Creative Energies Blog

Andy Tyson, Creative Energies Co-owner, is now certified by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) as a Solar PV Installer.  Now three of Creative Energies staff are certified!

Neither Wyoming nor Idaho currently have licensing programs specifically for solar technologies. We, at Creative Energies, believe that in the absence of such programs, NABCEP certification offers our customers the best guarantee that their system design and installation is of the highest quality.

The North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) is a volunteer board of renewable energy stakeholder representatives that includes representatives of the solar industry, NABCEP certificants, renewable energy organizations, state policy makers, educational institutions, and the trades. Each member of the board was chosen because of his or her experience and involvement in the solar energy industry. NABCEP’s mission–to support, and work with, the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries, professionals, and stakeholders–is intended to develop and implement quality credentialing and certification programs for practitioners.

NABCEP’s goal is to develop voluntary national certification programs that will:

• Promote renewable energy;
• Provide value to practitioners;
• Promote worker safety and skill; and
• Promote consumer confidence

Recently, Scott Kane was interviewed by Molly Messick of Wyoming Public Radio for the piece on the program Open Spaces.  Here is the story:

WYOMING (wpr) - There’s a groundswell of interest in small-scale renewable energy in Wyoming. Hundreds of homeowners are buying their own wind turbines and solar panels. But their reasons for investing in alternative energy point to a particular brand of environmentalism, one that’s an outgrowth of rural life and rural values. Wyoming Public Radio’s Molly Messick has this story. © Copyright 2010, wpr

Click here to listen.

For Immediate Release

Date: 2.18.2010

Contact: Scott Kane, Creative Energies

Creative Energies hired for Largest Solar Project in Wyoming

Town of Jackson contracts with Creative Energies for 810 panels

Lander-based Creative Energies has been contracted to design and install several of the biggest solar power systems in the state and region. The Town of Jackson, WY has hired Creative Energies, to install an additional 810 solar panels on Town facilities, creating the largest solar installation in the state.  When the project is completed this summer, the town of Jackson will have four solar projects with a total capacity of 225kW. The largest of these projects will be at the town’s wastewater treatment facility, where a total of 842 panels will produce roughly 200kW. Of the three other systems, two are already in place — on the stair tower of the parking garage and at the Deloney street public restroom – and the third system will assist a town water project in Karns meadow.

  27kW solar array installed at the Jackson Waste Water Treatment plant in 2008 by Creative Energies. The 2010 installation will be six times as large!

“Our goal with these projects” said Mayor Mark Barron “is to continue to move the ball forward with our commitment to becoming energy sustainable. We have good baseline data about usage and have made significant strides in setting out energy efficiency retrofit strategies. Renewable energy is also a critical piece of our overall sustainability goals, and we are thrilled to partner with Creative Energies and leverage stimulus dollars to save energy, create jobs, and work towards national goals of energy security.”

In addition to the Town of Jackson project, Creative Energies have also been selected to design and build several other major projects. The company won a highly competitive bidding process to secure and a a contract with the US National Park Service to design and build a 76 kilowatt  solar power system for at Mesa Verde National Park in Southwest Colorado. They are also currently under construction on a 50 kilowatt solar installation for the Wyoming Department of Tourism and Travel and WDOT’s  North East Wyoming Welcome Center near Sundance, Wyoming.

The Town of Jackson solar farm will be the largest solar array in  Wyoming and several of the surrounding states, and the Town of Jackson will be the largest grid tied solar customer in the region. “Two hundred and twenty five kilowatts of solar is a very large system for this area” says Creative Energies owner Andy Tyson. “The Town is really making a sound investment in this technology. By targeting stimulus funding on a technology that will yield steady energy generation with minimal operating cost for decades to come, the Town has made a shrewd long-term investment.” The solar panels will create as much electricity as is used by 33 Wyoming homes.

Creative Energies has been designing and installing renewable energy systems in the Rocky Mountain west for nine years. They have completed solar energy systems, wind power systems and geothermal heating and cooling systems for residences, ranches, businesses, schools and state and federal agencies.

Creative Energies

P.O. Box 1777, Lander,  WY 82520
Lander, WY office  307.332.3410
Victor, ID office  208.354.3001
Fax  888.456.6625
scott@creativeenergies.biz    

www.creativeenergies.biz

PO Box 1777 · Lander, WY 82520 · 307.332.3410 · www.CreativeEnergies.biz

By Scott Kane
3/13/2010

Each year, somewhere around the beginning of March, things at Creative Energies get busy. Well, if Creative Energies is busy that means Toby Schmidt, Co-Owner and project manager, is going full speed. This is what he did last week:

Monday:
6am start. Fort Washakie Entrepreneurs Center PV installation. Load 40 solar panels and the solar mounting rack in the CE work truck. Toby, Dan Kilcoyne (Electrician) and Curtis Tronlone (solar and geothermal installer) arrive on site and spend the day building three solar mounting structures and installing 40 Evergreen ES-A 205 modules on a flat roof of a great looking new commercial building. Beautiful day. Done by 5pm. The solar array looks great. Dan will go back to complete the electrical work.

