A story of a dream.
As this page grows, we will bring to you the story that is behind a small building in a rugged canyon.
The Canyon Office began existence as Elena Sayers' garage. A small block structure, 
(DeAnza College students taking a break outside the office while on a field day)
it had the slab floor extended and walls and roof framed in early 1993. As part of my U.C.S.C. Community Studies Field Study I worked on it the summer of 1993 with various people pitching in at various times. Friends and family, a group of men from the Boulder Creek United Methodist Church, two students from San Diego who camped for a week are some who helped. This was a great effort on the part of many, many individuals.
The building was sheetrocked, roofed, wired (for solar supplied 120 and 12 volt systems), insulated, trimmed and the interior painted. For much of this, we had no electrical power. 
(The first time Mutsun Power & Light connected, Sept., 1993 - flourescent light test in the battery/inverter box)
In September, we finally got the solar online and power tools were then used whenever possible. 
(myself putting a second coat of paint on our solar panel structure, Shasha and Pooch assisting)
Our solar 
(Paul priming the battery enclosure)
system consists of 3 12v 4watt panels charging two 375 amp 6v batteries which are connected in series and feed a 1500 watt inverter which gives us about 37.5 amps at 120v. We are aligned at 344.5 degrees (polar north vs. magnetic north) and the panels are angled up at 51 degrees from horizontal. We have run a 286 PC with three ceiling lights going for 30 hours with no detectible loss of power and skill saws and leaf blowers are regularly used, as well as up to three macs, printers, scanner, etc. at any one time. The ceiling lights are inexpensive 18" flourescent fixtures with a special ballast allowing them to run on 12v dc drawing 4 amps each and outputting the light of a 15 watt conventional fixture. These special solid-state ballasts cost about $32.00 each - the fixtures themselves were only $8 without bulbs at a discount home supply store!
In the office, we have meetings, 
work on our various databases, train users 
and work on building our archive of materials.
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