SolarSet: Solar Energy Systems FAQs - Solar Power Designs, Options, and Applications

carson uh thank you for coming on the show glad to have you on um it's strangely enough it's actually our first solar discussion we've discussed so many different elements of industry this is our first solar one so thanks for coming on to talk about your product and and why you developed it and where it's going thank you for having me um let's start with uh let's start with where solar set came from and the design because of course power zone is very much in the fluid handling side we featured power zone a couple times on the show we've promoted them on multiple episodes so where did solar set where did that angle come from yeah so i've been interested in solar for years uh six eight years and always wondered how we can get into it and during this last energy downturn there was not enough pump work to do so i started thinking of how ways we can integrate our solar products in the same way as we do our pump products and that is packaging in our shop basically fab um factory built solar systems is what i was targeting and i floated the idea to my brother and my father who are in in business with me and they liked the idea this time and we did it that's that's where it started it started about a year ago and and we've been building pre-packaged solar systems was it uh was it a easy transition because with power zone you've and i've been to your facility you have a great facility already set up so from a production standpoint it was it a fairly easy pivot to to go from because i know you're putting together pump packages with engines and customization and all that sort of stuff was it the transition easy enough yeah it it's okay uh the thing is with pumps they're very they're very high tech a lot of engineering they're custom built and that's how we're programmed the more complex the the unit is really the better and so when we talk about solar it's a totally different challenge they're not very well the off-grid units are sort of technical but the solar is not a high-tech you know thing it's it's just panels and some inverters and some electronics you know so our challenge here is production manufacturing which is a little bit new to us everything we've done up till now has been you know custom really high-tech stuff and now we're we're trying to tackle a different challenge of of lots of manufacturing instead of just one or two higher end the more the efficiency side of the production when you're duplicating the product over and over um what is on the market uh right now just so that i kind of myself and and the viewers understand sort of what gap that you're filling so where's sort of the standard solar offering and then where is solar set coming into the picture so um a normal ground mount system and really ground run is where we're focused normal ground mount system you'd have a contractor go out there onto site and you put in concrete pilings and build a frame up from those concrete pilings and then set his solar system on it and he'd be on site for you know a week or so setting this up and the system stays there it's a permanent structure then on the other side you have trailer mounted ones just for you know you can rent it for a a fair or a concert or something you can rent it and they're trailer mounted where solar said is coming in is kind of in between those there's a there's a gap where we're trying to fill we want to build pre-packaged solar systems in our shop and move them out they're really designed to be permanent structures but if you're renting a house and you want to rent a different one and take your solar system with you then you can do that if you if you sell your house and the new buyer doesn't want it you can take it with you it's really it's set up to just be these modular expandable type systems and they're all assembled when they get there right and it must be nice too because some i mean now they're there some people are putting them on roofs and things like that but a lot of people that they've already designed their house as a certain look and everything like that so this sort of fills that gap as well right yeah does um do these units i've seen a lot online of the the units that track the sun and that and i i don't know much about solar so i don't know if that's an efficient system these units because they're stationary and i saw that they kind of come we'll be showing pictures throughout this interview um do these units track the sun no they don't so the sun trackers are still used in industrial like when you have like several acres under panels or even 100 acres under panels you'll you'll use the trackers but in residential solar it doesn't really make sense anymore it's way more economical to just add two or three panels than it is to make the panels you have track because the panels are anymore they're not the expensive part the expensive part is installing and those trackers they take maintenance there are some cases where if you're in like a canyon and you only get two hours of sunlight a day you're gonna want a tracker but in 99 of the cases uh trackers don't make sense for for small installations like this anymore um i just have a i want to get into some of the units in that carson but i just just a very laymen question here um those i see the steel uh frames that they're there it's mounted on do you need to put concrete in and do that sort of stuff to make them stationary like you know like wind and all this sort of stuff like how how are these being tied down no you don't need concrete um none of none of our customers have put concrete in first they just put them on the gravel lot or the dirt lot and then we design we have do our wind load calculations and we design that the anchors the earth anchors to go in they're usually installed with like uh electric impact or something and you need several of them if you have like a skid steer or something you can put in a big anchor then you need less of them but we can do it really our preferred way is just to do it right on the ground no concrete right okay that's that's that's probably that's probably good to know just an extra layer that you don't have to handle um let's go i want to again for for me i mean there's people watching they're going to be much more educated in it but um even the grid tie to the off-grid system um i kind of want to have an understanding of that and then tie that in with the models because you do have different models out there so could you just kind of outline the models and then in that if you could sort of explain the differences because i think one has to be bigger if it's off grid or maybe the reverse you just kind of unpack that a little bit for us all right so let's start with the grid tie is just a very simple system it's just panels and then an inverter that changes that electricity from dc to ac and puts it into the power grid and that's if someone is already hooked up to utility power and they want solar to offset their meter basically pay less and generate their own power those those systems are very easy they take no batteries basically the grid is your battery um when the sun goes down you use grid power when the sun goes up