Solar Panels are finally turned on

We finally got interconnection permission from So Cal Edison so now our meter can run backwards and our panels can actually start to produce the electricity they were intended to and to think it only took over two months. To be fair though I did hear that there was a big boom in solar panel installations around the time we had Phat Energy install our panels. I guess as the rebates start to run out people rush to do things, of course that wasn't our reason for installing panels. For us our electricity usage went up just enough to throw us into the next usage tier when we had our underwater cistern and all of it's pumps installed and then we discovered all the local rebates in addition to the federal rebate cap being removed for solar panels so we decided to go ahead and install our panels now, solar panels are one of the things we planned to do eventually so the timing just seemed right for us.

Day 3 of the solar install

All 18 of our solar panels up on the roof

Our inverter all hooked up and ready to go

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

Day 2 of the solar install

The braces for the solar panels went up and then half of the solar panels went up.

The inverter went up on the wall this afternoon.

Day 1 of the solar install

The footers went up on the roof of our house this morning in preparation of the panels being installed tomorrow.

At lunch time our POD showed up with all of our solar panels and our inverter.

3.78 kW - measuring day

So today our solar panel sales person came by and took measurements and readings and all that good stuff for our system. I was very happy with the readings on the various sections of the roof on the back of our house. The readings ranged from 97 - 99% meaning that we have at most 3% shade on any of the sections of our roof facing the back yard. This is great news because this allows us extra space to add on to our system later if we decide to. Next steps are bringing them our first payment, we already gave them our deposit, and then they can order our panels and get our CAD drawings ready for where all the panels will go on our roof and start on the paperwork for our rebate from our electric company (So Cal Edison).

3.78 kW

Well we just signed the contract for our next major project on the house. We are getting a 3.78 kW SunPower system for the house. This should cover pretty much all of our electricity needs, based on our current usage. We only had about 9 months of electric bills to base our usage on and our usage jumped when we installed the rainwater harvesting system for irrigating the backyard, we had to add several pumps to the electric to circulate the water and pump it into the sprinkler system. It didn't add a whole lot of electric usage, but it did add just enough to put us into the next tier of electric usage out here which meant a significant enough bump in our bill to make us consider installing solar panels sooner rather than later. The added electric usage/increase in the bill coupled with the incentives from our electric company and the federal government made us realize that now was definitely a good time to look into adding solar panels to the house. Of course there is also the knowledge that our electric rates will just keep going up and the incentives to install solar are only going to keep declining as the demand for solar is met (our electric company pays us money for every watt we install so that they can meet their renewable energy requirements).

We found a great local company who installs premium solar systems and are very much looking forward to getting our panels installed. The system will be tied into the grid so as we produce energy that we aren't currently using it will be added to the grid (peak hours) and then when we are using power and are not producing any electricity of our own (at night/ off-peak hours) we will take power back off the grid. This prevents the need for batteries to store the electricity we are generating so that it can be used later, if we were off the grid then we would need batteries and we would need to maintain the batteries and allocate space to all the batteries. For us being tied into the grid is a good choice, but it doesn't mean it is the right choice for every situation. It is just one way of doing things.

Foothills Green Expo

Today we went to the first ever Foothills Green Expo which was hosted at Pacific Outdoor Living and was co-hosted with Phat Energy. Let me just say that I was really impressed by this very small green expo. The amount of services these two companies offer is rather astonishing. We are getting very excited about working on our yard now, previously I think we were a bit nervous about the whole thing though we were slowly figuring out what we wanted to do with the yard. Today these two companies just helped us to see how to really kick up the green in our yard way beyond what we had imagined.

Pacific Outdoor Living offers tons of services. They will even come out to your house and help you design your yard as well as what order things need to be done in and help you keep it all in your budget. We were most excited by the way that they can put your water storage underground and then put either a water feature or a permeable paver patio deck on top of the water storage area. I know it sounds a little confusing so I really recommend if you are intrigued by this look at their website or call them or even go down there and talk to them in person. You will be amazed at this, so cool not to need to have rain barrels all over the yard to store water for irrigation of the yard.

Phat Energy had these super cool Phatports. They are structures similar to a pergola style patio cover but they have solar panels on the roof area. You can use these as carports, patios, etc. We are really excited about the possibility of putting one in our backyard to cover our patio area. We had thought previously about an umbrella or a sail canopy or possibly even building a pergola style patio cover. This is super exciting though to think of having a covered patio that produces electricity to help offset our electrical usage.