot The Station email alerts tell me that the International Space Station will be sailing over the house early tomorrow morning (5:45 AM). I’ll be awake as usual and will go out to see it.

Every time I get a chance to watch the space station fly by I’m in awe all over again that we live in an age where spaceships silently sail above us – all the time. It’s pretty mind-blowing if you think about it.