Photo Gallery
Photos are from contractor and end customer installs, using panels distributed by www.WeAreSolar.com. I must say that I am constantly surprised by the talent displayed by the people putting in these systems, particularly the homeowners.
This 60 tube, PA located, Glycol closed loop connects to a wall mounted blower unit and ties into DHW as well. Coal is the main heat source. One major goal is to turn off the coal furnace for the non-heating season and use a small electric hot water heater as backup. These two units will have no problem supplying over 90% of the DHW energy for the coal off period. System is owner designed and installed and working extremely well as reported by the customer.
This SDHW 60 tuber in VT was owner installed at a 55 Deg mounting angle. Once again, a very professional job. System uses a 110 gallon Stiebel-Eltron tank with built in exchanger, single Grundfos pump and Resol diff. controller. LET THE SUNSHINE NEW ENGLAND!!!
This SDHW in CT was owner installed and looks just TOO good!! Close up photos reveal a very professional looking job. This is a very solarized person including PV, solar hot air and now evac DHW. 60 (47mm x 1500mm) tubes feeds an 80 gallon tank with a pumping station in a closed loop glycol config.. Customer will be upgrading with the now available "hyper" reflectors in a month or so, to increase Winter performance the most.
These 2 - 20 tube units are a start to an array of 6 - 20's totaling 120 tubes for DHW and space heating in New York state. The racking was very nicely designed and installed. All 6 - 20 tube units should be operational by spring 08. Job completely done by owner.
This is the completed array, except for a few odds and ends. I do not have any specific BTU numbers for you on a PSD, but the customer reports the array is working very well and puts out a surprising amount of heat. The customer finished the array with 1800mm tubes.
This very ambitious SDHW and space heating system was owner installed in N.H. The person is off grid too boot! Circulator power demands were looked at carefully among other system aspects. A micro hydro plant has since been brought on line as well. The system is a 240 tube drain back connected to a roughly 700 gallon storage tank made of Stainless Steel, non-pressurized. The owner is in the process of tweaking the system flow rate. The temperature in the storage has already hit 155 DegF, last reported. A tremendous amount of work was put into this systems superstructure, and 100 foot plus one way piping run. The owners backup fuel source is wood and propane, now at a much reduced level.
This 90 tube (3- SFB-30's) in Ottawa Canada was owner installed. Owner built his own tube in tube heat exchanger for his traditional drain back style system. Due to constant higher winds at this location, great care was taken when designing the super structure for the array. Solar orientation and access is excellent. The system supplies DHW and takes a modest stab into the radiant heat load.
This beautifully done 240 tube commercial SDHW system in PA., used 6 SFB-30’s and 3 SFB-20’s storing heat in an 800 plus gallon non pressurized storage tank. The system was totally done by the customer. On November 6th which was a Perfect Solar Day (PSD), the storage tank at the end of the day had increased its heat over 226,000 Btu’s. The energy was captured at an average storage temp of 105 DegsF and does not even include tank losses and piping losses over the collection period, no demand load. That is an average of over 28,000 Btu’s per 30 tubes net usable heat! The customer experienced a 79% drop in NG usage for the first recorded year which was shared between the SDHW system and a more efficient NG heater. A reasonable estimate is that 55% to 65% of the reduction was due to the solar system. A job well done, from all aspects including the ROI benefit.....
Two SFB-30's, center and upper left, added to an old Thermomax installation in Maine for DHW and Radiant floor heating. This job was completely customer installed. AC and/or PV-DC pumps used for circulation. Good mounting angle for Winter snow reflection.
SFB-20 being setup for steam experiments and water condensing at school in New Hampshire.
Two SFB-30's for DHW in Camp Hill, PA. System was totally installed by owner. House has excellent access and orientation to the sun. System uses an 80 gallon preheat tank and 20 gallon drainback tank feeding a conventional gas fired water heater. Owner already has hit 200 DegF in his 80 gallon tank and is averaging in the 180+ DegF range since the system went on line about the second week in June-06. This was the owners first system install and it was done very nicely.
Two SFB-30's installed in Minnesota onto an existing flat plate system to boost solar energy gain, especially in Winter. Owner installed, very professional look.
Two SFB-30's added to existing four flat panel Helodyne SDHW radiant system in Elyria Ohio to boost Winter performance. Evacs. were mounted at 80 Degs for maximum Winter effect and negligible snow susceptibility. Storage is comprised of two 120 gallon pressurized solar tanks with Glycol heat exchanger solar loop. Evacs. are the last collectors in the collector flow for maximum potential gain. Evacs. were installed by www.WeAreSolar.com.
Last Updated 1/2/2025
2023 is another PV Record Buster !!