then your system puts puts it i have a grid tie system at my place and it just every march they settle up with me um you know if i used more than i that i made then i owe them money and if i didn't if i made more than i use then they they owe me a little bit of money so that's grid tie very simple off grid is where you have no utility there's no backup you need to supply all the power yourself from your own solar system and that's where you need we use lithium-ion batteries in our systems to where you know they're maintenance-free and and that's an off-grid system there they're all packaged and that's your that's your grid basically if you need backup from there then you need a backup generator which we put on underneath these things as well okay so it's put designed into the unit then yeah right that's the difference between grid tie and off grid the reason off grid is usually larger they're more expensive because there's those batteries in there but they're also larger because you're sizing it off of your worst month grid tie you're sizing it off of your average months and in most homes there's a big difference there so that's the between a grid tie sized off your average month and a off grid is sized off your worst case month so when it comes to the models then are the is the size uh does it just essentially get length is that what we're talking about here it's not it's not like the are you building a bigger a wider panel um putting that design together or sort of how you approaching it uh when you need to upsize yeah the the panels are all identical on both off grid and grid tie and from big to small there's just the smallest one we make is actually a four panel it's not on our website because they're not very economical till you get to the eight and twelve panel ones but um the smallest one is is four panels and the biggest one is whatever 60 panels and you just add panels so you said about that for the off grid the lithium ions are efficient but are you using the same are you using the same type of panels for both the off grid and the grid tie yeah yeah so is that is that standard how they're made uh now i again i'm sorry that i'm not i'm just not a solar expert so is it is there sort of a standard now that they're they're manufactured as the panels you mean the panels themselves yeah there's there's um standard sizes that they try to go with but the wattages of these things are all over the map anywhere from like a really small panel you can buy for you know they're 200 watts and then a really big one an oversized one is 500 watts we're using 445 watt ones so they're pretty big but there's the panels are are not standardized really they're we've we've standardized with a panel in our product but in the general solar industry there's really not a standard panel the you mentioned with the sun tracking systems it takes a lot of maintenance which is why obviously if you're using it for commercial use it makes sense you've got maintenance people on staff and things like that um is there any type of maintenance that is required obviously if there's a generator there's that type of thing um but for the units themselves let's go let's start with the the the ti the the grid tied ones are they is there any sort of maintenance that is required no you like depending on where you live if you get snow and your panels aren't steep enough then you might need to go out there and shovel the snow off but i never do with my system um i just wait a few hours in the sun it the snow sloughs off so they don't take maintenance the grid tire won't take any maintenance well you mentioned yours a couple times and i want to talk about environment because um i re i remember when um i think uh i think elon musk came out with the uh the like the shingled ones and that was a big hype of course it was all across the news and everything like that and of course it was exciting but then as you start to look in you go ah that wouldn't work for this place it wouldn't work for that place and all that sort of thing so i i think what would be good is to understand why it works in your area and then if you could i mean of course you won't be able to touch on every place but just sort of expand as to what good what are good locations but let's start you're based in colorado so why is that a good location yeah colorado is great because you need sun obviously you can't have like really cloudy weather all the time here we get about 360 days of sun so that helps but more than that um solar panels perform more efficiently in cold weather so if you can have lots of sun and cold weather and cool temperatures you're better off the other thing is in this specific location is a little bit unique and that is that we're at 7 600 feet above sea level so our atmosphere is thin and our our sun is is more intense a lot of places don't have that but you don't really need it you just need the first the first one is basically the main one you need lots of sun but then cool temperatures is is better oh really i didn't realize that about the cool temperatures why is that oh it has to do with the with the semiconductor cell in a solar panel when the heat goes up it just kind of it's not as efficient i see oh okay yeah that's that's interesting so what um what other environments would would your units be good i mean obviously you're not going to cover all 50 states and canada i mean you're i want to get into something um but i want to get some of the the fold unit that you're making now um i want to talk about that but just what are some other areas that like you have i already identified that would be good systems or good environments for it yeah so anywhere in the in the southwest is obviously great there's even places that are quite a bit better than here um you know they get another hour of they get another sun hour than we do which is sun hour is not just an hour of sun but it's a as a measurement but then even over into you know north carolina it's good there florida is fine hawaii is really good and africa has great places um middle east it's there's just a lot of places in this world where solar is great and i've seen i've seen solar in in canada and and where the sun you know this the summer months are probably really good the winter months probably aren't but they're making it work so yeah i've got inquiries from missouri and ohio and it pencils out there you know you need a little bigger system but it it works there too so and can your team help out with that i mean if someone like me has a unit you know um uh you know people that are building their their houses and stuff are is your team able to assist and be able to tell them if it's economical or you know if it is a good investment for where they're located yeah this solar sizing is not um it's not just all a guesstimate it's it's pretty accurate really when you when you know how to do it you can estimate what it's going to be and if you have just a little bit of data you know you can get really close to what the payoff is going to be uh so you've mentioned um i'm glad you mentioned some of the overseas but even even across state lines we had a guest on that they were they were helping uh they have these different units that