Founded in and headquartered in New York , Conecuh is a leading producer and marketer of super premium craft spirits, focused on developing high-quality brands, including Clyde May's Whiskey, Prospero Tequila, and McConnell's Irish Whisky.
Conecuh develops authentic brand stories delivered in world-class packaging at an outstanding value. With high double-digit growth, Conecuh is well-positioned in today's most vibrant spirits categories. We look forward to expanding our relationship in the future. Northpoint Commercial Finance Asset-Based Lending helps middle-market clients grow and prosper with flexible financing options and delivers the confidence of execution to private equity sponsors. Northpoint Commercial Finance, with offices in Alpharetta, GA , and Burlington, ON , combines experience with advanced technologies, fresh ideas, streamlined processes, and a customer focus formed specifically for the varied financing needs and goals of each business.
Its design lets you work in close spaces, but be careful with these high-power brutes. A co-worker broke his jaw while drilling through two 2 x 4 top plates in a tight attic. The large spade bit hit a nail, and the drill handle spun out of his hand and clocked him in the jaw.
Taking care to spare yourself an emergency room visit—priceless. Slip-Joint Pliers Slip-joint jaw sizes get smaller and larger by virtue of their ingenious method of varying hinge placement, to accommodate a range of material sizes. You can use these tools when working with smaller pipe and fittings, since they are much lighter and handier than pipe wrenches. Machined from forged steel and with a heavy-duty hinge, these pliers are designed to hold up even after repeated use under extreme force on heavy-gauge wire.
Needle-Nose Pliers The perfect tool for feeding and pulling small wires through fittings, and aligning wires in terminals for tightening. Best if they also include wire-cutting blades. The tool shown also has a built-in voltage indicator in the handle to detect live circuits.
Adjustable-End Wrenches These are used all the time on pipe fittings, bolts, nuts, lag screws, and mounting hardware, and when it is impractical to carry a full set of box or open endwrenches. They are not intended for heavy-duty torquing on hardware. Pipe Wrenches Pipe wrench teeth are designed to grip pipe when pulling on the wrench and loosen when pushing on it to give a ratcheting motion.
Pipe wrenches are typically used in pairs, one for holding and one for turning. Clockwise from the bottom: a propylene glycol tester indicates the minimum temperature a particular glycol solution will withstand without freezing the floating balls are calibrated a little differently from ethylene glycol testers designed to test automobile antifreeze ; calibrated thermometers are used to check water temperature; pH paper is for handy for testing glycol solution acidity; and an inspection mirror is great for doing work in hidden crannies.
But some type of multimeter is needed for troubleshooting control or pump problems. Adobe Reader software required. Available free. It costs less than half as much to operate as some of the most efficient gasoline- or diesel-fueled cars, and produces zero tailpipe emissions.
Our family had been living a simple rural and remote life using very little energy—except for the vehicle we used to transport us to town, work, and school on a daily basis. Three years ago, we made a commitment to fulfill the long soughtafter dream of environmentally friendlier transportation, following a move closer to town.
We came to a point where being energy conscious in our home, but driving—and burning fossil fuels—seemed completely out of balance. With the addition of the electric vehicle and our solar-electric system , we were able to bring our transportation needs into this fold. Electric Attraction Watching the electric vehicle EV rallies and races at renewable energy fairs in nearby Willits, California, in the early s sparked our interest.
We built our knowledge base by attending a number of conversion workshops throughout northern California over the years, taught by EV experts Mike Brown and Shari Prange of Electro Automotive, and others. There was no better time for us to make the change from fossil fuel to solar energy for our transportation needs. We decided that purchasing an already converted vehicle would be our best bet for our first electric experience, so we shopped for a conversion with reliable and standardized components.
The car, which has turned out to be a jewel, is a , twodoor, four-passenger VW Rabbit. It needed cleaning and a new headliner, but was otherwise in good working condition.
It was converted several years prior to our purchase, but had been stored for a couple of years unused. Its sixteen, 6-volt Exide golf-cart batteries were still retaining a charge and continued to work for the next few years. This surprised us, since the car had been sitting for so long.
The conversion had been done by a mechanic with an Electro Automotive kit. Solar Charging We temporarily charged the vehicle on utility electricity until we were able to refinance our home and invest in a solar-electric photovoltaic; PV system to power the car and our household loads. The cost to power the car with utility electricity was about 4 cents per mile. This was stunning, compared to 14 cents per mile that we had paid to fuel our gasoline-engine car.
Even a car with gas mileage of 40 mpg would cost more than twice that of the electric to drive, at about 8. Through conservation and efficiency measures, we decreased our household electrical needs to less than.