Its official! 2023 is also a PV production record buster. The main tracking array produced 18.887 MWH's which is about 1.1 MWH's less than last year. However, the gorund test array added another 3960 KWH's to that, totaling 22.847MWH's, an increase over last year of 2.249 MWH's total.
UPDATE 6/23: Kia Nero traded in for Kia EV6.
UPDATE 9/22: New 40+ KWH battery backup installed with coming 4.6KW direct feed array. See details under 'My Solar Home', Solar PV.
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BLOG site for "open" topic writings, by myself!
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Where to Find Us:
www.WeAreSolar.com (Fitch Consulting)
1072 Fowlersville Rd
Berwick, PA 18603
Phone: 570-752-4827
Email: fcfcfc@pa.metrocast.net
Peak solar production for my house in one day is about 130KWH.
What's New
01/12/2021 My new GEO heat pump is finally installed. I have been "tweeking" it until today, 01/16/2021. It works GREAT!! Unlike it predecessor's, it actually performs up to its submittal sheet. LOVE IT!!
I finally finished my electric overhead to underground conversion along with the transformer upgrade (15KW to 50KW).
May Monthly Production Record Gets blown away in June at 2517KWH !!
Made changes to my PV tracking system. The main PV inverter was upgraded from an SMA SB-US-8000 to a Fronius Primo 11.4 (11,400 watts). Additionally, the PV arrays were upgraded with 20 SunPower 327 watt modules leaving 16 of the original Canadian Solar 255 watt modules, bringing the total output of the array from 9.18KW to 10.620KW. The combination of the inverter upgrade coupled with the array KW upgrade, should generate an additional 2 to 3 MWH a year. I hope this will compensate for the increased cloudiness being produced by Green House Gas Heating Climate change. It took a fair amount of work to do all this....
UPDATE: All 36 modules are being changed out which will result in an array output of 11,772 KW. On a very sunny year, 20 MWH should be within reach.
PV Yearly Production Numbers
2022-2024. Yearly numbers are running around 22 to 23MWH's a year with ground test array added.
2021 PV Production is 19.325 MWH which just misses the record breaker last year. Across the year, 2021 was much cloudier but crazy super sunny March made it almost even. Since the system has been running, we have produced over 129 MWH's total.
2020 PV Production is 19.375 MWH which is a new record buster.!! The only month that did not gen more than last year was October. Our usage was up due to more driving and general increases, which the increase in production was able to satisfy. That production defers about $2000.00 worth of power from the grid.
2019 PV Production is 16.787 MWH.
2018 PV Production is 12.463 MWH.
2017 PV production is 14.293 MWH.
2016 PV production is 15.629 MWH.
2015 PV production is 14.543 MWH.
2014 PV production is 7.711 MWH, first year partial production. 9.374 MWH were produced through the entire startup test phase of the system before certification.
2019 production was a record breaker, do to the upgrade being active for 1/2 the year along with being decently sunny. Most likely, if the array upgrade had been active for the whole year, 17 or 18 MWH's would have easily been had.
2018 production was the worst production ever, not only for PV but for all solar. The rain and cloud cover was unpresidented! WE blew right through the 13 Megawatt range and landed in the low 12's. An increase in array capacity might be necessary to adapt to the GH GH'ing realities causing climate change, to resore a slight electrical surplus.
2017 production down 1.34 MWH from last year. All months produced less except for December which is the cloudiest month of the year.... Ironic...
Electric car miles for the fifth year are 15863 saving 690 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1932, bringing the five year total to $9172.00. Covid-19 reduced mileage, but a third car (Bolt) and a third driver beginning in August, over turned the shortfall.
Electric car miles for the forth year are 14037 saving 610 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $2014.00 bringing the four year total to $7239.00. Gas went up and down over the period.
Electric car miles for the third year are 13,220 saving 575 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1955.00 bringing the three year total to $5225.00. Gas prices steadily climbed throughout the year. Total number of gallons not used stands at 1790.
Electric car miles for the second year are 14,830 saving 645 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1870.00 bringing the two year total to $3270.00. Not bad for only 2 years at fairly low gas prices...
Electric car miles for the first year ran about 13,000 miles of energy free driving. The gas saved which would have been burned by the car that the Leaf replaced equals about 570 gallons at an avoided gas cost of $1400.00.
Total mileage across the three years equals 41,050 miles. At a gross electric usage of 3 miles per KWH year round, this translates to 13.68 Megawatt hours of electricity, or 4.56 Megawatt hours per year. With the addition of the Ford C-Max plug-in Hybrid over the last year, the total transportation electric load is increased by about 2 megawatt hours more, bringing the household trans electric yearly load to about 6.6 megawatt hours.
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