Everyone starts somewhere... this is a brief story of my entry into the solar electric arena.
Back in 2002 my wife and I purchased a wonderful 22 acre block on an elevated site right on the edge of town, and started about the lengthy process of building our unusual earth-covered home. Trials and tribulations, red-tape, difficult neighbours, regulations, vandals etc all had a hand over the next few years.
Before we started building, we needed a reasonably secure site-shed to store things in, and decided to use a second-hand 40' shipping container. It became site-shed, storage shed and amongst other things - makeshift solar panel mount!
The earliest need for power was to run a small submersible pump to get water up to our new water tank. (105,000 litre concrete tank). The pump was a low flow pump, so needed to run for a long time. Running it off a generator was not practical, but solar was.
I purchased two 75W BP panels, at great expense (nearly $10/watt back then), and made a fairly rough but functional mount.
Here is is sitting atop the container. (The container is a "high-cube" - 9'6" high, with nothing to get hold of, so fairly safe against theft)
![](http://house.albury.net.au/17jan2004/MVC-093X.JPG)
The frame was some old scrap steel, welded to form an "H" base. I drilled a large hole through the middle, to take some brass plumbing fittings that would hold the panels down, allow them to turn so I could align to the sun, and provide a water-tight entry into the container for the cables.
![](http://house.albury.net.au/17jan2004/MVC-094X.JPG)
![](http://house.albury.net.au/17jan2004/MVC-096X.JPG)
The frame was angle-adjustable for season by changing where the upright arms attached. It was pretty crude, but it worked.
The hinges at the bottom were (barely) adequate. Although supposedly galvanised, I think they were just stored in the same room as the zinc. They rusted and were not much good in surprisingly short time.
![](http://house.albury.net.au/17jan2004/MVC-095X.JPG)
It wasn't much after the panels were set up than we started having problems with after-hours problems. So I put a small wireless IP camera in a weather-resistant enclosure and sat it discretely with the panels. It connected via wireless internet back to my office and home so I could keep an eye on things.
![](http://house.albury.net.au/05feb2004/mvc-114x.jpg)
The solar panels charged a car battery stored in the container, with a PL20 charge controller. The PL20 ran the water pump when there was plenty of power available, and the battery kept the camera going the rest of the time.
![](http://house.albury.net.au/07feb2004/MVC-118X.JPG)
A year later, it was time to move the panels. I'd set up a more permanent access point and the panels were more useful powering it (and a larger battery that wasn't getting so hot in summer - the container was over 65 degrees C inside)
![](http://house.albury.net.au/30may2005/MVC-864X.JPG)
The addiction clearly had begun. 2 panels were good. 4 panels must be better!
![](http://house.albury.net.au/05nov2005/MVC-529X.JPG)
Another year on, and the panels finally made it to a proper mount rather than just sitting on the ground. This was a commercial tracker. It was cheap and flimsy, but it gave me a substantial increase in watt-hours per day, just by tracking. I also liked that the panels were finally off the ground.
![](http://house.albury.net.au/17sep2006/MVC-491X.JPG)
And from these humble beginnings, I've grown to 3,500 watts of PV today.