Paonia Proves Ideal
By 2002, the Aspen real-estate boom had
washed over Carbondale. The school couldn’t
find affordable real estate on which to build an
expanded teaching facility, and staff couldn’t
find affordable housing. The solution was
to buy a farm 40 miles south of town, over
McClure Pass in Paonia. That’s where I headed
in mid-July.
Instructors Kris Sutton and Flint Richter
led a lecture-demonstration about safe grounding techniques, involving copper grounding
spikes, self-tapping screws and many yards of
bare copper wire. At lunch, seven of us wound
up at Paonia’s sole deli. Shop talk was about
state incentives, the price of PV modules and
the future of the business.
I took the first half of the course online.
The web-based lessons, given over a six-week
schedule, were easy and fun — you have to
know how to add, subtract, multiply and
divide, read tables and graphs and memorize
a few formulae. There are homework assignments and a couple of quizzes each week and
plenty of email support from the instructors.
You need to devote enough time to these tasks
to double-check your own work for accuracy.
Otherwise, you may specify undersized wiring
and burn a house down. I arrived in Paonia
with a good grade, up to speed with the class
and ready to climb on a roof.
Lodging at Paonia is informal. Most students stay in private homes or B&Bs, renting rooms for $40 a night and up. During the
warm months, some students set up in private
campgrounds. I stayed in an old farmhouse,
one of dozens on SEI’s recommended accommodations list.
After lunch Kris gave us a safety lecture,
concluding, “If you need to use the fire extinguisher, you fail.” Then we split into five
groups, each led by an earnest instructor and
each dedicated to installing a different form of
PV technology. I went with the microinverter
group. Our job was to figure out the size and
components for a household PV array using
Enphase’s new microinverters and then build
the thing on a pitched roof. Led by Kyle Bolger,
an installer from central Oregon, we did the
calculations and checked them against the
equipment specifications. We did a quick site
evaluation of the roof. Non-slip, closed-toe
shoes proved important, along with a straw
sombrero, for protection on a sun-baked roof.
When Western civilization collapses, Paonia won’t even notice. This little town enjoys
an alpine valley at about 5,600-feet elevation.
Paonians grow their own food, especially fabulous fruits. They have vineyards and plenty of
water, solar and wind power already in place.
They even have their own coal mines, a couple
of miles upstream along the road to McClure
Pass. It’s weird to work on a rooftop PV install,
with renewable energy projects in all directions, and watch a coal train rumble past just
yards away.
That changed. As we bolted up the aluminum rack system, the wind turbine at the back
of the property came to life and pointed its nose
down valley. Ten miles off, a black cloud spilled
rain onto the farms and ranches. When lightning struck a neighboring hilltop, we stowed
the aluminum rails under the roof; when the
wind began gusting our paperwork around, it
was time to close up the tool bins and head
for cover. Class dispersed at 4: 30 p.m., half an
hour early, in fat wind-driven raindrops.
Sun Bakes Panels and Students
Career-Changers Pack Class
I joined a class consisting of 30 men and three
women, ranging in age from about 26 to about
60. I found a seat in the barn-like classroom
between Todd Bevington and Sonnet Baker.
Todd is a 40-something sales-and-marketing
guy from Denver eager to do something more
meaningful with the second half of his career.
Sonnet, a 30-something mechanical engineer
for Boeing, described plans to cycle across East
Asia before tackling the next stage of hers.
The course is like summer camp. On the
second day, we started to figure out how the
team would fit together. For instance, young
Brendan Pattison, from Nashville, Tenn., is a
licensed electrician who does quick, neat work
with wire strippers and connections; David
Fuller from Massachusetts is a general contractor with a good eye for plumb. Our group
of six bolted together 10 175-watt Solar World
modules and 10 Enphase microinverters. We
only had three safety harnesses, so Brendan,
David and Mark Deazley hopped onto the roof
to assemble the rack and the first row of modules. The rest of us handed up tools and made
helpful comments, like, “That doesn’t look
straight.” Then Kyle pointed the groundlings
at the conduit bits and got us started on the
Training Programs
Across North America
Here are a few of the best-known,
long-established;solar;training;programs.
To find a program near you, see solar
today.org/training;or;contact;your;local
American;Solar;Energy;Society;chapter
(see;pages;54-55).
EAST
AltE;University,;Hudson,;Mass.;
workshops.altestore.com
Hudson;Valley;Community;College,
Troy,;N.Y.;;hvcc.edu
SOUTHEAST
Solar;Source;Institute,;Largo,;Fla.;
solarsource.net
SOUTH CENTRAL
Imagine;Solar,;Austin, Texas;
imaginesolar.com
WEST
Solar;Energy;International,
Carbondale,;Colo.;;solarenergy.org
PACIFIC
Solar;Living;Institute,;Hopland,;Calif.;
solarliving.org
Verve;Solar;Consulting,;Davis, Calif.;
vervesolar.com
It’s not necessarily about the roof: Squaring up
the ground-mount array.
