Alternative Power Solutions – Castro Mountain Retreat – Divide, CO

Located just 25 miles west of Colorado Springs and sitting along the north slope of Pikes Peak, Divide, CO has a lot to offer anyone looking for the serenity and beauty of a small mountain town experience. If you’re planning to add solar power to a property here, you’ll need to account for the annual snowfall; the small town gets an average of 100 inches a year.

The local climate is a major reason the owners of Castro Mountain Retreat needed solar racking with exceptional wind and snow load endurance, in addition to superior output for their off-grid power system.

Solar installer Rob Bennett and his team at Alternative Power Solution designed and installed an extra robust, highly productive solar system that’s up to the environmental challenges of central Colorado.

The team installed a three-pole MT Solar mount with a 35-module, 13.3 kW solar array, which feeds a 48 kWh LFP battery energy storage system and a 17 kW generator.

Per Rob Bennett, “This array allows our ‘hands-on’ mountain property owner to gain 10-15% PV production throughout the year by simply adjusting the tilt-angle every three months.”

This is a significant advantage for the Divide property, where snow accumulation is a fact of life from October through May.

Easy adjustability is optimal for not just maximizing seasonal output, but also maintaining it. By enabling snow to slide off the array rather than accumulate, there’s no interference with productivity, even during weather extremes.

In a high-snow, remote location, MT Solar racking is the mount of choice for a property with high-power, off-grid needs.

Rob Bennett stressed the value of solar racking that combines adjustability with endurance. He describes the mounts as “simply the best and most versatile high-wind, high-snow-load, manually-adjustable array structure on the market!”