being sure to use the right type of connectors, the right high voltage and high temperature connectors that will survive both sunlight and electrical connections, and weather conditions that solar panel is going to see, day in and day out, for 20 to 25 years.”
Sun for water The most common use of solar
panels in the Panhandle and else- where in rural Texas is as a re- placement for old windmills, which can be very expensive and time- consuming to repair. Ronnie Sauer, who has been in-
stalling solar water pumps since 1997, says those windmills allowed people to live in West Texas where there was no water, but many of them were installed more than 100 years ago. “A lot of those windmills are still
the same original windmills that were put in years and years ago and are beginning to fail,” he says. “When a windmill that provides all the water for everybody — human consumption and animals — goes bad they’re replaced with solar wa- ter pumps, because it’s much less expensive than to provide a new windmill.” Sauer is the owner of Southwest
Texas Solar in Eldorado, a company he formed in 2004 when he retired as director of engineering for South- west Texas Electric Cooperative and bought the coop’s solar installation business. They had gotten into solar pan-
els, he says, when electrical power was in the process of being deregu- lated in Texas. “Our customers, who had been getting power lines constructed pretty economically — for almost nothing — would now
have to pay the full cost of a line,” he explains. “These guys, who could get a
mile of line built for $28 a month on a 5-year contract, would now have to pay something in the neigh- borhood of $30,000 a mile. We de- termined we had to do something that would make it easier for these customers to supply water to their livestock in rural America, where there are no power lines available.” By comparison, Sauer says a so-
lar panel system to run a pump can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, depending on the depth of the groundwater and the amount that’s needed. “Since water weighs about a half pound per vertical foot,” he says, “if you’re pumping from 600 feet you’ve got nearly 300 pounds of pressure on that pump, trying to get water out of the top of the ground. If your water is only 100
Whiteface Ford TSCRA Member Discount
CALL: PAUL E. JACKSON 806-364-1919 or 806-678-1362 • Hereford, Texas
tscra.org June 2013 The Cattleman 85
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