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You can now find our blog at http://soleventollc.com.

Big News in Costa Rica!

SoleVento is now serving Costa Rica as well as other countries in South and Central America.  SoleVento’s main focus in Costa Rica is utility scale solar and wind development, commercial wind and solar PV integration, and community based power.  We offer the highest quality products and have the technical experience to design and integrate one-of-a-kind systems for site-specific applications.  The technology we have access to and provide is one-of-a-kind and can only be accessed through SoleVento.  We can provide you with 100% onsite generation and energy storage, financing, consultation, and long term planning.  We are also actively working with governments across the Americas to plan and implement utility scale renewable energy projects.  SoleVento is working with Carbon360Partners to finance and manage the development of the many projects on the drawing board for SoleVento.

Heading up our operations in Costa Rica as well as the rest of Central and South America is Enrique Medina, and managing the development is Pablo Diaz.  Both of these men are highly accomplished and able to navigate the political systems present.  Enrique is your local contact for all of the services that SoleVento provides.

We are also happy to announce that SoleVento will be moving forward with a 50MW Hybrid Wind/Solar PV farm in north western Costa Rica.  We are planning on 30MW of solar and 20MW of wind which will be bolstered by new inverting systems that will increase the output of the PV farm by 25%.  This particular farm will employ 25 native Costa Ricans and will provide a revenue stream that will allow SoleVento to continue to invest in Costa Rica.

Services Provided in Costa Rica by SoleVento:

Consultation/Planning

Land Acquisition

Development

Integration

Monitoring

Operations

Maintenance

Infrastructure

 

The Importance of the Feasibility Study

I am sure many of you have wondered exactly how much wind your property has.  In my travels and siting expeditions for both small and large wind I hear it all too often, “the wind blows like crazy here”, but knowing how much wind your site actually receives can be dramatically different from what the wind maps or your common sense tells you.  So, by hiring a professional company like SoleVento that has the experience and expertise in collecting and analyzing wind data, you  ensure that the wind turbine you are considering will work as expected.  Our team will come out to your site, install a custom tower, anemometer, and remote data logger, and we will collect data for six months to a year.  While that data is being collected, we also collect other local wind data to compare to your site’s data.  We will then compile all of this data and create an accurate wind profile for your site.  At the end of the feasibility study period we present you with a hard copy of your study with detailed analysis of your site i.e., the wind resource, the optimum operating height of the turbine, and system recommendations.  Our goal is to give our clients an accurate picture of how much a given system will produce over the lifetime of that system, as well as accurate numbers for your system’s ROI (return on investment), carbon offset created, and Renewable Energy Credits generated.  The residential/commercial feasibility study can usually be completed  for about $3000.

Another form of the feasibility study is the wind/solar farm development option.  We will do a feasibility study to determine all of the steps associated with developing your property, as well as determine if your property receives enough wind to make a project feasible.  We are currently working on two utility scale projects.  If you want to find out if your property is adequate for a utility scale project just give us a call or send us an email and we will begin the conversation.  The cost of the utility scale study is charged on an hourly consulting basis.  At the end of study and planning you will have the information you need to either develop the project or sell the project.  The feasibility study provides definitive proof to investors that your site will pay their investment dollars back.

Thanks for reading,

Walker

Roof mounted turbine installation – Honey Farm, Weld County, Colorado

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We finished the  installation of our second roof mounted wind turbine on Wednesday in a remote, off-grid location in Weld County Colorado.  We spent a few days reinforcing the structure of the building and installing the electronics.  It then required another day to install the first part of the tower system – the tower brackets that hold the tower in place.  Finally it was crane day, where we lifted and installed the tower and a 1.2kW wind turbine.  Dusty, from Sterling Crane, did a great job lifting and tilting the towers.  He really made our job easy.  It was a great experience  and went like clockwork.  A special thanks to MoJeaux’s BBQ!  Lunch was delicious!

I am really happy with the whole installation.  Our process was well planned out and efficient, and we are all excited about putting together and installing the rest of the components for the Honey Farm hybrid power system.  We have 1.2 kW of photovoltaic panels, a UGE 1k turbine,and a solar thermal system yet to be installed.  When we are finished, the system will power Bruce’s entire honey processing operation!

The towers were designed by our team under the guidance of our engineer, Geoff Robinson.  They not only look good but are safe and easy to climb.  We tested the turbine after installation, and it worked well.  This past weekend Northern Colorado had some great wind (50+ mph), and the turbine put out a significant amount of power.  The tower structure performed well too.  Bruce charged batteries, ran a large floor heater, and had all the lights on.  He even charged his cordless tool batteries all day, and the battery system hardly lost charge.  We recently added a 1kW Urban Green Energy vertical axis wind turbine to the roof system.

We had a special guest helping us with this installation.  Steve Milford with TIC Telecom came up from Texas to help guide the towers in place.  Thanks Steve!  SoleVento recently partnered with TIC Telecom to provide our clients with a true national installation force, saving us time and our clients money.  We can install turbines anywhere in the US and do it with dedicated and skilled installers. We are very excited about our relationship with TIC,  and we really enjoyed working with Steve Milford.  He is a good man and is dedicated to bringing alternative energy to an industry that can really benefit from SoleVento’s products and services.  I believe that our companies  are going to do a lot of really important projects together all over the country.

Loving what I do,

Walker

Welcome!

Welcome to SoleVento’s project blog.  We will keep you informed on what we are working on; from projects in development to installations.  We know, it’s very exciting.