they ship all over the us and they would always create in the in the crane sector so there's a lot of um there's a lot of hoops sometimes to jump through because of the different uh shipping requirements and and regulations and all that sort of thing so you've designed something called the solar set fold and that's you know in a way it's sort of a game changer because it does open you up to to even global markets can you talk a little bit about that design and and the demand for it yeah so um oh it was a few months ago i got an inquiry from oman in the middle east and and this lady wanted a solar system there an off-grid one and you know my system was was perfect except that it all needed to be completely disassembled and stuffed in a shipping container and then i really have no edge you know so that got me to thinking we need to just to make a system that fits in a shipping container but we need our power density like we need to be able to fit a lot of panels in there so right basically took the design that we had and made it fold and and slide in a shipping container and now i feel like if we would get that inquiry again we could be offering a very good solution i mean this is this is american-made high-quality factory-built stuff and it can go anywhere in the world and you flip a switch on and have power you know right um we also we're getting at the same time we're getting inquiries from all over the u.s and with our rigid model it's just hard they're they're 11 and a half feet wide they work great for just local stuff here but in the end if you're going to go more than about 300 miles away you're probably going to want to you know just get the fold as few hundred dollars more and and you can skip all the shipping permits and everything a few hundred dollars so this isn't this isn't thousands of dollars more for this unit i think uh i think we're gonna i don't have the pricing on the full totally nailed down yet we've built a fold and it's it's gonna work but i we haven't built up a whole bunch of them yet and so we're still running through the pricing models on that but it won't be you know way more it'll be within you know less than a thousand dollars more likely so on an off-grid system with the fold are you going to be able you're able to fold it down put it in a c-can are you going to be able to put your generator in is it going to be one contained unit i mean of course obviously if you it's a certain length you're going to need multiple containers but short of that are you going to be able to compact everything into that one container yeah they're not they're not dense they're very airy you know right you fit a lot of stuff under the panels and you can ship a lot of stuff in there you know and what is coming with it uh just so you have a complete picture let's go with with either one of the units when you're getting it uh let's say you're shipping it overseas and there what is coming in the package let's go let's go with an off-grid system because it'll have the generator and everything like that so you slide this thing out of the shipping container it has a cabinet it's an insulated and temperature controlled cabinet where your electronics and your batteries are and that's housed underneath the panels it can also have a a generator that is already electrically connected to the cabinet and then of course it has the panels and the framing and you take it out of the ship and container and and you crank it uh there's we send a little oh hand crank that cranks and unfolds it and at that point it needs to be anchored and used so um nothing electrically there's no nothing you need to do with this it's just connect your load up to the up to the outlet of this thing and it gives you power so uh anchoring is the challenge here it takes every site in the world is different and it takes a little bit of thinking you know what soil type we're gonna what anchors do we send do they need to be three feet long or four feet long or right whatever how many of them but short of anchoring this thing you just literally un you know unfold it and plug it in so yeah it's pretty amazing so you've got one already built and now you're you're transitioning into the production state you've already have multiple units of the uh i think you call it the rigid model you've already got those up they're already in operation is that right yeah but then the fold so if if somebody just as we tie it up i i know you're you've got lots on the go right now so i don't want to keep you too long but um right now if somebody wants to order them what's sort of the lead time on these units oh right now we're running behind a little bit we're probably at six weeks okay but our goal is to get that down to where you know if you need one in three weeks that's that's generally going to be very possible okay yeah we've got a gentleman coming on the show here in a little while uh doing uh we're doing a six sigma efficiency manufacturing talk so i'll make sure to send you that link uh maybe there's a couple secrets in there for you okay uh carson uh thanks for coming on the show again i'm not gonna keep you for too long i just i wanted to cover it we kind of fit you in amongst all the other episodes of course now that i'm saying that gowdy i realized now other people can like what can you fit me in so no we're busy but no i'm thanks for just jumping in on doing this this quite on quite short notice because i wanted to cover it and i wanted to get some solar talk on the energy show we haven't covered it so i appreciate it appreciate it carson and hope you come back at some point okay thank you okay did you order one while we're uh we were talking about it no but i do want to they look super cool well we were talking i was actually chatting with carson a little bit yesterday we were saying like people that are building like log homes and things like that um it's it's just it's just perfect because you know it there's a little bit of an investment that it comes to get these kind of units so people that are building those some of these beautiful places um it'd be a pretty good fit um anyway gowdy where can people go to follow like share comment or become a guest um well first off definitely go and subscribe to our youtube channel we've got two episodes a week on there and moving up to three sometime this year next week oh that's something i didn't know um and of course like always follow us on facebook and linkedin um and if you want to be a guest on the show or you want to recommend someone to be a guest on the show contact us info crownsman.com and go to solarset.com for solar panels amazing i want to get some although it's amazing i wouldn't know where to put them but we'll find somewhere okay thank you everybody for watching we love doing the show i'm glad we finally got some solar talk on and if you know someone in that in the solar industry uh please let us know we'd love to have them on we will talk to you soon and see you on the next episode of crownsman energy

Channel: SolarSet

Views: 54,516

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

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Id: _0iTvDEYU9M

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021