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The sun man cometh

Bruce from EnergyPro just left. Here’s the quick summary:

Good news

Our roof has enough south-facing, unshaded space to install PV panels that will likely supply all of our peak energy needs — even mid-day, mid-summer.

Not-so-good news

We may need to replace the roof because of aging asphalt shingles. The solar panels come with a 25 year warranty and would likely outlive the roof by many years. Better to replace the roof before installing the array instead of having to dismantle the thing in a few years and then put on a new roof.

(Don’t you love that word, array? It just exudes high-tech geekitude. I can’t wait for the neighbors to hear me shout, “Careful where you toss that basketball, son; we don’t want to damage the array.”)

More not-so-good-news

We’ll probably need to upgrade the electrical panel. I thought that might happen. It’s not as old as the one from our 1891-built house back in Iowa City, but it’s not what you’d call new, either. Another hit to the wallet.

Bruce should have the estimate on the array (hey, that’s what it’s called!) in a couple of days.

Later, some notes about conservation, energy use, solar water heaters and the amazing Fujitsu ductless mini-split system.

Until then, I’ll leave you with a wise thought from Bruce:

The greenest kilowatt is the one you don’t use in the first place.

Amen, to that, brother.

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Plan A.

Living in the southwestern desert — Phoenix, Arizona, to be precise — it seems only natural to convert the abundant sunshine into electrical power. If not here, in a mega-city that rightly calls itself the Valley of the Sun, then where?

Our former governor, Janet Napolitano (now Secretary of Homeland Security), used to say that we should be the Silicon Valley of solar power.

Maybe. The hunger for grand schemes is probably encoded down deep in the American DNA, but it is also bound up with the boom-and-bust cycles that make life here unsustainable. It was no coincidence that last month Barack Obama chose the Valley to speak about “a home mortgage crisis that not only threatens the stability of our economy but also the stability of families and neighborhoods.” We’re a great visual aid for that sort of thing.

So I’m starting small. One family. One house. (One blog.) One experiment — how far can we go in replacing the electrical energy we buy from APS, our local utility, with electricity converted from all that gorgeous sunlight cascading down on our roof like rain in the Tongass?

It’s a small experiment, but that doesn’t mean it’s simple. So many factors are involved — and too many of them boil down to that old snake in the garden: money. [Note to myself…apologize to snakes.] Sorry to put it crudely, but, well, there it is. The first question I have to consider is, What is this going to cost? That doesn’t mean we’ll go with the lowest bid, but there’s no getting around the reality that price is a Big Factor.

The first estimate should be arriving shortly. Tomorrow morning, 9 AM, Bruce from EnergyPro, Inc., comes to do an “on-site assessment” of our house. I found EnergyPro last week after filling out an on-line form at Cooler Planet. From there, I was contacted by several installers in my area to make bids on the job. Bruce was the first one I heard from.

He probably won’t have a bid ready immediately, but I’ll let you know tomorrow how the process itself goes.