Detailed Pictures of Grid Tied PV Array at Craters of the Moon National Monument

On a recent vacation trip we stopped at Craters of the Moon national monument.  The visitor center at Craters had a nicely done grid-tied solar electric array.  I thought that the array showed some nice construction detail, and took quite a few pictures. 

The pictures below  show a sampling of some of the construction details that I thought might be helpful to people building PV installations.  The link below goes to many more pictures showing construction detials.

I might add that Craters of the Moon has a lot more interesting things to look at than PV arrays, but I figure those things are covered in a lot of other places :)  The drive up from Twin Falls Idaho along US 93 and then Idaho 33 toward Craters of the Moon was exceptional.

Nice simple mount system using galvanized steel pipe.

Standard industrial fittings couple the rack pipes togehter.

While this array is fairly large (50 KW!), it is modular and similar to ones you might put on your house. 
Lots more pictures showing the details of the Craters PV Array construction...

The string inverter makes for simple wiring and is mounted right on the rack verticals.

 

Gary April 29, 2011