recent results

Well it is now just past mid-April and our system consistently produces in excess of 30kWhrs per day. Not quite enough for a negative balance every day, but getting very, very close.

What are we going to do?

Excitement about solar seemed to have peaked somewhere in mid to late 2007, and not much has appeared since then. Since the fundamentals haven't changed, I want to describe my source of excitement for solar, which was the successful completion of a 6.7 kW grid-tied solar system at the new house we just moved into in San Francisco. We're still working on getting the landscaping, etc. completed, but the house is functional, and so is the solar installation. We have one of the new PG&E bi-directional meters, and to me it is just phenomenal to see it run backwards on a nice sunny day (even last month).

"austrian solar power"???

Well, I should have explained. Very simple, actually. I'm Austrian by birth, and I love solar power. I'm in my second career (who can just "retire"?), and doing something that can benefit the lives of our children and maybe the planet seemed the right thing to do. Can I rest my case?

OK, so I may not be the world's sole expert on solar power, but I believe passionately that this is the way of the future, if we, as a species, want to survive on this planet. The sun's energy has been hitting this planet for billions or years and will continue to do so long after we've all gone to Dinosaurland. So let's try to stick around for a few more "galactic time seconds" by stopping the needless decomposition of fossil fuels, and taking advantage of what has enabled our existence here in the first place.

I'm a firm believer that trying to do this on a small scale is the real answer to our energy problems. A single household that can become self-sufficient is better than any number of expensive large scale projects trying to harness energy from the sun's rays. This can be achieved by first examining the "energy hogs", and trying to replace or eliminate them as much as possible, and secondly by trying to find ways of generating as much as possible of the remaining power consumption from the sun.

The idea here is that you can start small. We all have a few electricity users that use small amounts of electricity, and not all the time. Think of yard lights, battery chargers, shed and garage lights, etc. Many of these are available using solar power (blatant plug) for energy. Once you have a few of these hooked up and start using them, you become hooked (at least I did!) on the idea that "free" power is something really, really neat. You can then start looking at others.