Check it out: Our Farm is Solar Powered!Take a look at how we have upgraded systems and continue to improve with new technology in order to decrease our footprint and increase our impact! If this has interested you in getting solar panels for your home, you may want to check out websites such as https://rooftopsolar.us/learn/solar-loan/ to see about affordability so you too can reap the benefits. BFarm reaches net-zero over the year with our latest solar installation!7-25-20 Sonlight Power, a Christian nonprofit working to install solar equipment on a global scale, joined caretakers to upgrade our system once again. On Monday, Clay Luna from Sonlight, Caretakers Gemma, Raine, and Tori, and Sonlight volunteer Kyle installed 36 panels to the roof. Meanwhile Will, Eric, and Summer Servant Pat ran conduit from the roof to the Farmhouse basement. Over the rest of the week, the team installed 2 panel inverters, 1 battery inverter, an energy management system, and lots more conduit and wired the boxes. This latest installation pushes us to net-zero to the grid over the course of the year and contains a solar-charged battery which will provide more security during inevitable power outages. Other solar powered farms should consider something like outback power batteries as they mean that energy can still be used without sunlight. Check out SonLight’s videos of the project here.
The Farm upgrades our solar hot water system!8-20-19 During our solar hot water “blitz” over four days in August, we installed six heating panels and three storage tanks to supply the Retreat House and Caretaker Residence with solar hot water. With special help from B-Farm friend Jeff Bohrer, Caretakers and Summer Servant Pat hooked up a system that pumps water through outdoor panels and then through Solar Power InstallationGet a front-row seat to the 2009 installation of our solar panels by watching this video. Interested in our system? Click here to see our online energy tracking with the “Sunny Boy” portal. * Our tracking system is temporarily disabled due to a lightning strike. You can look at our record which goes through April 2019. We will install a new tracking device with the installation of new solar panels, getting us to 100% solar. Our Photovoltaic (Solar-Electric) Panels
Our Solar Hot Water
The Farm Goes Solar! . . . Again!4-6-16 Now that solar prices have decreased dramatically, we were able to install another 7.32 kW of photovoltaic (solar-electric) panels to increase our total system to 13.56 kW of renewable electricity generation and cover 2/3 of our total usage! Thanks to local installer Saving Sunshine, Gary & Nellie Holliday, for hooking us up. If this is something that has interested you, and you might be looking for an industrial electrician denver way, we highly recommend biting the bullet and going for it! We will get to 100% solar in the future! Solar Hot Water Added! 10-28-14 With help from WV native and resident James Richards at SunBank, the Caretaker Residence solar hot water is in service! The system consists of 5 40-gallon tanks which will provide domestic hot water (DHW) and radiant floor heat for the Caretaker Residence. Thanks to Calvin Elmore for plumbing support and Don Mohler for tying the system into our floor heat. We have plans to extend the system to the Retreat House in the future. The Farm Goes Solar! 7-24-09 We are happy to announce a great step on Bethlehem Farm’s journey toward alternative energy: the Farm is going solar! After a year of collecting wind data with our anemometer, we were deflated to learn that this mountaintop is not gusty enough to warrant harvesting wind energy. Shortly thereafter, we learned of an opportunity to purchase photovoltaic (PV) panels at a 20% discount. PV panels convert the sun’s energy into clean electricity and will reduce our reliance on the coal-fired electricity that destroys our West Virginia mountains. Thanks to proceeds from our Winter Benefit in Chicago and donations from newsletter appeals, we were able to seize this time-limited opportunity and purchase PV panels to cover 25-30% of our electricity usage. We still need your help to cover the cost of the system’s installation in order to put these solar panels to work. Additionally, those in the know have asked us to get some ideas regarding Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) software that could help us undergo digital transformation without any hassle. We have also been told that with EDA it could be possible to monitor the real-time status of our solar panels’ energy production. We have also heard that this system is known for its ability to detect and analyze malfunctions of solar energy equipment. Who knows, maybe someday we will use this technology! Preparing the farmhouse for solar panels included installing a new roofHauling the 20′ sheets of metal up on the roof was not an easy task, but with teamwork and careful planning, the process went quickly. The roofing crew: the caretakers; our neighbor, Richard (a General Contractor), Richard’s metal cutter, Joe; our Fall Servant, Holly; and Colleen’s friend; Josh. The roof was completed in only three days! The new roof, which will last 40+ years, was then ready for the installation of the solar panels. |
