CSA Week 3 - Maharishi Vedic City Organics

This is one great CSA! I'm really impressed with the quality and taste of the vegetables provided each week. The vegetables are also clean, dirt free, and healthy. I don't think it is possible to get vegetables of this quality and freshness anywhere else at this time of the year -- thank you MVCCSA!
Time to upgrade from 2.5 cu. ft. refrigerator to a 3.3...

(there were a few more carrots, but they disappeared before I could get out my camera ;-)

Batteries! Let there be power!

Yesterday, Monday December 14th, 2009, was the long-awaited battery day. Haddington and I met the FedEx Freight semi down on 175th. The wind was blowing and I think it was about 20 degrees. Luckily my John Deere compact tractor managed the 1150# total weight without any problem, though I knew it wouldn't have had I not added my 5' rotary tiller to the back for counter weight.

Based on a CAD drawing I provided, Nelson LaFrancis and Matt Havelka machined a bunch of solid copper battery interconnects. They look beautiful and make for a much cleaner and electrically more sound installation. They have been positioned on the insulated base of what will become a vented battery box.

Here's a close-up of the first few batteries. The Concorde PVX-9150T (915AH) batteries have two positive and two negative poles on each of the 2 volt cells. This is designed for high current draw situations. But while my situation isn't high current draw, electrically-speaking, this is a preferred wiring.

Here's a photo of the current state of affairs in my battery room. Obviously still more to do, but we're getting close... You can see on the left side my inverter, charge controller, DC and AC disconnects, etc. On the right is the Bergey XL.1 wind turbine controller.

Here's a straight-on shot of the inverter, charge controller, and disconnects. Not quite finished yet...

Here's a photo of the Bergey XL.1 wind turbine controller, cover off:

And finally for today, the 1800 watt dump load. Essentially, when the batteries are fully charged and the wind turbine is still creating power, the controller dumps the excess power to a "dump load" -- in this case resistor heater elements. Hopefully they will raise the temperature in the battery room, once all of the walls are up...

I didn't finish the battery installation and setup until after midnight. This morning, Tuesday, December 15th, I turned on the inverter and switched over from grid power to my own power system. Yeah!

Solar Array

On about the 10th of November Nelson LaFrancis and Matt Havelka brought out the solar array rack they fabricated and welded it on to a 5" pipe donated by Jack Eastman (thanks again, Jack!). The design for the rack is Nelson's, and it has an infinitely adjustable tilt angle, controlled by an extended adjustable tractor link. It works quite well -- now I just have to calibrate it!

The array is composed of six Sharp NT175U1 175Watt panels, wired into three strings of two, for a total of 1050 watts of power. I did check on the power one day around lunch time and was surprised to see a reading of 1141 watts, so needless to say I was pleased!

The panel wiring goes to a Midnight Solar MNPV3 combiner box, which contains three 12 amp breakers and a lightning arrestor. The PVC pipe that takes the wiring from the combiner to underground also contains a #4AWG braided copper ground wire that connects to an 8' x 5/8" ground rod buried near the base of the pole supporting the array.

The wiring goes from the combiner to an additional breaker in the battery room and then on to an Outback MX-60 MPPT charge controller. The MX-60 maximizes adjusts the charging voltage and current for maximum benefit to the batteries.

The wiring goes in a trench and then comes up along the outside of my machine shed, which contains a 9' x 5' battery room, which houses all of the batteries, electronics, and breakers (photos to follow).

Much thanks to Nelson and Matt for their fine work on this rack, and for Nelson's outstanding engineering efforts. Now... for that adjustable high wind bracket...

Here is a backside photo of the rack with panels mounted. The "C" clamp and 5 gallon bucket are being used to determine the proper weight of a counter balance.

