Project - Solar Power & General Update

Hello from Bonesnapper Ridge!

It's time for another general update on what has been happening here. I have a few other obligations that have come up that take away from working on Bonesnapper Ridge full-time, but I have been able to put in quite a bit of work here.

Solar Power

It turns out that not having enough power for a refrigerator is quite inconvenient. Ice is incredibly expensive, and my very small 12v cooler is not large enough to keep anything other than coffee creamer and ingredients for salads. Originally my thought was that I would just rough it for as long as needed, but after almost a year of not being able to have any foods that need to be refrigerated, it started getting to me. It's time to buckle down and get a real power setup working. I need a refrigerator. 

In my last update back in May, I wrote out a punch list of everything that needed to happen to complete this project. That list went from just after installing the PAW container, to having all the panels up and being completely done with the Solar Project. I have gone through most of the list, but it's still not 100% complete.

I am calling the container that has all of my equipment in it PAW, for Power And Water. 

Where I left off on the last update was just getting the PAW container installed, and started working on the insulated room inside the container. Here is what came next:

Trench from the House/Shop to PAW

Since all of my inverters and solar equipment is located in PAW, I need to get that power from there up to the house. It's about 170' (~51m) from PAW to the house with an elevation change of about 40' (12m). I outlined all the specs for this conductor in the post Project - The Solar Power System Design and Discussion but to summarize, I purchased 2/0 Aluminum conductor for the mains, 4awg for ground, and  CAT5e for data. 

Once I had all the conductor, I called up my buddy Drew who has an excavator and we got to work. I needed a place to terminate everything near the house and I decided on an outdoor backer board that would have my subpanel and network terminations. I put that at the back corner of the house because it will be closest to the panel in the house, and a close shot to the shop when that is built. So that is where we started.

The trench was to be 24" deep where I would put the 2" PVC conduit that would house the main power lines. Once that was in, I would fill in 12" of dirt, then lay the 1" PVC for network cabling. Here is a gallery of pics from the trenching process. 

{gallery}Power and Data Trench
Starting the Trench: The bucket is at the back corner of the house
Progress: Almost to the front porch
Progress: In the trenches
Over the Edge: Hes just starting to back down the steep hillside down to PAW
Final Stretch: It looks like he is about to take me out with the ex, but I am clear of the bucket here.

I was really excited to see this process start, but we dug right through my driveway and tore up all the nice rock I spread out earlier that year. We also successfully found the water main without breaking it! I figured we would find it the hard way, so I had materials on hand to repair it if we did break it. 

Even though the conductors were all aluminum, they were still pretty heavy once they were all laid out and taped together. It seemed like it would be really tough to pull all that wire through the conduit, so I decided to lay all the cable next to the trench on top, and then slip each 20' section of PVC over the conductors and then glue them in place. This worked out great. 

Once that was down, I backfilled the trench with about 1 foot of dirt and repeated the process with 8 CAT5e cables in a 1" PVC conduit. 

Next up was terminating the PVC connections on each end. I started up by the house since I had more work to do up there. I dug out a rectangle big enough to put a form in for concrete, picked up a couple 2 3/8" fence posts and arranged the conduits as best as I could. I had a 2" for power and 1" for data coming from PAW, but I needed to distribute that from the backer board to the house and to the shop. While setting up for concrete, I also added the conduits for the shop. They will just stub out underground, and when that project starts, I will dig them up, connect the conduits and be able to run power and data to the shop. 

At the PAW end, there was a large hole for a vent someone had previously installed. I used that to get inside the container. I picked up a weatherproof electrical box and had to attach that to a piece of steel that covered the vent hole. Drilled through the interior wall for the power, and a second hold for data. It took a bit of wrangling to get three 2/0 cables routed through, but they went!

I poured the concrete, built the backer board, installed the panels, and terminated all the wires on the house side. 

On the inside of PAW, I terminated the power into the same style panel as I put on the backer board so everything would be standardized here. In the picture below you can see the 2" PVC that has the 2/0 power and ground, and the 1" PVC for data. Right outside here, I also ran the main system ground through this conduit, to the box on the outside of PAW and into a ground stake. 

There is more to update on the solar project, but I think that's all the writing I have in me right now. 

Any thoughts or questions?

Ill write up the next segment soon, it won't be months this time, I promise! haha

Thanks for sticking around and following this project.  

-Kaleb