Give me the 

strong power of

the sun...

Solar Power

My interest in and use of solar power goes way back to our beginnings here in Fair Play now over 35 years ago. When we first staked our claim to our property in Fair Play we had no running water let alone hot water. So with little more than a 55 gallon drum, black paint, two wood pallets, some 2X4s, sheet of plywood and plastic, my then partner Larry and I created an outdoor solar shower that by the late afternoon each sunny summer day 4-6 of us could stand under a hot shower. This worked well all summer in 1975 up until about mid-October when the length of day, the angle of the sun and the outdoor temperature was no longer adequate  for our first harnessing of the sun's power.

Back then another priority was food preserving to utilize all the bounty from our incredible fruits and vegetables we grew. So we built a large solar dehydrator.

Then in 1979 when we finally started building our first real home we really dug in, literally, to harnessing the sun's energy. I designed a sod roof passive solar house which was dug into a south facing slope where the entire north and west sides were earth up against our concrete walls with the earth continuing up the north side onto the roof. The south wall of the house was a wall of vertical glass with a clearstory of glass above letting in the low sun of late fall through winter and early spring into the house to warm the tile floor and concrete walls. Atop the high roof facing south were two high efficiency solar hot water panels connected to a heat exchange system to preheat our hot water. It all worked and I was sorry to leave it all behind when we moved up to our current hilltop.

I always wanted to build a photovoltaic solar electric system but had to be patient for many years to afford such a high tech harvest of the sun's energy. Then finally in the beginning of this new millennium California's Energy Commission created a program with financial incentives to develop solar photovoltaic electric systems  that were on-grid and interfaced with the local utility company PG&E. This breakthrough made solar electricity obtainable for us. I told my wife and two daughters now is the time, I ask for your blessing to invest in solar power now or forever I will be bitching and moaning about the shouldof, couldof, wouldofs for the rest of my life.

So we refinanced our farm, borrowed enough to underwrite both systems totalling 40 KW. 80 panels for the 10KW system to run all our wells and another 220+ panel 30 KW system to provide almost 100% of our winery, lodge, commercial kitchen and home.