Don't Talk About It, Be About It!

The new rooftop solar went live today. We produced about five times the energy we used! You can too. It's easy.

by Shawn K. Inlow So, at 6 a.m. of July 7 our 26 panel solar array went live. The rooftop of this ranch style farm house bakes in the sun every day, even in winter. Even in winter, the far infra-red (and I mean far) of the sun warms this place better than you would think possible even in the deepest cold snaps. So J and I got to thinking about a second solar project. The much smaller rooftop solar array from the house in Clearfield sent the value of that place soaring almost $90K above even the crazy market that existed then, which landed us here, a safe distance from everyone we've ever known. There are so many advantages to rooftop solar, that I needed to do a blog post about them. The first is, as mentioned, it makes the value of the home you currently occupy MUCH higher. So your assets grow in the sunshine just like a friendly huckleberry bush in just the right soil. YOU become richer. Now, it isn't that you don't pay for a rooftop solar system. You can choose to finance through any number of companies and own the array yourself. You can choose to let someone else own the array (or, more specifically, the energy generated from it) and basically let your solar system pay for itself. Another upside is that your electricity bill gets totally zapped to, like, zero dollars per month (we pay a $10/month connection fee). So, even if you take out a loan to pay for the system, deduct your current electric bill from the monthly cost of that loan. Yet another benefit you will reap for going with rooftop solar is a whopping tax incentive. Under the Biden administration, J, this spring, pulled down a $10K federal check based on the LAST (Clearfield) solar project. Now, granted, the new guy has sold his soul to the oil industry and is trying hard to do away with renewable benefits, but.... let's face it... that prick's only gonna last barely through this term before he strokes out and someone else is going to have to wipe his ass for him. Keep hope alive! That's what I say. So I've been watching the performance of this solar array all day. I can hardly take my eyes off the app that shows real-time electirc usage, production and how much is going back to the grid. Check out THIS hour by hour graphic taken from the Enphase App that we're using.

The big picture is that TODAY, the new solar array, from the time it was turned on this morning to 8 p.m. generated about five times the energy that this household needed. The numbers show that: 1. We generated 53.6 kilowatt hours of electricity... 2. We used 10.7 kWh of juice 3. We "imported" 2.9 kWh off the grid, mostly pre-dawn 4. We "exported" 42.3 kWh back onto the grid If you want to look at the numbers in a very green way? Over on the right of the above graphic? We "removed" 85.8 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere today. Had Penelec (or First Energy, whatever, I still call it Penelec) had to burn coal or natural gas to produce the energy we did, they'd have put 85.8 pounds of greenhouse gasses into our ever climate changing atmosphere. To put this in perspective, a mature white oak can sequester 48 pounds of CO2 per YEAR. We have done the annual work of two (2) grand old white oak trees IN ONE DAY, from a climate change perspective. In a year, that would be 12,000 to 14,000 pounds of CO2 prevented from getting into the atmosphere. So you would have to plant between 250 and 292 mature white oaks to do the work of this solar array in one year. Personally, I feel great about this. I've got a small forest working for the good of the entire planet here. I worry about the climate every day. And you know what? I'm doing something about it. As my friend Chet Denny of the Pennsoulvanians once wrote, "Don't talk about it. Be about it." Me 'n' J? We're walking the walk. Here is a look, again, from the Enphase App, at the production of the array on the roof. You can see each panel and how it is performing. As you can see here, each of the 26 panels is producing more than 2kWh of energy.

It gets better. In Pennsylvania, you can get paid for the energy you put back onto the grid. Pennsylvania uses a "net metering" system (different places in the U.S. have different programs) that pays you back if you produce more energy than you consume. The way it works is surplus energy is credited to your account and rolls over month to month. At the end of a 12 month billing period, if you still have a surplus, your utility company compensates you at the "price-to-compare," which is usually the retail price of electricity minus delivery and distribution charges. I mean. Come on. Not having an electric bill is wicked. But having the electric company pay you back? Nice. How nice? Estimates may vary, but doing the math here, First Energy should pony up somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500 after 12 months. Not sweet enough for you? How about this? What if you decided you didn't want to pay for home heating oil any more? What if you swapped out your oil furnace for an electric one? I found out that the cost savings would be shocking if we switched to a 12-15 kilowat electric boiler (we have oil / baseboard heat). Estimated annual savings, for me, would come out to almost $3,000 per year. No more rising home heating oil bills! And in when it comes to tax incentives there are existing federal incentives and Pennsylvania is planning incentives related to solar and switching away from fossil fuels for heat. With a battery backup, you're also insulated against outages. Our system keeps our well, septic, kitchen, hot water heater and furnace all on battery back up. But you can size your battery backup in such a way that you could also go completely off grid if you wanted to. The Enphase App I'm looking at right now gives me the option to just stop importing power from the grid. You can just turn off the grid using your phone. You might be able to tell I'm pretty jazzed about this new rooftop solar system. I am. But, you know, I worry about climate change all the time and I worry that our society's dependence on fossil fuels gets more expensive every day if not just at the pumps, in the wars and shitty geopolitics we have to endure in order to have access to oil. Lookit. You can't have war without oil. The machine REALLY does not want you to read this article, OK? You wanna fuck the man? Go solar. And if you'd like me share more of our details with you or if you have any questions, just message me or send me an email. Our provider would love to talk to you and, yeah, they'd kick me a cook $1K for the connection. But you know what? In this world where everyone's bitching about inflation and the costs of everything (energy especially) going higher and higher, you'll save money. You'll enrich yourself by increasing the value of your home. And you'll be practicing good stewardship of the only earth we've been given. Listen. Rooftop solar is easy. If I can do it, it'll be a cinch for you. So stop bitching about the price of energy, the endless wars for oil, and climate change and DO something about it, ok? Don't talk about it. Be about it.