In August 2011 the membership voted 81% to go onto the TVA program, so the Board of Directors grudgingly set the program up. I say grudgingly because the Board spokesman commented in the newspaper that they were going on the program because the membership voted for it, but he was against it.
Since the utility was going to charge me a fee to apply to tie on, I decided to go all the way and build an array that could meet my anticipated future needs. Plan A had been to build 4 little racks like shown on my first post. {You'll note the extra piers for another rack in that post.} But when I got in touch with Daryl with my new Plan B, I asked him to design a big array and stay with Sharp solar panels. I like that they are made in Memphis, TN and they seem to do what they are supposed to. I also asked him to use an American made inverter, I didn't want to buy any more Chinese inverters. We designed it with 24 240w Sharp Panels and an SMA Sunny Boy 5000 inverter. I know, 24 * 240 = 5760 rated watts. I was confused at the choice of a smaller capacity inverter too. He explained that in poorer conditions, like most of the winter, we could have a problem with the system dropping off line from under voltage if we didn't do it this way. On the brighter side, I've seen the output peak a 5.11 kW on the inverter display.
