Back in the early part of this century, I was married to “Big T,” and we rented a house on a couple acres barely outside the city limits of Santa Fe, New Mexico. When we decided to buy a house, it was difficult to find something affordable
(Santa Fe County is extremely expensive), but we eventually found a place
an hour out of Santa Fe in what we called "the greater-Stanley
area" because we were out in the countryside (read: middle of nowhere) but still
in the Stanley postal and fire districts. The Stanley Volunteer Fire Department
district encompassed some 700 dwellings and other buildings in Santa Fe County, of which maybe 50,
tops, were “in town.” The post office was a single-wide trailer on the highway,
where the speed limit dropped from 70 to 55 for a mile.
Big T and I bought 40 acres of raw land out there in the
high desert and put a solar-powered house on it. For a city girl, it was a big
step, but a good one, and I fell in love with our new location. I never for one
minute regretted moving to Stanley and I was heartbroken when I had to leave.
The long commute to Santa Fe for work was even worth it because once we hit the
paved road, the drive was all highway through stunningly beautiful countryside.
When we moved out to our property, we were about the fifth
house in our “immediate” vicinity. I put that in quotation marks because
“immediate” is a relative term; the deed restrictions out there are such that
no property can be subdivided into a tract of less than 40 acres. Thus, our
nearest neighbors were about a mile away and we could see only two houses from
our place.
The distance between houses was one thing we loved about our
property, and it was also one reason we opted to go solar rather than running
electric lines to the house. Being 8/10 of a mile from the nearest power line
meant we would pay over $10,000 to run above-ground lines to our property, then
pay a minimum of $10/month for the meter (plus the fee for whatever electricity
we used) into eternity. It seemed more reasonable to put up a solar array, so
we did. It worked out great, and although our solar system cost more in set-up
and maintenance, we enjoyed the unobstructed view of the countryside and were
happy to have no monthly utility bills. We wrote a check twice per year for
propane, we had a well for water, and we used a high-quality sandstone
woodstove for heat. Big T was very good at scavenging wood for the woodstove so
we never once bought wood. It helped that when friends and family in Texas cut
down appropriate trees they saved the trunks and big branches for us; on our
next visit, we would chop it up, stuff the truck bed full, and take firewood
home with us.
If you’ve never experienced solar power, it’s really cool
and really hilarious all rolled into one. We had power when the substation went
out or the co-op had a line down, but we also sometimes played games by lantern
or by oil lamp during monsoon season or after a cloudy day because the batteries were
too low to frivolously turn on the lights. We had no central heat because while the furnace
was gas, the blower was electric, and a blower uses a lot of power. Monsoon
season often found us going to the Laundromat in our last clean outfits rather
than doing the laundry more timely at home because although our washing machine
was a Staber and used very, very little water, detergent, or electricity, the
dryer used a lot of power, and when it wasn’t raining, it was too dusty and
windy to hang clothes out.
People who don’t live with solar power often don’t know that
a solar-powered house is a battery-operated house. Explained most simply, the
sun shines on the solar panels, the panels are connected to and charge up the
batteries (in our case, 10 forklift batteries), and the house runs off the
batteries. The inverter converts the power from the batteries to the 120 volts
needed to run lights and appliances.
One major thing about a battery-operated house is that you
don’t want anything to constantly drain the batteries. A constant drain by any
item is called a “phantom load” because it is always using electricity although it may not be an obvious use. Any
appliance with a build-in clock (microwave, for example) or a remote control
(television, DVD player) has a phantom load. Any phantom load will drain your
batteries lickety-split on a cloudy day or at night, and can keep them from
charging to 100% even on a sunny day. To fight the phantom load, we put everything
electric (except lamps) on a power strip and used its power strip to turn the
appliance or device on and off.
None of our guests had any more clue about solar power than
we had had before we decided to go solar, so everyone who visited was fascinated
by the mechanics of it all. We toured guests through the house, showing off the
inverter (in a cabinet built onto the outside of the house), the batteries (in
a cabinet built into a closet), the panel on the kitchen wall that showed an
approximate percentage of current battery charge, and the power strips.
