Happy birthday to me. I turn 63 today.
Here are two pictures of Conor and Liz’s homestead. I wasn’t able to catch Conor at work on their land.
The last several days have revolved around the kindness and hospitality of solar bozo families on Orcas Island. In short, I returned to Orcas Sunday morning, in time to spend several hours with Jason Lerner, who has taught many of Solar Energy International’s PV workshops with Ian Woofenden around the islands. Jason lives on Waldron Island, which is served only by private boat and water taxi and lacks the umbilical power cables of the more developed islands. He has done both profitable and subsistence off grid systems for island dwellers for years.
We talked of life’s passages, and of his moving to Seattle so that his adolescent girls could continue their educations. We also talked solar tech-geek stuff, and I learned just how radically system design and even component programming is region- and climate-specific, as well as the usual issues of being site- and budget-defined. The man knows his stuff.
After a night camping on Conor and Liz’s land I headed around the horseshoe-shaped island. I camped two nights on the lawn of Loren, Jen and Max (5 1/2 yo) Dickey’s homestead. Loren is a general contractor and cabinetmaker, known for doing beautiful work. He’s also well-respected for his grid-tied PV work, for which he collaborates with a local electrician for license compliance. Several others in the solar field had recommended that I meet this “lovely low-ego man and his family” and I am glad to have done so. I was able to assist him with better understanding of his own off grid home system.
While this area is in the rain shadow of the Olympic Peninsula and only receives 23″ of rain a year, cloudy days are quite common, even now in late summer. Seasonal insolation is about 6 hours in summer and one (!) in winter, so generators or microhydro are essentials. (By comparison, Albuquerque gets about 5 1/2 hours in winter and over 7 in summer with seasonal array adjustment.)
Once again i was treated like royalty, with meals of fresh garden produce and local salmon. Yesterday I visited the eastern/aging hippie-flavored Doe Bay Resort, then rode out to the exquisite Obstruction Pass State Park.
The View from Doe Bay
Today I met Eric Youngren, who developed the Solar Nexus off grid packaged system for health clinics, homes and schools in the developing world and has traveled the world installing these systems for NGOs. He’s now developing tiny LED- and USB-cable-based systems. I hope to learn more about overseas work, which appeals to my sense of adventure and desir to install PV where it will make a huge difference in people’s lives.
Eric Youngren with his Solar Nexus preassembled PV system for developing world applications.
As of today I have been on the road for a bit over six weeks. It feels a bit like a natural midpoint. Tomorrow morning I board the ferry to leave the islands and begin riding south toward home.