Happy Earth Day!
We’re going solar!
Solar panels.
And the construction makes a great run-in shed for the sheep, too!
Solar panel installation, side view.
We are not up and running yet – we have to wait until final inspection from our electricity co-op. But I am happy we can do a little to help the earth!
Technical details: we are still tied to the grid. The solar installation should provide for about 80% of our energy needs. During the periods that we produce more than we are using, the extra energy goes to the grid, and is banked for us by our utility co-op. Then when we are not producing our own energy (like in the two months of rain we just had), we can use up our credits. If those get used up, we pay for electricity as before.
Reblogged this on justliveyourlifeokay.
Happy Earth Day to you also and what a treat……Solar Panels!!! GOOD for you. very impressive.
We have wanted to do this for so long! The planets aligned and this was the year to do it! 🙂
Good for you!!
That’s a huge step that helps everyone in the long run!
I hope the prices continue to come down so it will be economical for lots more people! 🙂
We had looked into that but, at our ages, it’s not a practical alternative. Our coop has offered something much more practical….for the customer and themselves (there’s a price for this technology on both sides of the meter!). The electric coop has set up several/many solar panels adjacent to their rural plant building. Each panel is for sale and the purchaser will bank/receive the credits for the elect. generated. Maintenance will be taken care of by the coop. There’s a huge ‘up’ side as neither customer nor coop has to purchase the necessary meters/equipment needed to monitor an “off-site” panel (and there are other costs bypassed by this set-up). With the panel cost being only $1500, the pay-back is reasonable for us. Interesting, eh????
That is a great idea! Not everybody has room for panels or a southern exposure, and to some people they might be too ugly to have in their yard. I’m going to mention that to my co-op people when they come out to inspect.
Somehow folks in northeastern Ohio haven’t been installing a lot of solar panels. Can’t imagine why. I gather your utility has no problem buying your excess electricity. I read that in CA so many homeowners are installing solar panels that utilities are getting a bit worried about who will bear the costs of maintaining the electric grid infrastructure.
Huh. I would be interested to read about that, as it would not have occurred to me. Our coop is fine with it – they pointed out that if we were customers of a for-profit utility, we would pay retail for whatever electricity we had to buy from them, but they would pay us wholesale for any extra we generated. But as we are in a coop, we buy and sell at the same price.
I guess if our installation became a problem, they could shut us down. They have easements on our land, so they have the right to cut us off but rewire around us to the next customer. There are always so many more issues with apparently simple ideas, aren’t there?
What a present for Mother Earth! I have wanted to do the solar panel for a while now but as you say, the “planets have not aligned” for us just yet. Plus as Doreen pointed out, at our ages it’s not a practical alternative for us, even though we have the perfect place for the panels, all across the south side of our roof. Happy for you all and please keep us updated on your success.
We expect to break even in seven years. One thing that gave us pause though, is that if we ever have to sell this place, it will probably not go to a person who wants to keep it as a farm, it would probably be made into a neighborhood. So the panels won’t help resale value. But I hope we will be here for at least another twenty years.
I wish Oklahoma would get the idea. The US power industry needs to face the facts, get out of oil and coal while you can and get into the methods that will last. You should see the fields of solar panels in Germany as they try to move to energy independence. My last landlord had them across the roof of his barn as an energy source and selling the extra back to the energy grid. He and a local group of farmers were setting up a bio-energy plant also.
Well, in the interest of full disclosure, many people in our family have worked in the oil and gas industry, going back to probably 1960. And I think every aspect of energy and manufacturing has its problems. To bring wind energy from West Texas to San Antonio and Austin, thousands of miles of new utility lines were put up with those huge towers, so how much power did it take to build and transport those? But I do hope that by choosing solar, we haven’t overlooked some hidden environmental cost, and that overall, this is a beneficial alternative.
Cool.
Congratulations on going solar! We have never regretted it.