Although Big T and I loved the battery-operated house, sometimes visitors who
arrived thinking solar power was awesome lost some zeal when we explained – or
they experienced – the quirks. They did not appreciate the interesting fact
that while the inverter pulsed every second or two seeking something wanting to
connect to electricity, there could be a time delay if you turned something on
in the pause between the pulses. We watched a few people flip light switches on
and off and on and off and on and off, always missing the inverter’s pulse,
before we figured out what was happening and added the possible lag time to
the tour spiel.
The thing it took us longest to comprehend was that the
inverter pulse didn’t sustain a low-level energy pull. We finally caught on
that flipping the microwave’s power strip on would cause the power to come on
for the length of the inverter’s pulse and then disengage when the pulse ended;
then we “got” that something else had to be drawing power for the microwave to
engage. Once the microwave was running, it pulled plenty of electricity and would
work fine all alone, but the amount of energy needed just to light it up was
insufficient to flip the inverter from “pulse” to “power” mode. Same problem
with the coffee maker, the boom box, the auto-light feature of the gas
burners/oven, and more. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to listen to a
radio that plays for one second then turns off, then plays for one second then
turns off, until you either give up or get smart and turn a light on. In the
case of the radio or boom box, there always had to be something else with a
large-enough electric pull to keep it going because even at full use those
things were too small to engage the inverter.
After we figured it out, we always tried to remember to
advise guests of that oddity as well, but sometimes we forgot to mention it or
even if we did tell them they forgot by the time they needed the Mr. Coffee™ the next morning. After a few unfortunate visitors either woke me up (family members) or quietly suffered
starvation and/or caffeine withdrawal until I woke up (friends), I learned to
leave notes taped to the kitchen cabinets and the coffeemaker to remind overnight guests
who woke up first to flip on the kitchen light before trying to make coffee, use
the microwave, or light a burner on the stove.
Another feature of our solar-powered living was
lack of telephone service. When we moved to Stanley, landline phones were the
norm. We couldn’t have a landline phone because the phone company piggybacked
its lines onto the power lines. We had no power lines, so we had no possibility
of a landline.
We did have cell phones and service with the only provider that claimed
to have full coverage in the greater-Stanley area. However, the nearest cell tower
was at least couple miles down the paved road from us and since it was very
windy out there in the desert, the signal regularly blew away. Usually (unless
the wind was gale force) once a call connected we could talk forever, but connecting
was often iffy at best. Eventually we got a high-powered, portable antenna
(like what truckers attach to their side mirrors) that boosted the signal and,
when handled in exactly the right way, frequently would allow the calls to
connect. “The right way” was the fun part.
The antenna was about three feet long and had a cord coming
off the bottom that connected to the cell phone. When the phone rang, we had to
grab the antenna, plug it into the cell phone, then run out onto the front deck
and hold the antenna as high in the air as possible while answering the phone. Sometimes
the call would drop before we could even get outside, so we would then stand
out in the wind waiting to see if the caller would try again. People who knew
us would immediately call back; we would stand on the deck and hold the antenna
high to try to catch the call. Sometimes a person would have to call multiple
times before the signal would catch and we could go back inside and talk – still
holding the antenna, mind you, and staying near a window if the wind was
particularly strong that day. Big T had no patience with the dropped calls so
anyone who called him was out of luck if the call didn’t connect quickly, but I
told everyone we knew to try me three times then wait while I tried to call
them back. That at least gave me the option to go back inside and get a coat in
the wintertime! Big T is a good six or seven inches taller than I am, so he
didn’t have to stretch quite so much to get the antenna up high enough. It’s a
bummer cell phones didn’t have photo/video capacity back then – I would dearly
love to see a video of me standing on tiptoe and stretching my arm out to hold
the giant antenna as high in the air as possible while trying to both keep
control of the antenna in the wind and dial the phone! That must have been
quite a sight. Thank goodness the neighbors were too far away to see it.
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