Guest post by Ian Clarke from their journey to solar in New Jersey It seems like it should be pretty straightforward: a state decides that it wants a minimum of its power generation to come from specific types of renewable resources. It designates target percentages for each type of renewable energy and, by way of […]
Going For Solar – DIY Small Scale Solar
Posted on May 14, 2012 Written by 5 Comments
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could buy a solar panel and just plug it in to an outlet without needing to hire an electrician? Well, now you can! Be sure to read the cautions below for why you still might need a licensed electrician. I learned about solar micro-inverters about 4 years ago when […]
Reaching for Net-Zero
Posted on May 3, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment
With all the sunny days in April, we reached a milestone with our Solar PV Awning. We moved being net-consumers of electricity to being net-producers for the year (first four months). Chart generated by SunWatch Meter from SunBug Solar LLC In April our solar awning produced a whopping 733 kWh of electricity, only July 2011 […]
The Greening of Rest Stations!
Posted on April 8, 2012 Written by 2 Comments
We live about 200 miles from our nearest family, so a typical holiday for us involves driving that far each way. Before children, we would occasionally drive straight through, but really, I can’t go more than about 2 hours without stopping at a rest station. Now that we have three, we have gotten to know […]
Solar Thermal Around Boston
Posted on March 6, 2012 Written by 1 Comment
Today I spent the day at one of the full day workshops kicking off NESEA’s (North East Sustainable Energy Association) Building Energy 12 Conference. I went to Solar Thermal Best Practices and Performance Data organized by the Mass Clean Energy Center because I am looking into solar thermal options for my community. It was a […]
Going for Solar: Removing Snow from Solar Panels
Posted on February 29, 2012 Written by 8 Comments
I love snow, but when snow is piled up on our solar panels it significantly reduces our electricity production! Most manufacturers recommend letting nature take care of clearing the snow from your solar array, and since we are grid-tied (meaning we are still connected to the electricity grid) we won’t actually lose power if the […]
Photo Montage from Renewable Sales – A Solar Mecca!
Posted on February 18, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment
On Thursday, I attended “Understanding Risks and Rewards: A Conversation on Community Solar” organized by the North East Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) as a pre-event to their Building Energy 12 Conference in Boston next month. The session was organized by The Cadmus Group and my co-worker was one of the speakers. Renewable Sales hosted this […]
Going for Solar – Becoming a Net Generator
Posted on July 12, 2011 Written by 1 Comment
Our March 2011 Electric Bill – No Payment Due That didn’t take long, it took longer to write and publish this post. As soon as the days started getting longer our solar awning started generating more and more electricity. So much so that when we got our March electric bill (2/17-3/22) we were shocked that […]
Going for Solar: Construction (Step 9)
Posted on November 8, 2010 Written by Leave a Comment
Beyond the first few steps in the waiting process comes the real work, construction. Every solar project will be a little bit different depending on the design, location and local building requirements. Our solar awning project construction happened in three steps: Awning Construction – Step 9a – coming soonBecause our roof orientation and configuration was […]