Homestead, showing solar panels on left, shed, cabin, and turbine in the background:

Bergey XL.1 Wind Turbine

view looking SE. Bergey XL.1 1KW turbine on 65' tower:

view looking NW from cabin:

The tower raising was November 3, 2009. Over the prior weekend I finally finished all of the prep work, and realized it was ready to go up. Monday night I checked out the weather forecast on NOAA.gov and realized that the next day, Tuesday, November 4th, was the last calm day for the next week or so, so I decided to raise the tower on Tuesday. Nelson LaFrancis and Matt Havelka showed up shortly after 1, and Haddington O'heart showed up a while later. We did a test raising without the turbine, so we could adjust all of the guy wires, and make sure everything went up smoothly. Then we put the turbine on the tower, and raised it. It was after dark when we finally got it up and secured -- whew! It was a scramble, but everything went smoothly. I had decided on using a grip hoist (http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200342810_200342810)
instead of a winch, but it worked very well and was less costly than a winch -- and, as it doesn't stay attached, it will be stored in the shed and probably will find other uses. The grip hoist worked really well, but had to be cranked smoothly to prevent jerking the tower and turbine.

view looking up. Tower is 65' tall (six 10' segments, and one 5' segment), with 4 guy wires (3/16") connected at 20, 40, and 60' heights. I have two additional segments, but the location I selected necessitated the 65' limit -- that kept my cabin out of the "fall zone." The tower is a "TallTower" by NRG Systems that I bought on e-Bay from the same seller who sold me the turbine.

This photo shows the tower base. Basically a pad of concrete 2' x 2' x 14" with rebar reinforcement and four "j" bolts wired to the rebar protruding above the concrete surface. The two pieces of 2x4 sticking up at an angle were used to brace a temporary 10' mast that raised the grip hoist cable into the air to start the gin pole raising process. Note the #4AWG braided copper wire connecting the tower base to an 8' ground rod. You can also see the PVC elboe that takes the power wires (6AWG 2 conductor with 10AWG ground in a direct burial tray cable format) into the trench.

I initially planned to screw the 5' earth anchors into the ground. But the clay was so dense that I quickly decided that using my backhoe to dig holes and filling them with concrete was the way to go. I dug holes 4 1/2' deep for each of the anchors, made 3/8" rebar cages, and poured 3000# concrete into the holes, consuming 3 3/4 cubic yards of concrete. The driver, Marc Abbott, from Shipley Ready Mix in Fairfield, was gracious enough to navigate the sloped site with his mixer truck and back right up to the holes (customer service like this wins repeat business.) Luckily the earth was dry and hard, and no impressions were left.

Connecting to each earth anchor are two equalizer plates fabricated by Nelson LaFrancis, with 1/2" bolts, connecting to 1/2" x 6" turnbuckles. Extra cable is circled back into a safety loop through the top cable clamp, and #4AWG copper ground wire connects an 8' 5/8" ground rod to a strand of guy wire that connects the copper to each of the guy wires. Remaining to be done is to add a safety loop preventing the turnbuckles from loosening under vibration.

The grip hoist connected between the earth anchor and the gin pole. After getting the gin pole down, I used a 5/8" x 12" turnbuckle to connect the earth anchor to the gin pole. NRG Systems calls for a 20' gin pole for my tower size, but to simplify installation I used a 30' gin pole. The gin pole becomes a permanent part of the installation, with the guy wire equalizer plates attached directly to the gin pole. To lower tower I simply disconnect ground wire and replace turnbuckle with grip hoist. I also am leaving two 1/8" guy wires that I used to stabilize the gin pole. Hopefully the deer, dogs, and other wild life, including people) won't trip on them...

Much thanks to Nelson, Matt, and Haddington, who made this raising possible, and to Jack Eastman for his encouragement and sage advice. Special thanks to Nelson LaFrancis for his expert engineering, experience, and extra-ordinary common sense, and most appreciated, his warmth and friendship. (I'm still marvelling at how he started a cross-threaded bolt and straightened it out within 1/2 a revolution...)

CSA Week 2 - Maharishi Vedic City Organics

Normal pick-up for the CSA is on Thursday, but their refrigerated truck was in the shop, and the weather was just too cold on Thursday, so pick-up was moved to Saturday, December 12th.

It's amazing!

I want a four season greenhouse...

CSA Week 1 - Maharishi Vedic City Organics

Here are a few photos of the December 3, 2009, produce:

The taste of everything has been truly delicious!