Prior to entering the Solar Industry, a decision was made to learn from the ground up how energy and renewables are built & maintained. Immersion into the industry from the bottom up created an understanding of the trade issues, material characteristics & equipment behaviors before offering all inclusive services.
The process, for us, started during the Great Recession as a result of finding the most important, stable industry supporting the North American way of life. Learned experience from rebuilding utility power lines, substations and power plants in the new oil and gas rich Bakken & Chelsey oil fields made it clear that electricity will become our future.
Amazing how electricity drives everything. A great example is how the Giant Utility coal or gas burning power plants power electric pumps and control centers for all gas & oil well fields . Electricity from these plants also power the pumps that Frack the deep rock and soils that bare new found oil reserves in the controversial fracking process. Electricity is then used to separate and refine the resources out of the fracking chemicals & waters recovered from those well sites.
Did you know that it takes as much as 12-32kw to pull one gallon of oil out fo the ground and then refine ONE GALLON of gasoline. (the range comes from varying reports at different stages of refining but does not including delivery or continued well operations).
As a result we asked, “Why do we use Electricity to capture other less efficient fuels and power sources? Why not simply use the electricity itself?”
The answer: Because oil, coal and gas are an old embedded resource industry that we once knew as the “only” readily available resource and since they are a legacy of mass scale chain distributed resources of power, they have become deeply embedded in subsidized policy
As much as the argument continues with old vs. new, electricity is the power that drives the world. Gas turbine, Hydro, Geo Thermal, Hydrogen, Wind & Solar are viable and proven technologies. Yet most require a large corporation to design, operate and service in order to remain online for the masses. While there were no options feasibly available, on paper, to justified generating your own power previous to 15 years ago, things haven’t changed. Until NOW!
Enter modern Photovoltaic Solar Power. Finally, technology has caught up, bringing North America an economically & ecologically justifiable resource. Our Sun produces solar radiation 24 hours a day all around the world with no service charges or corporate rate hikes. No bi-products to recycle or dispose of. This is self fueled power we can chose to harness. This radiation penetrates our protective atmosphere, even through rain clouds offering reliable photovoltaic energy. With new technologies we can harness the suns rays, power our homes partially or completely. We can safely store this power in modern Lithium Iron Phosphate LiFePO4 batteries for night time use and/or send it to the grid for credit. Each homeowner does hold the key to decide where their power comes from and where is goes. This means Solar PV and Batteries (ESS) can even neutralize the recent NEM 3.0 utility rate hikes. Its simple clear math!
[ ex. most homes consume significant power during the 4:00-9:00p.m. time slot. For this we will use 15kwh as a baseline of utility power consumption for that time. NEM 2.0 gave you kilowatt for kilowatt daily credit for use during this time. The utility was your battery. Which means you received retail Kwh volume credits for the extra power you created each day. Power you used it during the that night.
Under NEM 3.0 the utility only gives you about .038 +/- cents credit for what you send onto the grid. and charges full TOU rates (.44-.54 cents per KW) minus the .038 +/- cents per kilowatt used. 4 months into NEM 3.0 the utilities raised their rates once again. SMUD and other smaller utilities give credits arounf .089 cents or Kwh.
By adding 15kwh of battery you store the extra power generated from your solar PV never sending it back to the grid” and then use it during the TOU peak rate period cutting the utility out of the expensive part of the bill. Based on a 15kwh TOU peak charge this saves you $2,455+/- annually meaning your batteries pay for themselves in under 5 years not considering the TAX credit! NOTE: grid tied ESS type system]
Modern Solar is both great for the environment and great for your wallet. It’s absolutely great for your independence as we’ve found most clients are going solar with energy storage purely for financial reasons. Unlike the first few decades of solar being consumed by the remote “Off Grid” rural citizens or highly focused Green Movement personalities, Solar PV Power is now the most effective and clean source available that works for everyone. Especially when offered affordably!
How are we affordable? By entering the industry from the ground up, performing pre-site inspections, designing, installing and servicing PV systems throughout Northern CA for one of the largest Solar PV providers in the state then working for one of the largest Inverter manufacturers in the world we gained insight that exposed numerous oversights by the industry. The continued learning became exciting!
NOTE: Many of the Largest Solar Installation Companies nationwide practice “inexpensive installs at expensive rates” through these oversights.)
Field experience that included reverse engineering systems of all makes and brands, trouble shooting design deficiencies by others and learning about the aging process of equipment enabled decisions to be made on quality and not purely ease of install or cost of materials. This has lead us to use Enphase as out primary manufacturer as well as lead to a path of selecting quality PV modules that have a price point to achieve the best ROI end goal while not diminishing quality and long life expectancy.
We understand what causes browning of cells & utilize techniques that not only protect against cell deterioration but even extend the life of your PV modules and the entire system.
We understand what causes false Arc Fault failures and design systems that don’t experience them.
If you have an older system experiencing PID issues we can fix most cases of that as well.
Our experience is from more than a decade of O&M services performed for the Largest Solar Fleet Companies in the world:
- Over 3307 residences serviced
- 763 and counting – inverters RMA’d (not necessarily due to manufacture defect)
- Includes: SolarEdge, SMA, Fronius, ABB/Power-One/Aurora, Kaco, Blue Planet, Solis, Magnum, Outback, Solectria, APSystems, Tyco optimizers,
In addition, troubleshooting commercial PV power plants and performing solar forensics on both installation and production related issues, learned knowledge mandates we offer clearly the best design, installation and service.