We had just finished restoring our old farmhouse, which we retrofitted with conservation and efficiency in mind. The cubic-foot Sun Frost refrigerator, efficient Maytag Gemini glass-top electric stove with a small oven , Eemax electric, on-demand, under-counter water.
Additionally, we effectively eliminated phantom loads standby electricity drawn by an appliance when plugged in but turned off by unplugging all electrical items when not in use and using power strips for the computers. We then sized our PV system to meet our actual needs—about 5 kilowatthours per day for the house and 5 kilowatt-hours per day for the car. Our 2. I was able to work off a significant amount of the labor cost by being involved in the installation and trading out my labor on other projects.
I decided to replace the Exides with Trojan Ts. I found that the individual battery caps the Trojans use tend to have no leakage, keeping the battery tops cleaner. At the same time, I decided to upgrade the volt charger to a faster and more efficient volt Zivan charger that has an automatic shutoff and equalization features for the batteries.
The new charger takes 4 to 5 hours to completely recharge the batteries, compared to about 8 to 10 hours for. Aside from adding a couple of gallons of distilled water to the batteries every few months, the electric car requires very little maintenance. We operate a small store in town, and can run our cash register, credit card machine, stereo, fax machine, and lights during utility outages.
At home, we can plug into the car to watch TV or have some lighting for our evening tasks if the grid is down. EVs suffered a setback by the elimination of this mandate in and the crushing of many of these cars, but the electric car has not been killed—far from it.
Its fate may best be left for us to bring to the forefront as an integral part of our renewable energy future. The electric car lives in our driveway and in the driveways of many today, and its time has come.
I work with a small group of EV enthusiasts—the Humboldt Electric Vehicle Association—to encourage and aid people in our community who are interested in purchasing or converting a car to electricity.
Our goal is to replace gasoline-engine cars on the road with electric vehicles. One of the best things that EV activists can do is to connect with other EV activists in their communities and develop support networks.
It helps to meet on a regular basis with this group of folks to share information and build upon ideas for community outreach. But the Jetta spends most of its time in our driveway, since the electric car is the easiest and most enjoyable car to use for our daily errands. Driving the electric is simply a matter of turning the key and going down the road. There is no startup, no warm-up, no fumes, no gas stations, and no engine noise to contend with.
When you stop the car, it is silent. When you coast down a hill, the car uses no energy. Electric Tractor The newest member of our electric fleet is a s General Electric Elec-Trak tractor volt with a inch mower deck. I expressed to him by chance that I was looking for an ElecTrak, not knowing he actually had one, and he offered it for free, providing I hauled it away! The GE Elec-Trak tractor charges its batteries from the solar-electric system and keeps the orchard understory mowed to perfection.
In the end, driving your vehicle is absolutely the best way to let others know that EVs are viable, affordable, and user friendly. Charging our electric car and mower with solar electricity from our PV system decreases the payback time for our solar-electric system, since the money saved by not buying gasoline can be included in this calculation.
The electric car replaced a gas-engine Toyota Tercel station wagon that was getting about 25 mpg. At this rate, we will recoup our PV system costs in less than six years. The payback period will probably become even shorter, as gasoline and electricity prices continue to climb. The combined costs of our car and solar-electric system was far less than the cost of a typical new car. Knowing that our electric car is both a smart environmental and economic choice heightens our enjoyment of driving it.
Driving an electric car is sensible and forward-thinking. Our little VoltsRabbit makes an impression on all who see it. It reminds people that there is a solution to the oil dependency that plagues us.
In some way, I sense that it provides some hope. First I checked the main drive motor by hooking a volt battery up to it to see if the motor would spin. It did! The mower deck has three motors and the bearings were shot on all of them, so I took them off and had them repaired at the local electric motor shop. I downloaded the repair manuals and wiring diagrams from the Elec-Trak Owners Club Web site and painstakingly pieced everything back together with the help of Nick Johnston, a friend and fellow EV enthusiast.
Once I knew the tractor was operable, the entire machine was stripped of its rusty yellow paint by hand. Parts that were removable were pulled and sandblasted. The bare metal was primed and recoated with a nice John Deere green. Six new 6-volt Trojan T batteries completed the restoration. Elec-Trak tractors once had numerous accessories, including a snow blower and rototiller, but ours came with just a mower deck.
The tractor helps out on our farm, hauling horse manure and compost with a small trailer, and mowing the lawn and orchard. Like our VoltsRabbit, it is charged by our solar-electric system. Two UPM mounts were installed at my rural property in the mountains of southern Oregon.
