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periods in the winter. There is a backupgenerator in case this is not enough.With the larger solar array and battery system alarger inverter was required. The new solarpanels were put on a tower and tracker system,and mounted on a pole. The trackerautomatically adjusts for variations in the sunsposition during summer and winter, as well asthroughout each day. The steep angle of thepanels in the winter ensures that the snow doesnot accumulate on the panels (a problem whenthe panels were fix mounted on the garage).The current battery system is about ten yearsold. It should last another three years. The arr ayis now up to 1500 watts and is on a higher polethan in the early days. The shading from treesrequired that they get it up even higher. Theyhave more power than they need in the summerand the charger shuts down sometimes. Thereis still a deficiency in the winter. November insouthern Ontario has many fewer daylighthours and may have no direct sun for days onend. The solar array could be bigger to make upthe difference in the winter. In fact, engine -driven generators have been the biggestproblem. They have been unreliable in general. They are strictly for backup powerand arent designed for longterm usage.The generator runs about 150 hours a year. The cost for gas on this is about $150.This is a stop gap for now, says Leonard. Eventually he is hoping to store thesummer excess power for later usage in the winter. Eventually he hopes to run on afuel cell energy storage system when these units come down in price. This should bein two to three years. Leonard expects to be one of the first off-the-grid users offuel cells in the country. The fuel cell unit would then be sized to store the annualrequirement for kilowatts needed. The array would probably need to be about 20%greater than expected requirement, and then the fuel cells could be used to storeexcess for use during the winter.172