Two years ago today I published an analysis of our first year with home photovoltaic panels. And then I published an analysis of year two. This is a summary of year three. You can find all of my prior solar power posts under the solar power tag. To recap... My system has 31 405W REC … Continue reading Learnings from home solar power, year 3 →

One year ago today I published an analysis of our first year with home photovoltaic panels. This is a summary of year two. To recap... You can find all my prior solar power posts under the solar power tag. My system is 31 405W REC Alpha-Pure 405W panels mounted on my roof with a SolarEdge … Continue reading Learnings from home solar power, year 2 →

It's dawned on me that our home electricity usage profile will change this year. On the negative side, we've decided to do away with our spa, a.k.a. hot tub. It's a Sundance Cameo 880. That's ~ 350 gallons of water that no longer will be maintained at 103 degrees F year-round, and pumps that no … Continue reading Our electricity usage will change this year →

As of two days ago, I've owned a residential solar power system for one year. To help others make decisions about solar power for their home, and to reward the four people who follow this blog, I'm going to report on how it did in the first year. To recap... You can find all my … Continue reading Learnings from home solar power, year 1 →

In this post I wrote about photovoltaic’s impact on a house’s resale value. The tl;dr is, it was positive, and the only question was by how much. Today, my insurance company told me that my house’s value had increased by 100% of the amount I spent on the recent solar panel installation. This isn’t an … Continue reading Photovoltaic’s impact on home insurance & resale value →

A good article about panel degradation: How long do rooftop residential solar panels last?

I'm enjoying monitoring our solar panels' production. SolarEdge's site provides more data than their iOS app, but the app is convenient for checking the system during the day. The UI won't win any awards but it's more than adequate for the task. It’s illuminating (no pun intended) to see how a tree or chimney shadow, … Continue reading Monitoring my photovoltaic panels →

All the panels are up, we're connected to the grid, and we are live! Here's the panel layout. I went with the maximum panel density that our roof would support, given local building codes. (Some localities, Seattle included, regulate the maximum roof percentage that may be covered by solar panels, minimum roof edge clearances, etc.) … Continue reading Photovoltaic installation, day 4. We are done! →

Previous posts in this series: Photovoltaic installation, day 1 Photovoltaic installation starts today! Solar panel changes, installation in one week! On Modeling the Economics of Residential Solar Solar power installer selected! Three solar power proposals A financial model for residential solar power Today the A&R team worked on the connections and intermediate hardware, and figured out … Continue reading Photovoltaic installation, day 2 →

Previous posts in this series: Photovoltaic installation starts today! Solar panel changes, installation in one week! On Modeling the Economics of Residential Solar Solar power installer selected! Three solar power proposals A financial model for residential solar power This is supposed to be a four-day install. The REC 405W panels were delivered. I've now got 12,555 … Continue reading Photovoltaic installation, day 1 →