See HP and HP The local climate runs the gamut, from hot summers to deep-snow winters. High winds do occur, but infrequently. Each mount holds an array of six, watt Sharp modules and faces true south.
Over the years, Home Power has evaluated a wide variety of PV pole mounts from various manufacturers. A few years ago, Steve Willey, founder and former owner of Backwoods SolarElectric Systems, located in Sandpoint, Idaho, recommended that we work with the mounts manufactured by General Specialties, also located in Sandpoint.
General Specialties originally designed their heavy-duty pole mounts for Backwoods, who was their exclusive reseller. Only the module mounting-hole spacing on the aluminum rails varies, based on the width of the specific modules being installed. This translates into approximately to 2, rated watts for crystalline modules; the exact figure will vary with the power output of a given module type.
Most UPM mounts are shipped via United Parcel Service, with only the two largest models requiring motor freight shipment. With the exception of the schedule40 steel pipe that the UPM8X rests on, all structural members, assembly hardware, and module mounting hardware are included.
The UPM mounts are easily installed by a single person, and go together quickly and securely. These rails are attached to steel horizontal members via aluminum standoff brackets to zincplated U-brackets, which are secured with self-locking nuts. Simply use a tape measure to correctly space and position the rails. Pole-Mount Positives While roof-mounted PV arrays are the most common installation approach, pole-mounted arrays can be preferable, depending on your site and needs.
If your roof does not have good solar exposure due to shading from vegetation or other buildings, pole mounts can offer some siting flexibility, allowing you to locate your array in the most shade-free location on your property. Aluminum rail brackets. Main mount structure: Painted steel tubing and pipe electroplated and hot-dipped galvanized also available.
Array output drops as module temperature increases, and the increased airflow around polemounted arrays can keep the modules operating at lower temperatures. In some climates, this can increase array output during warm seasons by 5 to 10 percent compared to roof mounts with minimal standoff less than 3 inches between the roof surface and the module backs.
To the end user, pole mounts might seem like a relatively simple piece of hardware to design and manufacture.
But over the years, there has been ongoing improvement in mount design flexibility, ship-ability, and durability. Some sturdy mounts are currently manufactured using a lighterweight, mostly aluminum framework, and they perform very well. These racks should last for generations. While most system owners do not go to the trouble of adjusting the tilt angle of roof-mounted arrays, or even installing adjustable racks in rooftop installations, pole mounts make seasonal tilt-angle adjustment easy.
Finally, pole- or rack-mounted arrays will operate at cooler temperatures than. Displays vital battery system data to help users provide better battery care, increase conservation awareness and aid system maintenance. When your system is working OK you can just forget about it. If after some time your system seems to be losing power or otherwise acting strangely, in 2 minutes you can download the data into your Windows computer— then email the result to your installer or other expert for analysis.
The website has information for you techies on how to set up, graph and analyze the emailed data so you can diagnose most common system problems without travelling to the site. See website for more info. While living in Boulder, Colorado, we stumbled upon a piece of land that captured our imaginations and our hearts: a mesa, or flattopped mountain in the Sangre de Cristo range of southern Colorado, an hour from the nearest town of Trinidad. The property is 36 acres, with about 5 acres at the top resting in meadow and open forest.
Yes, we own our own mountain— albeit a small one. It was a significant investment for us. It was contract work in Antarctica, and although the pay was not outstanding, there was nothing to spend it on—other than the mortgages back home—which allowed us to save up a substantial chunk of change. The original two-story cabin is of pole construction, with treated posts running down to bedrock and up to the top rim joist where the roof sits. The walls in this part of the home are 2 by 4 stud frame in some areas, and double 2 by 4 in others, which allows for R insulation with no thermal bridging through the wall.
In walls with single 2 by 4 construction, a layer of plastic-bubble reflective insulation boosts thermal performance by reflecting heat—either back to the outside of the home in the summer as in our attic or back into the living space.
The manufacturer claims the equivalent of R in certain applications. While these claims seem optimistic, this insulation is quite effective when used in conjunction with conventional insulation. We also installed reflective insulation in the ceiling and attic, in addition to fiberglass batt insulation.
Whenever possible, we used rough-cut lumber from our local sawmill. The lumber is a bit more difficult to work with, but provides exceptional value and uses a product grown, harvested, and milled locally. In terms of constructing a building with low embodied energy, this is one of the prime strategies—use local products whenever possible. After one winter in the cabin, we decided it was time to expand the living quarters.
