Happy New Year! We’ve had our solar awning in place for just over 2 years and I am happy to report that we love it as much today as we did when we had it installed. Maybe even more so now that electricity prices inched up a little this fall. Here’s how we did: Electricity […]
Solar Should Be Simple – Back to SRECs
Posted on July 19, 2012 Written by 2 Comments
Guest post by Ian Clarke about their journey to solar in New Jersey, part of the Solar Should be Simple series written for Green Lifestyle Changes. Previous chapter: Contractor #3 Back to SRECs Since late June 2011, we’ve been generating plenty of solar electricity, more than 13,500 kWh to date, from a system that’s supposed […]
Solar Should Be Simple – Contractor #3
Posted on June 21, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment
Guest post by Ian Clarke about their journey to solar in New Jersey, part of the Solar Should be Simple series written for Green Lifestyle Changes. Previous chapter: Contractor #2 Contractor #3 Contractor drilling post holes for ground mounted solar We were able to push our annual consumption from 8,800 kWh to 12,500 kWh in […]
Solar Should Be Simple – Contractor #2
Posted on June 8, 2012 Written by 1 Comment
Guest post by Ian Clarke about their journey to solar in New Jersey, part of the Solar Should be Simple series written for Green Lifestyle Consulting. Previous chapter: Contractor #1 Contractor #2 We embarked on a quest for another contractor and identified one who seemed to be on the ball and whose pricing was reasonable. […]
Solar Should Be Simple – Contractor #1
Posted on May 31, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment
Guest post by Ian Clarke about their journey to solar in New Jersey, part of the Solar Should be Simple series written for Green Lifestyle Consulting. Previous chapter: It Just Makes Sense First, we needed to select a contractor. I had begun building a rapport with the consultant I met at the conference, and he […]
Solar Should Be Simple – It Just Makes Sense
Posted on May 30, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment
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 […]
Going for Solar Another Way – Solar Leasing
Posted on March 15, 2012 Written by 1 Comment
While we purchased our solar installation outright, there are other effective ways to get solar on your home. Here is a guest post by our friend and fellow solar enthusiast Bob Paine. Achieving green energy, one homeowner at a time by Bob Paine Bob Paine’s Leased Solar Arrayin Medford, MA I have long been interested […]
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 […]
