29) Grid Connection & New Panels - December '17
The Federal Government has a program that gives back a 30% tax credit against the cost of installing a solar system. For our Solaflect tracker this amounts to nearly $7000 deducted from the total out-of-pocket cost of $23,000. But the thing is you have to have it up and running in 2017. That means you need to generate some photovoltaic power, not a lot, just some, a few electrons, a couple of watts.
So it's December 19th, close to the wire, and we have neither panels nor a connection to the grid. Thankfully the Solaflect boys arrived at 3 pm add started stringing the panels:
They worked well into the evening:
Two days later a crew from Green Mountain Power arrived to hook us up to the grid. Talk about shaving it close.
So here's the completed panel on the morning of December 31st. I have no idea if we made the deadline. One thing that didn't happen was we failed to get internet service hooked up. The tracker uses it to fine tune aiming the array, to monitor the weather, and to generally communicate with the tracker. Solaflect says that it's not necessary, that it can track the sun approximately with its built-in software. But I'm noticing that the array has yet to move. So the big question is did we meet the requirement to create power in 2017? Did a few electrons make the trip to wherever they go? It's a $7000 question.