From the Canyon Edge -- :-Dustin

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Solar Installation - Part 2


Step 2 is installing aluminum brackets on the roof, to which the solar panels will actually mount.

I was chatting with one of the two installers. He noticed that I was wearing a Linux Foundation t-shirt, and he mentioned that he ran Linux on his older computer. Ubuntu, as it turned out. He said that he found it mostly user-friendly, and was able to do almost everything he could under Windows, except use Real Player to listen to his favorite college radio station, kdvs.org.

So I checked out kdvs.org, and found multiple m3u streams, for both mp3 and ogg formats. Within minutes, we were streaming to the outdoor speakers while they were working on the roof ;-) When he got home, he confirmed that he was able to do the same with Amarok.

For other articles in this series, see:
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/search/label/Solar

:-Dustin

5 comments:

  1. I hope you past the info onto your fitter :)

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  2. Regarding those solar panels, how about rain/dust/snow (if any at your place? :)), what are the longevity of these? Do you need to clean them often?

    ReplyDelete
  3. vytas-

    Hi! The warranty is 20 years on the panels, and 13 years on the inverter. Even at 20 years, the panels are projected to still produce at 85% of what they produced when brand new.

    We only get snow out here about once every 5 years, so I'm not too worried about that. Hail is a much bigger concern, as it can do a lot of damage. For that, I just needed to increase my homeowners insurance premiums to cover the value of the system. Dust could potentially be a problem (if it doesn't rain for a very long time). In which case it would help if I climbed on the roof with a hose and washed them off.

    :-Dustin

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  4. I quite like this concept as well:

    http://tinyurl.com/nvxd88

    ReplyDelete
  5. Regarding hail, PV panels are rated to withstand rather large hail. We had a huge hailstorm last year... many people in our neighborhood got new roofs, both our cars were damaged - and our PV panels were just fine.

    ReplyDelete

Please do not use blog comments for support requests! Blog comments do not scale well to this effect.

Instead, please use Launchpad for Bugs and StackExchange for Questions.
* bugs.launchpad.net
* stackexchange.com

Thanks,
:-Dustin

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