I’m Walking on Sunshine: Going Solar (part 1)

BY JOEL PETT,
Herald-Leader Cartoonist, used with permission.

Sunshine.

It’s everywhere, especially here in Arizona,. The sun shines two hundred ninety-six days of the year. Yes, that’s 296.

By contrast, the Seattle area, where I lived a quarter of a century ago, gets a mere fifty-eight, yes only 58, sunny days a year. Shiver. 

You’d think, with so much sunshine we’d be completely solar friendly in our state. You’d be correct. Following close behind, surprisingly, is Hawaii. And not so surprisingly, Nevada.

Why do I bring this up?

We had solar panels installed recently. The whole back side of the roof full of the things. No, we didn’t win the lottery, or take out a home equity loan. Nor did we inherit money from some long-lost rich relative. (Sigh.) We’re leasing the panels for less than what we pay the Power Company.

Here’s what our roof looks like now…

8 a.m. and the sun is already tickling the panels which face WSW.

I’m not going to try to explain how it all works, because, frankly Scarlett, I don’t give my husband dealt with the business and science part of all this. I signed some paperwork, read a bit of fine print, and cleaned up the side yard enough so the installation guys wouldn’t trip over the mess.

All I know is the sun shines on our roof, those black panels turn it into electricity somehow, and we have all the juice we need to run our little household.

What I’m really interested in involves a reversal. Yup. A reversal.

Whatever we don’t use of our solar generated electricity gets sold to The Power Company.* Does that sound cool, or what?

I think so.

Instead of us receiving electricity from and paying out money to the Electric Company, in vast enough quantities to fund a small nation, they will start paying us with an annual check. Sounds like a great plan to me!

Whether or not it pans out gets me all excited and curious and a little giddy. Okay, maybe not giddy, but definitely curious. I’ll be watching those meters, reading the bills, comparing this year and last year. And instead of feeling forlorn at another in a long series of unending sun-swathed days I’ll feel happier than a pig in mud on a sunny day.

There’s an 85% chance this will work out in our favor. I like that. Those are good odds, don’t you think?

Saving Money? Yes, Please.

Saving money lights up my happy neurons. And yet we’ll still have enough electricity to keep the house cool in these desert nonsense temperatures, run the frillion computers MSH has amassed, keep the oven baking bread and keep the six-body** deep freeze icy cold. If the power goes out, the entire neighborhood can come on over and charge their phones to their heart’s delight.

We’re waiting for an inspection and paperwork and insurance stuff to happen in the next few days. And then, voilà. We’ll be cooking and cooling with solar.

Now I feel all green and tingly and earth friendly. Come September I’ll kick my desert gardening hiney into high gear and get every one of my raised beds planted with happy little vegetable seeds for an even greener sense of self-sustaining karma.

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes. Good or not so good.

Here’s to the sunshine!

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Here’s some info you can read if you want to:

Not a solar company –  Will Buying Solar Panels Really Save Money?

Also not a solar company – Do Solar Panels Really Save Money?

Or you can do your own research easily enough, right?

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*Well, almost all. MSH tells me that The Powers That Be work a lot of fine print into the contract, but still… looks and sounds great to me. Like I said, I didn’t read the details and I don’t get the math or the science at all. Over a twenty-year span, we come out ahead.

**When MSH brought home the deep freeze (I thought we were buying a small one) it turned out to be this massive monstrosity nearly the same size as our Toyota truck. I like to say it’s big enough to hold six bodies. So really, we could have a bit of a sideline helping out the morgue if needed. Normally, though, we keep ice cream, roasts, a ham, a turkey and freezer jams in there.