We opted for nonload-bearing straw bale construction for a square-foot addition. A post-and-beam superstructure hidden within the straw bale walls carries the roof load. This extra-beefy architecture may be overkill for some sites, but we experience winds that often exceed mph on our mountaintop. Straw bale construction uses what would otherwise be a waste product to create a beautiful and energy efficient home.
The relatively high insulation value of a straw bale wall, combined with its ability to reduce thermal bridging, keeps the home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Two woodstoves provide backup heating for the home.
One error was not to include a major passive solar element in the house. Here in southern Colorado at our elevation of 8, feet, the sun is intense, and subsequent structures we built proved that incorporating good passive solar design strategies could provide the majority of the space heating, even in a fairly cold mountain climate like ours. But although there was no concerted effort toward incorporating passive solar design strategies, our home stays warm, even in midwinter when nighttime temperatures routinely drop below zero.
Between the large thermal mass of the 6-inchthick, perimeter-insulated, concrete Thick straw bale walls provide ample insulation, slab foundation, and the well-insulated keeping living spaces warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
These noncatalytic heaters are both certified by the U. Environmental Protection Agency to meet emissions standards. Because of the care we took in our building envelopes, we only use about two cords of wood annually to heat all of our structures, which include our home, the power shed—greenhouse, and a garage—workshop space. The wood is sustainably harvested from our www. While we get an almost-free source of heat, we also reduce fire danger and improve the overall health of the forest.
The array consists of six, watt BP Solarex modules mounted on the roof of the power shed—greenhouse located next to our house. When we built the house, we ran AC and DC wiring throughout. First, running DC loads is ultimately more efficient, as it eliminates inverter conversion losses, which average about 15 percent.
Many of our lights, the household water pressure pump, and the telephone all run on DC. Currently, a conventional, tank-type propane water heater provides our domestic hot water, but we plan to integrate a solar hot water system in the future. With more than sunny days per year, we have a superb solar resource. Compared to our location, homes in most other parts of the country would require larger solarelectric photovoltaic; PV arrays to generate an equivalent amount electricity on a daily basis.
To take full advantage of our resource, we selected our household appliances with. While most large offgrid systems are now designed to operate at a system voltage of 48 VDC nominal, we chose to go with a 12 VDC system because of the wide range of lighting and appliances available at 12 volts.
One major disadvantage was the requirement for larger gauge and more expensive wiring between the PV array and battery bank, to minimize power losses. Three large Rolls-Surrette flooded lead-acid batteries make up the battery bank. These 4-volt batteries are wired in a single series string for a nominal 12 VDC, 1, amp-hour capacity battery pack. I cycled them deeply a couple of times when they were first installed just to exercise them, but since then I have rarely seen the battery monitor display a state-of-charge status below 90 percent.
These batteries should last for fifteen to twenty years given the easy life they lead. On the rare occasions when we have multiple snowy, overcast days in the winter, I fire up our year-old Honda EB gas-engine generator for an hour or so to recharge the batteries. The balance-of-system components, including the generator, reside in the power shed—greenhouse, which sits northwest of the house. Three-wall polycarbonate panels on the lower, south-facing roof and a set of south-facing clerestory windows provide a significant portion of the overall space heating requirements.
The generator sits in a workshop space inside the power shed, with the exhaust piped through the wall, so we get rudimentary waste heat recovery when the generator is running, which boosts the efficiency of burning a fossil fuel. In this area, that is both an expensive and uncertain proposition—by no means were we guaranteed to find water. We got lucky, and hit water at feet, but we continued down to feet to have a more reliable source. The well produces sweet water at 2 gallons per minute.
Not exactly a gusher, but not bad for this area. The perfect fit for a low-production water well is a 48 VDC solar-direct submersible pump coupled with a cistern. We bought an EtaPump, which offered good reliability with only one moving part, and a high resistance to abrasion from sand and corrosion. At the time, it was also the only pump available that could pump from that depth.
CBM production is a high-impact process, and its effects are far ranging. Heavy industrial engines and compression facilities running day and night ruin the solitude of our woodland setting, continual traffic on our dirt roads creates noise and dust, and all of those industrial engines create serious air-quality issues.
The contaminated water that results is most often released into the streams, which alters the biota that normally lives in and around the riparian areas. There are reports of diminished crop yields and buildup of salts in the farmlands that use this water for irrigation downstream.
The process also poses some very serious threats, like methane seeps, coal fires, and the contamination of domestic water wells like our own. We have worked out Surface Use Agreements for our ranch association, and involved ourselves in citizen activism. Most of all, we are searching inward to find a place of peace. We are uncertain whether or not our water well will remain viable and unpolluted, and whether the noise and traffic we fled the city for will make life here untenable in the near future.
