Solar powered stations?

[letmesleep]

Hi all, it's been a while since I've visited the city, and here I'm asking for your opinions and maybe even a little help. First let me catch you all up on my life since I last posted. My wife and I were married last May, we bought our first house together, and 7 weeks ago my son was born health and happy. I've been a little busy to say the least. Now to my question.....

Here at work, as I'm sure in many places nation wide, Management has challenged us to find ways and to come up with ideas to cut cost and to save money. We are almost entirely paper-free after approx 12 months of tiresome hard work, we have controlled water usage and electricity waste, phone lines have been condensed, supplies have been reduced to cut out the unnecessary items, and many other issues. I am in a group of 3 who are researching solar power to run our stations, and we are just getting started. I have done some looking online, and have found that we do not have an original idea with the use of solar power, but we are still pretty excited about the possibilities it may bring. That is where my questions pops up:

1) If you are using it at work, how is it working for you?

2) Is it reliable enough for what we do, will it power a station enough?

3) Has your employer seen a big difference in the electric bills?

4) Is it worth the cost with or without any state funding or grants?

I have seen many articles about different departments implementing solar power, but can't seem to find much about how it is doing once it has been installed. It's your opinions, and hopefully your first hand knowledge that I'm looking for. We may be lucky enough to qualify for grant money from our local electric company considering we have a major power plant in our District (we're crossing our fingers).

Quick FAQ's about my District: We staff 23 full-time medics and 1 EMT that is testing, and approx 40 part-time personnel (EMT and medic). We have 4 stations and run 4 trucks 24/7/365. We cover approx 244sq miles including 10 miles of interstate roadway, and average approx 3500 calls per year.

Thanks

[Richard B the EMT]

Per the "Today" show (I think), there is a movement to eliminate Mr Edison's Incandescent bulb by 2020, in favor of the more efficient CFL, or Compact Florescent Light. The CFL is supposed to be in the cross-hairs, too, in favor of the even more efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulb.

The good news is, the 60 watt equivalent LED should last 15 to 20 years, the bad news is, it damn well better, seeing the aforementioned 60 watt equivalent will cost about $40.00 a bulb.

Hopefully, that might be some needed information for your planners.

Edited June 28, 2010 by Richard B the EMT

[Aeromedic]

Working at a small, single car station, we're considering using Wind to augment our existing power supply. I'm in Saskatchewan, so it is cold, flat and Windy (year round). We will of course still be on the grid as a backup but after doing some math with our power consumption (the majority of it coming from the unit's shoreline/block heater) we have figured that we will be making about $15/year re-selling power to the grid. (yea, $15, not much, but it'll buy us lunch one day) We were initially skeptical about what we could do with it, but then we realized that the majority of our grid-based power outages come during, you guessed it, windy and stormy periods. With a good battery system, we figure we may actually be able to functionally replace our generator with wind power (again, keeping it as a backup with regular on cycles and servicing of course). For us it hasn't been a matter of cost recovery or output cost, rather, just a desire to do something different and be an example for everybody.

We are slightly different from most other services though, our station is just a garage. Quarters are located in the adjoining hospital or at home for our 3 members who live in town (our town spans 4 blocks, you can sneeze across it). Because of this, our power usage is quite minimal, again, with most draw from the shoreline (85%) 10% coming from our light sensing outdoor CFL Fixture (which I want to change to LED because it attracts fewer bugs), 3% from Garage Door usage and the remaining 2% for the odd occasion we actually turn on all the interior lights in the garage.

Personally, I think Wind is a superior method to solar if it is feasible in the location (which of course it isn't always) just because newer windmills can put out a lot more juice with a smaller footprint than equivalent solar systems.