We've Gone Solar

I like to do what's good for the environment, and I also like to save money.  With that in mind, we are now the proud owners of solar power.  We're off the grid (pretty much) for electricity.  We have sixteen solar panels on the back of our roof, which actually look pretty good.  They face west, and will hopefully capture all the sunlight we need to power our home and car.  We won't know for a while, as we just got the monitoring system up and running

For years I had wanted an electric car, and about 18 months ago I bought one.  I have a Ford C-Max, which gets 20 miles on a charge, then converts to gas, where it gets over 40 miles per gallon.  My actual miles per gallon, factoring in electric and gas, is almost 80mpg.  I recycle, carpool, reuse, and do just about everything to reduce my footprint.  Ron and I both thought that powering our home with solar energy would be a win/win situation.  Ron did the math, and with our usage, we should pay for new energy source in about five years.  That's assuming the cost of electricity doesn't go up, which it surely will.

I've been told that 10% of California homes will be powered by the sun within the next few years.  That means that SDGE and other power companies are going to have 10% less customers.  So how are they going to make money?  Raise their rates, is what I figure.  Right now the government is offering a 30% rebate.  This offer runs out soon, but it is a big cost saver.  Many people finance their installation, others pay cash.  We chose the latter .  Never having another SDGE bill was very appealing to us.  If we accumulate more energy than we use, we sell it to the electric company for a small fee, and if we need more energy than we produce, we buy energy at a reduced rate.

It's all very complicated, but if you have a solar company out, they will give you all the details.  They will examine your last six months SDGE bills and determine whether you will benefit from solar.  We just got our monitoring running, so now I can see exactly how much power we are storing each day, and it even tells you which of the 16 panels are most productive.  It's a fascinating new industry, with more and more homeowners going solar every day.  Just look up at the roofs as you drive around and you'll be amazed how many there are.