Pacific Valley School | Solar Power | Big Sir | Monterey County

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PACIFIC VALLEY SCHOOL IS SOLAR POWER ENHANCED
Pacific Valley School is off the commercial power grid.
We generate our own power by two Cummins Onan 45KW generators operating on LP gas and a solar array of 84 panels with four Trace 4024 inverters, a 24VDC charger and 18 Surrette/Rolls 4 KS 25PS 4VDC deep cycle batteries configured for 24VDC.

We started in 1983 with 72 ARCO M53 Panels and added some others later from local donations.
We upgraded in 1996 from a 120VDC system with a prototype Best 120VDC inverter to a 24VDC configuration and four Trace 4024 inverters in two stacks of 120VAC each with six Motive Force forklift batteries for storage.
We recently recycled the Motive Force batteries and replaced them with 18 4VDC Surrette 4 KS 25PS batteries.
After evaluating the new Surrette batteries, we feel that another 6 of the 4 KS 25PS batteries would be needed to supply the storage needed for our system.
We are now in the process of adding 6 more Surrette 4 KS 25PS batteries for a total of 24.

We use DirectPC satellite technology for the downlink for our Internet connection.
Thanks to OptiStreams.