pv pinots SOLAR.KnowledgePublications.com

pv pinots
19 apr 2000
i just visited wild hog vineyard, who make about 3,000 cases of organic
wine per year, including award-winning pinot noirs, in reusable bottles.

they have been completely off-grid for 20 years on the sonoma coast
north of san francisco near jenner, california. they have about 2 kw
of pv panels, 12 l-16 type batteries, a trace 4024 inverter, a 35 psi
2-nozzle pelton water wheel (which provides more power than the pvs,
in season), and a 7,500 w outdoor auto-start propane-powered air-cooled
onan generator that runs 50-100 hours per year. with a few more hours
and water cooling, they might use its (80%!) "waste heat" for space
and water heating...

the owner's house is mostly wood-heated, "with some vague attempts at
passive solar," a large solar food dehydrator, a sunfrost fridge, and
a couple of instantaneous aquastar propane water heaters. he went off-grid
after the local utility quoted $500k to install about 4 miles of wires.
he recently trenched in 4 miles of cable tv for himself and his few
neighbors, but didn't run electrical power, since that would have been
more expensive. 

his electrical system isn't perfect, with two separate pv arrays vs one,
an extra c40 controller, and some extra load-diversion resistors. the
batteries only last 5 years (he's cooking his 4th set in an uninsulated
box off a sunporch, with about two weeks of 100 f weather per year.)

the trace needs a software mod to reliably start the onan, but he doesn't
want to remove it from service and send it back to the factory, so he
pushes the autostart switch with his finger as needed. the winery building
is about 500' from the house and inverter, with some large connecting wires
and a 120 to 240 v step-up transformer in the winery building. he says
the losses might have been less or the wires might have been smaller with
240v transmission, but the system works :-) 

peter heylin provides wild hog's reusable bottles from his company encore!
in richmond, ca. he lives in a very nice two-story 5-zome home with wide 
decks made from telephone poles and other reused materials in canyon, ca,
overlooking a redwood forest a mile outside of the oakland city limits, and
goes out of his way to buy milk in reusable glass bottles. his neighbors live
in other domes and older shoeboxes and earthships and hyperbolic paraboloids
made from bottles, plastic films, old tarps and tires, junk cars, ferrocement
and eucalyptus trees, among other things. some of these homes are accessed
by high suspension bridges without railings. canyon is an old activist hippy 
community (earthfirst! began there.) they've avoided aesthetic police and
building inspectors for the last 25 years :-) 

nick