Guemes Island, Wash., has more than its fair share of tall beautiful trees. During the winter months, it also has more than its fair share of storms accompanied by high winds. This combination leads to frequent power outages, as trees or their limbs fall, breaking power lines.

Guemes Island is in northern Washington and is separated from the mainland by the Padilla Bay and the Guemes Channel. Approximately 600 year-round residents live on the seven-square-mile island, and the population more than doubles in the summer. A drive-on ferry makes scheduled runs from Anacortes to Guemes across a mile-wide channel.

In addition to falling trees, the area is subject to earthquakes, which have not been a major issue yet but could cause lengthy power outages. Several years ago, a ship dragged its anchor in the Guemes Channel, pulling loose the underwater power cable. This left the entire island with no electricity for days.

Skagit Fire Protection District 17 serves Guemes Island. Chief Carl Meinzinger heads up the 15 volunteers. The Guemes Island Fire Department is a non-transport basic life support agency. The Anacortes Fire Department serves as the advanced life support transport agency for the island. If the car ferry is not running, there may be a foot passenger ferry available. There also is a heliport, if necessary.

The Guemes Island fire station consists of two buildings on one site. They provide office space, a medical equipment room, a training room, and five apparatus bays. It also has space dedicated to the central radio site for the island's Community Emergency Response Team. The fire station would be the likely place for emergency medical treatment, should the Island become isolated during a disaster.

The department did not want such critical services left to the mercy of an undependable power source in the event of a disaster. Running a large generator 24 hours a day was not an attractive solution, particularly since there is no guarantee of a re-supply of fuel. So the department set out to use renewable energy to power its station during outages and reduce its reliance on the power grid during normal operations.

During the summer of 2006, Guemes Island obtained a grant from the American Institute of Architecture's Sustainable Design Assessment Team. The team worked with groups of residents called the Guemes Energy Efficiency Club. GEEC's top priority was a sustainable backup power system for the Guemes Island Fire Station.

Longtime island resident Ian Woofenden is the coordinator for Solar Energy International workshops in the Pacific Northwest and Costa Rica. He had the experience and contacts in the renewable energy industry to formulate a plan for a grid-tied solar electric backup system for the fire station. He outlined a budget for the project after assessing the station's annual energy use and learning which circuits were critical for a backup power system to support. The system was sized to cover the entire annual electrical power usage of the fire station.

Members of GEEC and technical adviser Christopher Freitas from OutBack Power Systems met with the commissioners and fire chief, who unanimously agreed to the proposal. The funds for the project were to come from community donations, not out of the fire district's budget. With commitments from several manufacturers for about $20,000 worth of equipment, the GEEC raised $40,000 from more than 220 donors in the community. Work got under way this summer.

A firefighter and an electrician volunteered to help with the preliminary work. But before installing the solar backup system, several preparatory steps were required.

The electrical circuits were assessed to determine which were essential. These essential circuits included minimum lighting requirements, critical-use items such as vehicle engine block heaters and the CERT radio, apparatus bay doors, the compressor, and pumps for the well and septic system. The buildings rely on electricity for heat and hot water. (There will be a separate project to install propane heating system and water heater, so the fire station is truly self-sufficient.)

Each of the two fire station buildings had a utility service entrance. These were consolidated to only one service entrance.

Electrical subpanels were installed in each building, and new wiring was installed to bring all essential circuits to these backup panels.

Soon, another need became apparent: the roof on the fire station was showing signs of age. By replacing it with a SnapLock steel roof, racks for the photovoltaic modules could be mounted with clamps designed for that roof, which would eliminate the need for any roof penetrations. One of the firefighters was an experienced roofer; he took responsibility for this part of the project. The fire district covered the cost of the roofing materials, and GEEC and other volunteers from the community donated the labor.

The Guemes Island Fire Station was the subject of the hands-on project for SEI's Photovoltaic Design & Installation workshop that was held in October on Guemes Island.

OutBack Power Systems donated the power center, inverters and charge controllers. Its software engineer spent a week on Guemes supervising the installation of the OutBack equipment.

The workshop class installed clips, mounting racks, and an 8-kw photovoltaic array consisting of 45-PV modules on the new roof. AEE Solar sold the Evergreen Solar modules to the fire department at a deep discount. The company also helped in specifying system components. The array rack also was heavily discounted by the manufacturer, Uni Rac.

Dyno Battery delivered three enormous railroad locomotive batteries (weighing more than 1,300 pounds each), which will give the fire station more than four days of back up electricity during a utility outage — even if the sun fails to shine. The battery bank is 48 volts nominal, and has a 90 kilowatt-hours total capacity. A battery watering system is being specially designed for the batteries. On the outside of the building there is a connector for a portable generator that could charge the batteries, should the power be out for several days during an a heavily overcast period that would prevent the PV array from doing the job.

Fat Spaniel's Web server hosts a system that shows the performance of the system on the Internet. Fat Spaniel's equipment and installation was donated. This sort of third-party performance monitoring is often required by utilities and government agencies to substantiate the amount of electricity produced by a system in to qualify for rebates and deductions.

Washington's net metering system allows the fire station to use the utility grid as a big battery, storing its excess solar energy as a credit on its utility bill, effectively spinning the meter backwards. When the fire station's solar electric array is generating more than the fire hall is using, the system will sell energy to the grid. When the buildings are using more than the array is generating (at night and on cloudy days), the fire hall will buy from the grid, using up its credit. Because of generous incentives for renewable energy in the state, the system will generate a cash surplus for the fire department of nearly $1,000 per year, in addition to zeroing the station's electricity bill.

The energy payback period will be brief. Within four years, the solar electric array will make all the energy it took to manufacture the equipment. After that, the Guemes Island Fire Department will enjoy 30 to 50 years of clean, locally produced electricity, and a back-up system that will keep the vital functions of the fire department running during utility outages and disasters.

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Donna Davis is an avid student of renewable energy and freelance writer living on Guemes Island, Wash.
Ian Woofenden contributed to this story.