Tuesday:
6 am start. 10 kilowatt residential PV solar installation near Cody. Load up 45 Sunpower solar modules and rack material on a truck and trailer. Drive three hours, again with Dan and Curtis. Today’s solar install is on a 8/12 pitch roof. Fall protection equipment slows the pace of work but that’s what it takes to put solar on a roof with an appropriately steep pitch. The work gets harder when the snow started to fall. An inch or two of snow complicates work on a steep roof. According to Dan, the last half hour of work took three hours. Once again, a great looking solar array installed in one go, though this time the finish was in the dark. Again, Dan will go back to do the remaining electrical work.

Wednesday:
Toby and Curtis switch gears from solar to geothermal. They travel to Sundance, WY to continue work on an ongoing geothermal project. We are installing both solar and a geothermal loop field at the Northeast Wyoming Welcome Center, now under construction. After five hours driving to get there they stage our Bobcat skid steer, our drilling rig and our grout pump at the geothermal field site. Spring mud conditions prevented them from getting the vehicles to where they wanted but they made it work somehow. “Grouting” means injecting a precise mixture of silica sand, bentonite grout and water down into the full depth of each of our sixteen 200 foot deep geothermal bore holes. It is not a clean or quiet process. Done well, though, it allows the geoxchange field to capture or release heat into the ground efficiently.

Thursday:
More grouting. All day. Lots of mud and sand. Drive five hours back to Lander. Arrive 2 am.

Friday:
6 am start. Project planning meeting in Mesa Verde, CO. Creative Energies has been selected to design and install a 76 kW solar installation at Mesa Verde National Park, CO. Toby’s list of skills is long and full of surprises. New to the list is flight. Toby and Phil Schneider (system engineer) meet at the Lander airport at first light. At 8:30 they are 500 miles south. A productive working session with National Park Service staff helps to map out a complex installation. Phil and Toby touch down in Lander just before dark.

Things were starting to cool off here in Idaho by mid-September, so what better to do than drive to Baja and roast in the late-summer sun?  NOLS Mexico has an off-grid facility in Coyote Bay with a battery-based solar system that powers multiple buildings and a water pump.  Toby and Curtis went down last April to upgrade the photovoltaics on the roof and pull off an older array in preparation for the roof being replaced.  With the new roof installed, Toby needed to head down again to put that array back up and double the size of the battery bank; I volunteered to assist him and become familiar with the system.

We rendezvoused at the office in Lander.  When I arrived Toby was cramming his itty-bitty Honda Civic with spools of wire, hardware, tools, conduit, luggage, etcetra.  Somehow we both fit in as well, with the ability to lay the passenger seat back!  The sun was dropping towards the western horizon as we drove out of Lander.  42 bleary-eyed hours later we pulled off the highway into the NOLS Mexico compound, and parked in the shade.
The new batteries were delivered using a local delivery service from the border.  The photo below was the delivery service that brought the batteries (2500 pounds!) 10hr down the bumpy road. Not sure how it made it?

Stepping out of the air-conditioning at noon in Coyote Bay was a bit like sticking your head under the heat lamp at a pizzeria.  I could feel my brain shut down to half-capacity out of self-protection, and it didn’t come fully back online until we crossed the border back into Wyoming.  Despite the crushing heat, Toby went right to work.  After we unloaded the car into the garage that houses the battery bank and inverters, he gave me a quick tour of the facility and then we opened up the Outback panel and started re-configuring the wiring to work with an added array and more batteries.

The following two days continued in the same vein.  Up on the roof shortly after sunrise until the sun on the brand-new galvanized metal roof was too hot to bear.  Sweating through the sunny hours down in the inverter garage.  Back on the roof after the sun went behind the horizon, and a brief swim in the bay at dusk.  We put up a pretty good-looking array on the new roof, including 12 ancient panels that came from the original system and produced about 600 watts.  The batteries (2500 pounds of them) were delivered by a friendly Mexican man who had driven them 10 hours down the very bumpy highway from Ensenada in the back of his tiny 2-wheel drive pickup.  Pretty impressive.  We parked them next to the original bank and wired it all up into one big system.  In the end, NOLS Mexico now has 8 KW of solar with about 3000 amp hours of battery capacity.

Though it was hard to believe, we stuffed even more into the Honda for the return trip, including 4 solar modules that had been recalled.  Pulling out of Coyote Bay at 5pm seemed a little ridiculous, but it was actually nice to drive through the night without any traffic.  We limped into San Diego at 6am with a dying front passenger-side wheel bearing and checked into a motel for a few hours’ rest.  After having the bearing replaced on a Sunday morning, we hit the highway again and finished up the trip back to Lander.

7 days to drive Lander to Baja, upgrade a system, and drive Baja to Lander.  Not bad.

Above and following are photos from my recent visit to the Solar Decathlon event in Washington DC. Teams of students from 20 universities design and build small homes that need to meet specific performance and comfort goals. The event is held every two years, when the homes are “built” on the Mall in Downtown Washington DC. Tours are given to the public and the houses are tested and judged. The application of quality building materials and the innovation in small footprints (800 sqft is the maximum) is really interesting to see and experience. There was plenty of variety in the solutions to the meet the engineering challenges of the event, but one thing remained the same as the last Solar Decathlon – Germany won. I had a couple favorites – Ontario and California, with many bits and pieces from other homes. Check out the Solar Decathlon website for virtual tours, product lists and links to competing teams websites. http://www.solardecathlon.org/