Going Green

You know those annoying guys that come to your door and try to talk you into solar panels on you roof?  Well . . . we got talked into it and we are going solar!  It has been a long process and we still are not connected.  We had our first appointment with them probably back in March.  The company that we are going with (American Solar Direct) then applies with the state for all of the grants, has it checked out by the electric company, checks eligibility, etc.

At the beginning of June we finally had the solar panels installed.  It took about 3 days for a team of about 5 or 6 guys to install all 17 - that's right, 17, panels.  We decided to go with a little bit larger size package because we don't use the air as much as we would like and hopefully this way we will feel like we can use it more.  Even though there are a ton of panels, we can hardly even see them.  The way our house faces the street and with how our roofline is, the next door neighbors are the only people who could really even see them (which is another reason why we decided to go for it).

The worker's on top of the roof.  This if from the neighbor's drive way and was really the only way to see it.

We are leasing the panels, for 20 years, with a fixed monthly payment.  We will receive a statement monthly from the electric company saying if we used more than we generated, but we will now only pay the electric company 1 time a year.  We calculated that it will likely be a wash for us the first year or so, but after that, if the prices of electricity go up much (which we are expecting), then it will be saving us quite a bit of money.

We had the City code inspector here a couple weeks ago and it passed inspection, so we are expecting the electric company to hook it up in the next week or so!  We shall see how it goes.