by Alan Stankevitz | Sep 18, 2020
Over the past year I have been doing my best to help the monarch butterfly—both in our prairie, gardens and greenhouse. This summer was the first full season for the swamp milkweed that I planted in our greenhouse in 2018 and these giant plants definitely attracted...
by Alan Stankevitz | Apr 9, 2020
Times have changed since the last time I installed a solar array 16 years ago. Back in those days, it was common to right-size or over-size an inverter based on the size of the solar array. In our particular case, I installed 4kW worth of solar panels and (2) 2.5kW...
by Alan Stankevitz | Mar 25, 2020
I really believed that we’d be lucky to have our solar array up and running by May knowing how our spring weather can be and not knowing how Scott from Viking Electric would be able to squeeze in this job. And as it turned out those issues were small compared...
by Alan Stankevitz | Mar 17, 2020
Earlier this year (late January) I started getting bids to install a new solar array. The purpose of this array was to get us closer (and maybe slightly beyond) net zero — meaning that our renewable energy production would equal our consumption of fossil...
by Alan Stankevitz | Feb 26, 2020
It’s been 16 years since installing our 4kW solar array and thought now was a good time to see how production is compared to the first year. The NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) predicts that panels produced after the year 2000 should degrade about...
by Alan Stankevitz | Apr 4, 2019
Late last summer I completed the construction of our 14′ x 20′ greenhouse. I decided to build the greenhouse from scratch instead of buying a kit because I really didn’t like the fact that the kits don’t allow for the sides to be removed or in...
