My Quest to Save Ohlone Elementary’s Solar Array
It all started with a call from Glen Kizer. He told me that he had a fun job for me I believed him but I had no clue yet just how fun this would be! The job was to salvage a damaged solar array at an elementary school; the fun part was that the school was only a block away from where I grew up!! What a treat! I got to save a solar school project and do my favorite type of work, all right in my own back yard! The news was exciting, but then there was the act of actually completing the job, and that was a bit more complicated…
I began by calling in a real hero, Jayson Lehmann, who is a solar installer from Scudder Solar in Monterey County. He was the best solar installer I have ever worked with and a real titan of the industry. When we got to the school it was beautiful. The campus is covered in murals and inspirational quotes were written on the walls. We needed that inspiration because we soon found that the array was more damaged than we once thought.
When you install something that is “weather proof†you generally assume that means that water won’t be able to get inside of it and damage it… well, when Jayson took the front of the inverter box off, about three inches of rusty rain water spilled out right onto his head! It was not a good thing but we still found ourselves laughing about it.
Next we had to buy a new inverter box and install it. We waited the weeks it took to ship and then when it finally arrived we told the school that this was the big day and that their solar school project was going to be saved! We installed the inverter and waited for the big moment but it didn’t come… it was clear to us then that we still had more work to do. The teachers and kids stayed optimistic and wished us luck.
The following few weeks were full of long hours of trying to analyze what went wrong, problem solving and “ah-ha†moments. We had many victories but still the array wouldn’t come up on the interactive site… and that’s the fun part! (the part, I maintain, which is by far the most important!) So we soldiered on.
Finally, on August 24th we got the Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s internet site approval that we needed to use our program on their network and the project was complete!! Yay! The array is running at peak efficiency most days, but the kids are able to also use the interactive Sunny Portal system to see why certain days the array works better than others.
The school is thrilled to have use of their solar array again and the kids are all learning about solar energy and its benefits every day!! It is wonderful to see everyone looking at the solar array in a new way and it is fantastic that it once again can be used as a teaching instrument rather than just a shade structure!
Everyone is happy, I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to serve my hometown community and I am forever grateful to Glen Kizer for instilling his trust in me in this monumental way! I’m sorry it took so long but we got it done!
I guess this project comes with a little lesson about life; when things are hard, never give up! Because the hardest things to complete end up being the most satisfying. Have a great school year everyone and stay sunny!