Track the Sun

Charity begins at home. So, before expecting green efforts from the world we ourselves will have to take initiatives to save the environment. Thinking on these lines Terry Coss has gone an extra mile to save the environment. He has come up with an eco-friendly home improvement project, which uses a 16 feet by 10.5 feet solar panel array that automatically tilts and pans to track the sun across the sky.

Coss, a teacher of Newberg High School’s robotics program managed almost everything himself, be it digging the foundations, installing the support post or running electric conduit into his house. He installed a photovoltaic system mounting on top of the house’s roof. This system with movable panels is capable of generating nearly one-and-a-half times more power than stationary panels. On days when sun smile brightly a 2,000 watts can be generated and on gloomy days he had to be satisfied with just 500 watts.

Coss triggered the panels in January, ever since has noticed a reduction from $60 to $15 in his monthly electric bill. Though the wattage is not enough to power the entire household, but most appliances do not work always, so whatever amount of power is additional it goes into the grid, which spins the meter back. A flaw in his system has been disturbing him, which he soon hopes to rectify. The defect is that the power that is generated from the panels enters the mains, from where it is distributed to the entire house. In case of a blackout, everything would come to a stand still. To deal with this ugly situation, Coss plans to add some kind of battery storage system.

In addition to the photovoltaic system, other projects on his schedule are installing energy-efficient windows and a solar-powered vent fan to cool his attic. The system comprising of panels and their supporting hardware cost a little over $30,000.