DC disconnects, the pump, and its controller round out the system. We pump water up the well, then feet horizontally to a 1,gallon plastic cistern. The bulk of our water use goes to washing clothes, even with our efficient Staber washing machine. We installed low-flow fixtures, and are careful not to overdraw our well by using water faster than it can be replenished. Instead of using a typical flush toilet and septic system for disposing blackwater, we use a moldering composting toilet.
Moldering toilets like ours rely on a long retention time to kill any potential pathogens that might be lurking. Our toilet has two containment vaults. In another ten years, it will be time to switch over the seat again, and by that time, what will remain will be nothing but compost. A Wide-Awake Life For us, off-grid living means that we are acutely aware of the world around us. If skies are overcast for several days, we carefully monitor our electricity consumption.
We know where every tree came from and have lengthy discussions about which ones get the axe. We know where our water comes from both the well water and the catchment water and monitor its usage closely. Again, a bit different from just turning on the tap. With the food we grow, we know what went into it. This is not an easy place to garden, and takes a lot of time and effort. We live a minimalist lifestyle, and are very conservative—in the true sense of the word.
Mind you, we also recognize that we still have impacts. With our lifestyle, we find that the advantages of off-grid living are huge. It would have cost more than twice the bill of the entire PV system to run utility power up here, so our system has already paid for itself twice, in savings, from the moment it was installed.
Every winter there are numerous power outages for the folks on the grid. In , we had a very heavy spring snow that resulted in flooding, and our neighbors in the valley were without power for six days. When the snow finally melted enough to check things out in town, we were quite surprised that we had missed this major inconvenience.
We have had just one power outage in the past six years, and that was operator error. Finally, there is the independence. We feel like it is a key value, and one well worth striving for. Announcing a new Wind Data Logger for wind site assessment and wind turbine performance monitoring. High performance and low cost. Supports multiple anemometers, wind vane, temperature, relative humidity, light level, turbine power output, and other sensors.
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This regular input from PV professionals serves as an ongoing source of information related to the equipment, hardware, and installation techniques being used by PV system designers and installers across the country to streamline the installation of safe and effective systems. A few recent items of interest follow. PV on Metal Roofs Section These surfaces include the PV module frames, metallic module mounting racks and, in the case of some roof-mounted systems, metal roofing material.
Some PV systems may operate at close to volts and can pose a significant shock hazard if they are allowed to energize conductive exposed surfaces that may be touched. Effectively bonding these conductive surfaces together and grounding them will minimize shock hazards.
PV arrays installed on metal roofs should be grounded in a manner that limits potential shock hazards. There are two primary wiring methods for connecting PV modules together—using exposed single-conductor cables, and using conduits. Each dictates a different grounding method, but in either case, PV modules must always be grounded properly. Exposed, single-conductor cables that connect PV modules together can come into contact with the module mounting racks. Movement of the cables from wind, rain, and ice could compromise the conductor insulation and potentially energize the racks and metal roofing.
Where exposed single conductor cables are used, the racks and the roof should be grounded. Since many standing-seam roofs are coated with a durable paint, it is usually necessary to make a connection to each panel of the roof and to make sure each of those connections penetrate the paint of the roofing panels.
When conduit is used between the individual modules and there are no exposed, single-conductor cables, then it is unlikely that either the module racks or the roof would require additional grounding. The module frames should always be grounded and the conduit that surrounds the conductors effectively protects them from damage.
The conduit may be of an insulating type, like rigid nonmetallic conduit RNC , or a metal type, like electrical metallic tubing EMT.
If the conductor insulation should fail, the conduit would prevent the rack or the roof from becoming energized. In this case, neither the metal racks nor the metal roof require grounding, except in the event that significant PV module damage could be expected. Such damage could cause the internal connections of a shattered PV module to contact the rack or the roof.
Section The UniRac and Wiley products are not listed for use with any specific PV module, and there is no clear indication of compatibility with a particular module or mention of these grounding devices in most of the current PV module instruction manuals.
Securing Exposed Conductors Most PV modules are manufactured with generously long 40 to 48 inches output pigtail leads with connectors on the ends. The excess lead length must be securely fastened to the module frame or array mounting rack to prevent abrasion and damage by exposure to the elements.
This fastening method meets NEC requirements for good workmanship and protects the conductors from damage. White cable ties are not resistant to ultraviolet radiation and should not be used. Mark channel Not-Safe-For-Work? Are you the publisher? Claim or contact us about this channel. Viewing all articles. First Article Article 2 Article 3 Article 4. Browse latest Browse all 4. Original Article on Solar Reviews. Latest Images.
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