With a wood stove that uses scrap wood and, soon, solar panels, the Ypsilanti Food Co-op's RiverSide Bakery could very well be producing carbon-neutral bread.
The 30 solar panels are now in place above the bakery and just have to be wired, explains Dave Strenski, who started the grass roots project Solar Ypsi and was the force behind the solar projects on the co-op and on Ypsilanti City Hall. The bakery is on a separate circuit from the rest of the co-op, he explains, and if his calculations hold true, the panels could provide 100 percent of the power needed for the bakery.
Over the past two weekends, with the help of volunteers, he hauled steel for the panel racks up to the roof, installed them, and then hauled up the panels. The 30 panels are about 30 pounds each, he says, and they also used cinder blocks to act as weights. "I was definitely tired," Strenski jokes.
This week, his goal, now that all the heavy lifting is done, is to run some conduit and get the panels wired.
The panels are the same as the 12 used on the co-op, but the new ones are a bit more efficient. The co-op will be able to bank its exported power for when it creates less in the wintertime, thanks to a one-year window DTE Energy offers.
"It should be interesting," he says. "We're hoping that through the summer, we'll be exporting lots of power, all the time."
Daily, weekly, and monthly usage from both the co-op and the city hall can be seen here.
Next on the docket is a solar tour on Oct. 2, a kind of open house where people can visit and learn about different solar systems. Strenski will be showing off the system at Ypsilanti City Hall, with another volunteer showing off the co-op's system.
Strenski will be a guest speaker at Concentrate's October 7th Speaker Event. Read about it here.
Source: Dave Strenski, volunteer with Solar Ypsi
Writer: Kristin Lukowski
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