Shortly you will be receiving new sizing and pricing booklets for our Track Rack™ Passive Solar Trackers and Fixed Racks for mounting photovoltaic modules.  This information will also be posted on our website.

We are seeing more and more new modules appear on the market and have included all that we know of in our new matrix.  We will try to stay up to date with sizing requirements for new modules by updating the sizing and pricing matrices and adding the information to our web page.

 Due to rising costs of materials and fuel, we must announce an increase in prices for our products.  Prices for trackers will increase approximately 12% and for fixed racks the increase will be 5%.  The new pricing will be effective June 1, 2008.  All orders received in our office before this date will be invoiced at the current pricing.

 We are continually making improvements to our products.  Recently we have strengthened the axel on the UTRK-40 tracker and we are making other structural improvements to trackers and fixed racks. Feed back from our customers is always welcome.

 
We appreciate your support and business and look forward to continuing to work with you.

Sincerely,

Management and Staff

I am looking for a slogan or phrase to use in our ads and literature.  Words to wake people up.  Something like the ad we ran 25 years ago:

“Our Big Fin solar water heaters operate from the sun, not tax credits.  We think the sun will burn longer than the taxpayers.”  See Big Fin on our website.

Other Candidates:

“Real green seeks no subsidy or tax credit and needs no certification”

“A green subsidy here leaves a brown bruise there”

“Green begins where extravagance ends”

“For America’s sake buy our products only if they pay their own way”

“Warning - for a healthy America do not purchase with tax credits”

“Save a taxpayer, buy a Zomeworks product with your own money”

“Save America- shop only with your own money”

“Conserve Energy and Taxpayers”

"Real green needs only sun, no subsidies, tax credits or certification"

"Our products run on the sun, not tax credits.  The sun outshines the IRS"

For more on subsidies see my website www.taxshine.com.

Using Energie Solaire absorber panels, the buildings can gather heat during the day, increasing the average internal temperature and decreasing the daily temperature swing. One building has 3 panels and has been heating for a month, staying quite warm inside.

The other, more recently completed building has 4 panels so that we can better investigate the effect the panels have. The next step will be to install overhead louvers to give a degree of control to the temperature of the buildings.

Russell Benner
Project Manager Double Play

January 30, 2008

Zomeworks held its annual Perihelion picnic on January 3rd, 2008.  Last year it was on the 4th of January.  Perihelion is promised to move forward through the calendar, one day each 57 years, but it is a hesitating back-and-forth advance.  Maybe that is why it was hazy and we did not record the usual temperatures of ambient + 100ºF for flat black surfaces facing the sun.

Joining the Zomeworks crew were guests; our neighbors Sacred Power, old timers Mike and Roberta Elliston, Bruce Davis, Carlos Proffit, Pat Gallagher, Al Zellicof , Jon Davis, Dave Menicucci and others.  We had to drag Dave Nevin, Zomeworks Production Manager, away from the press brake.

Lunch served outside worked fine, as it usually does on this, the day when we are closest to the sun.  I did not give a speech.  I would have reminded people that Perihelion is like a century had moving through our calendar.  In Perihelion time atomic power was invented a day ago, the steam engine a week ago and fire a year or two ago. I would have questioned whether it is worth celebrating such a mysterious date that takes 22,000 years to swim underwater, so to speak, through our year changing things most are not aware of.

Aren’t we glad we live in the Northern Hemisphere with the strongest sun, 7% stronger, on January 3rd instead of on July 3rd?  On occasion I have felt giddy reflecting on the slow, slow, slow progress of Perihelion through the year, imagining what July in Albuquerque would be like were the sun 7% stronger.

Here is a picture taken (by Linh Pham, Cool Cell lead) at the picnic of Danny Ray, lead welder and Zomeworks employee for more than 20 years, and Andrea Sarracino, without whom the Zomeworks office would come to a complete halt.  I have been reading about Danny’s ancestors’ successful progress on foot, six months ago Perihelion time, from Asia through out America.  My great grandfather, also on foot, spent a winter near Albuquerque about three days ago Perihelion time.

Steve Baer

January 3, 2008

Robert Foster of the Southwest Research Center at New Mexico State University gathered a group of “Engineers Without Borders” at Zomeworks on December 16th, 2007 for a workshop on photovoltaics and a pizza lunch in the shop. 

The workshop seemed so perfectly aligned with our work at Zomeworks that I prodded Jeannette Moore into gathering the group again on January 26th, 2008 for a closer look at our Double Play buildings.  This was followed by lunch at Carolyn’s restaurant on South Coors and a trip out to Pajarito Mesa to see Carlos Proffit’s house and solar electric heating system.  The water line was frozen, an indication of the cold this January.

Carlos’ talk of his twenty years of work at his place and his great progress along with the solar efforts of Ron Orozco and Chuck Marken make Pajarito Mesa a suitable end for a solar pilgrimage – even more so for me than the much advertised Mesa Del Sol industrial park directly across the river with its grand empty boulevard and imminent State government financed invasion of sun starved Germans.

Steve Baer

January 31, 2008