sustainable connections run strong and deep

During one of my final weeks at Creque Dam Farm in St. Croix, we had lots of visitors come through for the Bush Skills Rendezvous. One very nice man from Pennsylvania, Kenny Point, stayed the longest. He was very interested and inspired by the R2R program and all the wonderful people on those beautiful 200 acres, and he wrote about it here:

Ridge to Reef for a Sustainable Education

He took the above picture right after Patrick and my presentation on renewable energy (notice the lit bulb in my hand). This makes me miss the island so much....

i came here to learn

Here is a video, documentary style, about the sustainable energy project that Patrick and I completed during the Ridge to Reef program. Fellow reefer, Dez, took on the task of documenting everyone's work for her final project. With little time and resources, she did an amazing job producing videos that show what we accomplished, and interviews that divulge the real reasons why we had all come to the farm. As far as Patrick and I were concerned, we came to learn.

the yellow dwarf and the dinner plate

With a few more posts left before I can really close the book on St. Croix (for now), I should probably go ahead and get these up here - before we all forget that, yeah, that actually happened. I shall start with the conclusion of my final project at VISFI: to design, create and install a working solar system for our client, Kyle O'Keefe.

I left off (almost FOUR months ago, geez) talking about how Patrick and I had to decide on the best location for the solar panel. Well, after surveying the area, we decided this was the prime spot:


Patrick and I worked closely with zen-master/zig-zag man/bearded electricity guru, Don Young, to develop the optimal system for Kyle's needs. We constructed a box out of scrap wood that was lying around the container pad to house all of the components of the system that would convert the sunlight into AC and DC. Then all we would need to do is send the current up to Kyle's cabana, connect a few wires, screw in a bulb, and voila - power.

The box, which we painted a lovely shade of green, was attached to a 6-foot post. The roof of the box was slanted at 17 degrees (the degree of latitude in St. Croix) and doubled as a platform for our solar panel. A maze of wires ran from the panel, to the charge controller, to the batteries, to the inverter, to the fuse boxes, and under the ground to Kyle's cabana. It honestly took every ounce of our sanity to check and recheck our math, solve wiring puzzles, and get all the tools we needed to finish the job. One of the things I was most proud of after completing the project was knowing how much we were able to recycle from previous projects or from junk lying around the container pad. As frustrating as it sometimes was to try and find the right size screw we needed or to try and get our hands on a wrench or a charged power drill, it felt great to accomplish so much without even one trip to a Home Depot (not that one even exists on the island or anything).





The big moment came the day before the project was due. Patrick and I had spent the previous afternoon digging a seemingly endless trench that would become home to one measly 4-in-1 10 gauge wire, we had connected all the wiring in the system, and the panel had been charging the batteries for a good 48 hours - it was time for the moment of truth. Now, I don't mean to be overly dramatic or sensational, but it was a very emotional moment for Patrick and me. It actually was our moment of truth. Would the light bulb light? Was all our work actually for something?

I twisted the bulb into the rusty socket of the old metal fixture we had borrowed from the baby chicken pen. I gave Patrick the thumbs up. He switched on the inverter. Current flowed through the fuse box, into the long gray wire, through our ramshackle joint box, and into the old fixture. The bulb's filament slowly began to glow, brighter and brighter (actually, not slowly at all, more like the SPEED OF LIGHT, but I like to pretend it was all in slow motion), and soon it was burning with the electrical fury of a thousand suns (40 watts). And the peasants rejoiced.


As Patrick and I were making the long walk down the hillside, back toward the community center, I noticed the setting sun in front of us. How incredible it was, I thought, that we had taken unseen particles of light and transformed them into something - creating a light of our own. We began to chat about this very miracle, when both of us turned around to gain perspective. We wanted to look back toward Kyle's cabana to imagine what it would look like from the other side of the farm if the lights were on. We wanted to imagine what future farmers at VISFI will see in the distance when someone is reading by the light of our bulb. We just wanted to imagine it, but we saw this:


The full moon had risen, stealthy in the night sky. It hung like a dinner plate directly over Kyle's cabana, casting its pale glow over the farm. It was, as Elton John might say, the circle of light.

sustainable energy project: providing Kyle O'Keefe with a working solar system

In order to complete the Ridge to Reef program, we must each complete a final project and present it to the class. Patrick and I will be designing and installing a solar energy system for a home currently under construction. After one week of work, we have consulted with Kyle twice and come up with a good estimation of his energy needs and a quote for the price of a sufficient system. Most of the supplies are already on the farm, but we are working through this process from start to finish in order to gain experience.

On Thursday, we had a second consultation with our client, Kyle. Before the meeting, Patrick and I had to prepare by sizing and pricing a system based on the things he had told us in our earlier consultation.

We knew that he needed an AC (alternating current as opposed to DC, direct current) system that would provide power for:

• a ceiling fan during hot summer nights
• a laptop computer
• a CD player
• compact fluorescent lighting (with future expansion for front porch and compost toilet)
• halogen lighting
• cell phone charger
• possible electric single-burner stove

We used a sizing worksheet copied out of the Solar Living Sourcebook to calculate his energy needs. Based on average wattage for the above appliances and electronics, we guesstimated that he would use 936 daily watt-hours. This amount of energy would demand (based on St. Croix's solar climate) three solar panels providing 19.5 amps of energy to a battery pack of six batteries providing 36 volts. He would also need a sufficient charge controller that could convert the 36 volts into 12, and an inverter that could handle the amperage. All together, this would cost Kyle approximately $4,187 (not including a few hundred dollars worth of extra supplies and accessories).

