wireless internet dish/wind turbine tower [RE-wrenches]

[Tom Simko]

Fellow Wrenches,

 Today I had a guy drive up to my off grid place and knock on the door. The
first thing out of his mouth was "I noticed your wind turbine tower", and I
thought it was, as  has happened many times in the past, someone that just
had to know how it all (my off grid system) worked. I am always happy to
show a neophyte around my place, you never know, it may result in a sale, as
has  happened in the past.

 It turns out he's a rep for a wireless internet company, new to my rural
area (SE Idaho), and my 50' 4 legged tower, currently occupied by a Whisper
H-80, very soon to be replaced by a AWP 3.6 (as soon as next week) fit the
bill as to height and location for one of their network dishs. He went on to
say that if I gave permission, they'd come in and run a buried phone line
from the road to the tower base, install an 18" mesh dish 5' below the tower
top (from the top of the 4 legged tower its another 6' of 2 1/2" pipe to the
base of the turbine itself, and as the dish would point west, and the
prevailing winds are south in my area I'm not concerned aerodynamically),
and all they need is an outlet to plug their repeater or whatever it is
into. 

  At this I laughed and told the guy that I was totally off grid and while
this may be possible it'd take some looking into, we'd need to get some
power consumption figures etc, and I'd have to figure the load on my 1200
watt PV/ 1000 watt wind system. He mentioned that it shouldn't be a problem,
the gear in his estimation drew little power. Then I pointed out IF the
numbers worked the advantage to the company would be continuous power
regardless of grid outages (pretty reliable around here, outages are brief
and infrequent, darn it). He said that he'd get back to me tomorrow with
exact numbers as to how much power would be required, its a given the need
would be 24/7. I suggested checking with the company engineer's to see if a
low voltage DC repeater was available, and then pointed out the cost
effectiveness and potentially greater reliability of a simple DC system, and
how a autonomous system, with its own PV panels/batteries, located on my
property, using my tower, but separate from my home power system but perhaps
using it as a backup, would give a very great degree of reliabilty. He
thought that was a great idea, but was puzzled as to who would know about
all that solar stuff, he did not realize until I took him over to the shop
and showed him my current project, (pun intended) a 960 watt PV off grid
system that I had just finished putting together prior to delivery to the
customers site, that I was in the business. So now it looks like not only
will I lease my tower site to them, I'll sell the power equipment and
install it. It gets better: I pointed out that since I have a trencher and a
boom truck (10 ton, 84' reach, very handy) I could handle ALL of the work.
Sweeet.... They want to provide me with free internet access using their
system (1,500,000 BPS) in exchange, but I think I can keep my old cable
based provider, its adequate for my needs, costs me 35 a month including
hosting my website, and shake them down for a monthly cash payment. He
mentioned they may pay as much as 200 a month if the tech problems are few
or minor and if I'd be willing to sign a contract.

 Anyway, first question is: anyone know if they can expect any electronic
interference from the Trace 4024SW, the SolarBoost 50DL, the soon to be
installed AWP or any other component of my off grid system?  Second
question: anyone else with a wind turbine tower been approached with an
offer like this? If so, what'd they offer and how'd it work out?

Already spending the money,

Tom Simko
Skyline Solar

- - - -
To send a message: RE-wrenches at topica.com

Archive of previous messages: http://www.topica.com/lists/RE-wrenches/

List rules & etiquette: http://www.mrsharkey.com/wrenches/etiquete.htm

Check out participant bios: www.mrsharkey.com/wrenches/index.html

Hosted by Home Power magazine

Moderator: michael.welch at homepower.com

==^================================================================
This email was sent to: michael_welch at sbcglobal.net

EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8Qcs.bz9JC9.bWljaGFl
Or send an email to: RE-wrenches-unsubscribe at topica.com

TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html
==^================================================================