King Electric goes on line

It's been a tough road reducing our carbon footprint, but at 9:00am on Feb 27 2009 the final piece of the puzzle fell into place and we are finally generating solar electricity. The resident spokes-model at the right is drawing your attention to the center-piece of the system - 8 photovoltaic panels capable of generating about 1400 watts of pollution free power to energize our home. Of course this didn't happen without negotiating a lot of hurtles such as the city building permit system, and a never ending stream of paperwork from the utility company, but when you finally throw the switch and watch the new "net-meter" start spinning backwards it all seems worth while.

While most people are mounting these systems on their roofs, I decide to do a pole mount system on the ground near the back of the lot. My theory here is that it's going to be a lot easier to maintain, I don't have to worry about roof leaks from the mount attachments, and I didn't have to run up and down a ladder to do the installation. We actually have an ideal spot since there aren't any buildings behind us (just city open space) and it faces south. For this to work out I did have to dig a pretty large hole to concrete the pole into, and I had to run wires in a ditch up to the house to carry the power.

At 9 in the morning the sun isn't shining directing on the panels but I was already generating 1000 watts....woo-hoo!!!! I'm feeling greener already.