After a lot of thought and planning, we pulled the trigger on a solar system. We’ve had various power outages over the past year, as well as sky-high electric bills, so we thought it would be cool to generate some of our own power. We worked with a local company to design a system of solar panels that will provide more electricity than we need in the summer (for which the utility company will pay us). Those sixteen-hour days are sure nice, so even though we’re up in almost-Canada, we can take advantage of all that sunlight. Winter won’t be quite as good, but we’ll be able to generate a portion of our power, even on the cloudy days.
The crew– actually just a guy named Mike– started the installation today. It’s not much to look at right now, though: just some mount points on the roof where the panels will be placed.
Of course this is the week when the first snowfall hit, and that’ll probably slow down the process a bit. The panels are sitting in a warehouse in Billings, with an unknown ETA. Hopefully they’ll show up soon, and within a few weeks we’ll be a little more “green”.