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 […]
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 […]
Going for Solar – The First Year
Posted on January 19, 2012 Written by 6 Comments
Happy New Year! View from under our Solar PV Awning In our first full year with our solar awning, we generated 5,816 kWh of solar energy, which is 16% more than we expected. I’m not sure if that is a normal fluctuation in the amount of sunny days we had this year or a trend […]
Going for Solar – Adding Insurance for Solar Array
Posted on August 25, 2011 Written by 4 Comments
Hurricane Irene 2011 – Photo courtesy of NASA With Hurricane Irene heading straight for Boston I finally got around to calling my insurance company to see if I needed to make any changes to my homeowners’ coverage now that we have this expensive solar awning on our home. I’ve been meaning to do it once […]
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: Your First Electric Bill (Step 12)
Posted on April 1, 2011 Written by 2 Comments
I cannot believe how excited I was about getting an electric bill. I was eagerly anticipating our first electric bill after we turned on our Solar Awning. Yeah, I’m probably a little crazy, but I was excited to see how low our net-usage was, that is, how little electricity we used from the grid. Here […]
Going for Solar: Flipping the Switch To Green Energy (Step 11)
Posted on March 28, 2011 Written by Leave a Comment
We finally got the go ahead from the electric company to turn on our solar awning on November 19, 2010. It was a bright, sunny day and I took a quick break from work to run home and flip the switch. Usually your solar contractor gives you basic training on how your system works, then […]
