Archive for October, 2009

One Antenna Soul vs. 9 Solar Panels: Solarthon 2009 - Part 2

October 2009
To bring you up to speed, in Part 1, I covered some background about how I found myself on a roof installing solar panels (and not so secretly enjoying it).  With the panels now on the roof, the real fun began: we had to mount the wire running down from the roof to the ground inverter. That involved some quality time lying and eating dust in a dark and scary attic and a flashlight, and a lot of pulling and pushing wires through a wire juncture. Here’s a picture of Katie on our team staring up into the attic where I was pulling wire with Ceylan and Ian.

On the roof, I had the very intellectual job of ratcheting and wiring and carrying panels. I found out what a weeb is (email me at wei at antenngroup dot com if you want to know too) and I also found out that being OCD is a very good thing when arranging panels. No one wants crooked panels on their roof, and we made sure that everything was laid out just nice. We measured and placed the panels on the racks that had been drilled into the rafter, and proceeded to connect the cables together.

Being OCD

Being OCD

Ratcheting is fun - part 1

Ratcheting is fun!

Finally, after only 4 hours, it was done! Joe, our construction lead on the roof, stayed back to make sure everything was perfect, and then we all leaped down to take the requisite photos on the scaffolding, and to turn on the connection. It was extremely satisfying, especially when saw that we had beat the Google team, who was still up on their roof.

Here’s Joe on the roof, making sure our wiring isn’t going to lead to an explosion

Here’s Joe on the roof, making sure our wiring isn’t going to lead to an explosion

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