A diagram of a solar system using both AC and DC:

We met with Kyle and ran through our findings. We gave him the initial quote, but made sure to note that if his energy consumption could be decreased, we could knock dollars off of the price. We were generous in the amount of daily watt-hours he would need when we sized his system because we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. But after our second meeting with Kyle, he let us know that his usage would be less than we had planned for, so we went back to our sizing worksheet - this time with these numbers in mind:

• ceiling fan for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week (only during summer, but must be considered year-long) - 320 watt-hours/day
  
• laptop computer for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week (a generous amount, but he scratched the CD player in lieu of Pandora or Itunes) - 140 watt-hours/day
  
• 13-watt yellow compact fluorescent for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week (for inside mood lighting - the porch light was not considered as it will be a future addition) - 26 watt-hours/day
  
• 2, 20-watt halogen lights for 3 hours a day, 7 days a week (as task lighting) - 120 watt-hours/day
  
• cell phone charger for one hour a day, 7 days a week - requiring little to no wattage
  
• (The electric stove was nixed after research showed the energy requirement to be very inefficient. Running one of these for two hours a week used more energy than running the ceiling fan for 56 hours a week - Kyle settled with his trusty propane stove instead)

These numbers, while still generous enough to give Kyle and ourselves room to work with, allowed Patrick and I to cut back his system considerably. After our second time through the sizing worksheet, Patrick and I found that Kyle would only use 680 daily watt-hours instead of the previous 936. This meant we could knock off one of the three solar panels and two of the six batteries. We could also get a much cheaper charge controller now that we didn't need one to convert the system voltage (the new battery pack could be wired at 12 volts, the usual amount needed to power appliances and other electronics).

These three changes alone dropped the price from $4,187 to $3,028. A difference of $1,159. Any client would be thrilled to hear that!

Our next task will be to decide on a reasonable inverter for his system. We need to shop online and find one that will fit his needs (a pure sine wave inverter with a sufficient amp rating). We also need to finish talking with Kyle and decide on our final location for the panels - because his home is surrounded by trees, the panels will have to be located on a stand in the field in front of his home. There are at least two possible locations. We must work through the pros and cons of each location in order to decide.

More on that next time...

Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me

The curriculum for the Ridge to Reef program here at the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute (VISFI) is split into 8 different study areas: Farm-based Education, Permaculture, Sustainable Building, Agroecology, Animal Husbandry, Renewable Energy, Slow Food Cooking, and Agrotourism. As a class, the nine of us will spend a week on each study area (minus animal husbandry because not as much interest was expressed toward that area) and one week at the end will be spent on holistic synthesis, where we will bring everything together into a cohesive whole.

Individually, each of us has chosen one area to focus on more fully. We will spend two days a week working with an adviser in that focus area, while completing a final project that will benefit the farm in some way, and giving us a way to turn our ideas into reality. We will also show our project to the class at the end of the term in a final presentation.

It took some hard thinking to decide which area I wanted to focus on. It was a relatively difficult process - as decisions often are. Permaculture has been very interesting, as I will highlight in a future post. And sustainable building is something I have been interested in for a while. I really wish I could spend months studying each one of those areas and putting that knowledge to practical use. Someday, I want to build my own home - an efficient, energy-saving place where I can raise a family and grow old. And I want to use the land around me to grow food and create a fertile environment for natural cycles to take place. Still, I knew the place I wanted to start my quest for knowledge was with renewable energy.

As I focus on renewable energy, I will be working with Dan Glenn, the farm's operations manager, to create a sustainable system of solar power for a specified site. First, though, Dan will have to teach me (and Patrick, the other student who chose renewable energy as his focus) the basics of electricity. We spent a few hours last week looking into the system where he lives on the farm. There really is a lot to take into consideration when deciding how to set up your own solar system.

So far, all I have done is read through a few packets of information on electricity, wiring, circuitry, and solar power. For instance, did you know that enough sunlight travels to the earth each day to provide enough energy to last us 5 years at our current rate of consumption? That's pretty crazy.

Soon we will be hiking up to Kyle's place, checking out the site, and working with him to design a system that meets his needs. Kyle is a staffer here on the farm, who is currently teaching us all about permaculture. He is almost finished building his own cabana up in the hills above the moringa swales. He wants a solar system to provide his power, so Patrick and I will work with him as our client to design, build, and install a system before the term is over.

I chose renewable energy as my focus area because I felt like it was the area I could benefit from most during my time here. Though I do really want to learn a lot more about other areas as well (permaculture, sustainable building, agroecology, etc.), I know that I can always find ways to learn about these things in other places - whether it be through a class or through an apprenticeship or just simply asking lots of questions at farmer's markets. I don't know a whole lot of places where I will get a chance to design, build, and install a solar system with no previous knowledge or experience. It is just something I can't pass up.