Not knowing where you will be each week to week can be confusing, expensive, and tiring. What definitely makes it a little better are the goals that you set for yourself.
It sounds quite cliché, but it’s true.
When you wake up and you find yourself on a ranch, you have to ask yourself, “Why am I here again?” And then you take a step back and retrace the steps you made and where you are headed.
We completed a multitude of milestones in the last three months: submission of our provisional patent, product testing, acceptance to the Energize California program, completion of the G2 Launchpad incubator, and many successful connections within the solar industry. However, with all this, and our lease ending in Santa Barbara, we still didn’t know which customers were ready to buy now to help fund our product development.
So this led us to stay at Andrea’s ranch in Exeter this past week where we were situated close to Tulare County’s 70 commercial solar installations.
A month before we tried calling all 70 and only about 10 picked up, and of those 10, only 7 were willing to speak to us. But when they did, they expressed the pain they had with cleaning their solar installation which ranged from half a megawatt (1,500 panels) to an entire megawatt (3,000 panels).
We decided the best way to speak to these customers was in person so that we could validate our findings and test sell our device. Turns out, that’s not the best way to do things. Twice we were threatened to be shot when we arrived unannounced but when it was successful, we had an invitation.
With our successful visits, we learned about how customers were a little misled when they were sold their installation. One solar owner stated, “I wish [insert solar installer] told me that it was going to be such a pain in the ass to maintain.” This solar owner also uses 7,000 gallons each week to clean them and has his son rinse ⅓ of the entire megawatt each day with a water truck.
Interestingly enough, both installations that we saw that washed with water truck had a dirty panel at the beginning of each row (where they would start the water truck — the pressure wouldn’t be too strong initially). However, when you have a string inverter, you are only as strong as your weakest link. So despite all the other panels being cleaner, the output would only be at the output of the dirtiest panel. How frustrating!
When you are a solar owner and dairy owner, it’s quite complicated. Not only are you faced with the headache of the dirt building up on the panels from agriculture and livestock but the way the solar panels are installed created another obstacle.
The same megawatt solar owner had short rows in order to fit into a narrow space of land. This limited his ability to even have an autonomous robot to clean his panels if he wanted to. Other farmers couldn’t even maneuver their water truck around due to the tightness of the installation. This meant that they were only left with manual labor and possibly drones — but then cost becomes a factor and the buildup of dust is fast.
When we showed our device that continuously cleans, all our test sales were successful. We are still prototyping and trying to find the best solution. However, we are happy to have three beta users that can help provide feedback on our device.
After our journey to the Central Valley, Colette and Atal went to Solar Power International 2018. Stay tuned for more updates about the conference.
It’s an unpredictable road ahead for us but the American Made Solar Prize is keeping us on track. We are about to submit our application and we hope to be a part of the next rounds, but until then, we are making our way day by day.
