News and Views

Devon passed round one of the singing contest, and is going on to the next stage, which I think is next weekend. Here’s a picture of him someone took from the TV:

Here’s a picture that was in the local newspapers, with a caption from the English language paper:

I didn’t understand this before, but apparently the contest is for foreigners only, which should reduce the number of competitors.

The contractor was out today doing some painting and checks, and briefly activated the solar power system. It was generating about 5000 watts, most of which was flowing back out of my house into the power grid. No air conditioning or TV was on, so besides my computer, refrigerator and some lights, we weren’t using much electricity.

It is a little cloudy today, high thin clouds, which reduced the power a little too, I’m sure.

Still waiting for the utility company, SRP, to approve it before we can go on full time. Hopefully by the end of next week.

… the non-expert is probably wise to withhold opinion, or at least not be too dogmatic about it.

Economics is the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe Keynes is right, maybe Friedman, maybe neither. I tend to lean towards Keynes, but with all the disagreement between the experts, I have to confess that I really don’t know.

On the other hand, when the experts all agree (or the vast majority), that’s good evidence that the opinion they hold is closer to reality than any contradicting ideas I may have. There are exceptions all through history, of course. Plate tectonics is a recent example, where in the early 20th century geologists mostly laughed at the idea that there were huge moving plates under the earth surface. But as the evidence accumulated, and the old guard died off, it became the accepted theory. And the trend was continually in the direction of more and more acceptance.

Global climate change is an example today where almost all the experts (climatologists) agree that it is happening, and that human activity is a major cause. As with plate tectonics, the trend has been towards more and more acceptance by the climatologists, to the extent that today it is very hard to find any that disagree.

People who disagree are mainly television pundits, politicians and businesses that might be hurt by corrective actions, though they have done a job of convincing people that there’s some kind of conspiracy. Even as I wouldn’t ask one of them for medical advice, or understanding about quantum physics, I also doubt their expertise on climate.

They didn’t quite finish today, but all that’s left is some trim, wire termination, and a little roof repair.

Here they are installing the first solar panel:

Here’s what it looked like with several panels installed:

And here’s the finished job:

Here’s a close-up, looking up the array:

And here’s a close look at one of the clamps holding the panels down:

33 panels, each providing a peak of 240 Watts, yielding a theoretical 7920 watts (clear day, sun shining squarely on it, not too hot, etc., etc.).

The past couple of days, Devon has been in most of the Taiwan newspapers and and TV news shows. I think it’s some kind of publicity push by his agency to try to make him a star. He is getting ready to participate in a Taiwan “American Idol” show, or similar contest.

Here’s an article from one paper (front page). Note the picture of Justin Beiber — they think he looks a lot like him:

Here’s another front page article:

And here are a couple of news segments on him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIbK-WFAuD4 (The newscaster starts out asking, “Did Justin Beiber come to Taiwan? Actually, no.. but…”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JQcZu2a-LM

http://tw.nextmedia.com/applenews/article/art_id/33802595/IssueID/20111109 He tells a story about exchanging phone numbers with a girl and getting 100 calls from her within a 3 hour period. I think he sings a little better in this one than the others.

Look at all the girls eager to have their pictures taken with him! He said he has had about 400 Facebook friend requests in the past couple of days

Looks like there’s going to be a “Day 4” post. They didn’t finish today. I guess the rain Friday and Monday set them back a little.

Most of the work today was wiring, in and out of the attic. Not much to show, but I’ll post some pictures anyway.

Here you see where the wires from all the panels drop into the attic through that round metal pipe upper center of the picture. I don’t know if you can see it, but there are three red wires, and three black. They run from three “strings” of panels. Each group of 11 panels has it’s own connection to the inverter.

As usual, if you right click and select “View Image” you can see a lot more detail.

And here are the wires coming out of the wall above the invertor. They had to be run through the attic, not an easy job because our attic is separated into two sections and the wires had to be brought through a narrow connection.

The unpainted boxes and conduit are all new installations. The lower one is a cutoff, but I’m not sure what the upper box is for.

And this shows the conduit all finished running from the inverter through another cuttoff.

They stacked all 33 panels against the side of the house so that tomorrow they can start installing them on the roof. Notice the obstructions on the other end to keep Apollo out. Wouldn’t want him peeing on the panels!

Tomorrow I really hope to have pictures of the completed job!

Two things were accomplished today: They cut the tiles so the mounts could extend up through them, and they fastened rails to the mounts.

Here are the rails. Tomorrow they should fasten the solar panels to the rails. Looks like the ends still need to be trimmed.

Here is a close up of one mount extending through the roof tiles. You can see that they just cut the tiles with a circular saw, but I guess whatever works. Any rain that falls through this hole will land on the flashing below and come out onto the tile below.

Interestingly, I woke up Friday night about 1:00 am to the sound of rain leaking into our bathroom, “Drip, drip, drip.” I went up on the roof in the middle of the night during the rain, and moved some tiles around to help cover any openings. Turned out that the only leak was coming in through an improperly sealed exhaust vent, and nothing was damaged. Things look pretty tight now.

The job should be finished tomorrow, with solar panels attached and wiring complete, though at the rate they worked today I’m not sure if they will be able to finish up. We’ll see. After they are done, it will take another couple of weeks to get city and utility inspections before it can be turned on.

I woke up this morning before 7:00 to the sound of boots on the roof. They got an early start.

The job for today was to install the mounts into the roof that the panels will attach to. They also mounted the inverter to the wall.
As usual, right-click and select “View Image” to see a larger version of the picture.

Here are the workers early this morning moving tiles around on the roof.

Here’s what one mount looks like. The tiles still haven’t all been replaced.

Here you can see several of the mounts, after the workers had finished for the day.

Here’s the inverter, attached to the wall just inside the gate. It is huge! This location doesn’t get much sun because of the neighbor’s house, but to prevent any sun at all from shining on it they will put an awning over it. I have no idea what the awning will look like.

They will come back on Monday and Tuesday to finish the job.

We have approvals from the city of Tempe, the HOA and the utility company, so we are ready to move forward and install the solar panels on our roof. Construction is scheduled to begin this Friday (November 4), and be complete on the following Tuesday.

Inspections and final approval will take another 1 – 2 weeks, so activation should be mid-November. I’ll write an update when it is active.

I posted in February about installing a new hybrid hot water heater. Although the initial price was almost $1000 higher, it is supposed to cost less to operate.

6 months later, I have some data. Comparing kilowatt-hours consumed in 2011 with 2010, my average monthly bill is $43 less than it would have been at last year’s usage. So I would expect in a year to save about $515, paying for the extra cost of the heater in less than 2 years.

Of course every year is different, and this is hardly a scientific study. And it doesn’t include the coldest winter months when a heat pump is less efficient. But it is interesting, none-the-less.

Later this month or early next month I will have my solar panels installed, so that will make it harder to track the savings from the water heater as everything will be changing.