At 9:30 a.m. this morning on a blue sky, totally cloudless Colorado June day, an Xcel Energy electric meter man knocked on our door and said he was about to switch out our old utility meter – complete with its spinning metal dial – for a brand new one with a digital meter capable of recording electricity consumption and production.
After a three-week wait for the new meter – which, until this morning, had prevented us from turning on our 5.6 kW solar system, the entire process took all of three minutes. Essentially, the Xcel meter man popped out the old meter and literally popped in the new one. It was all plug-and-play, no time-consuming wires to cut, or to run here or there. Just – pop – out with the old one, and – pop – in with the new one!
And, just like that, with the flip of a switch – actually, three switches, the AC, DC and solar inverter on switches — which I excitedly turned on even before the Xcel meter man had left our yard – we have become an electricity producer, not just a consumer, with our 26-panel PV system pumping out 32.4 kWh of electricity today!
It’s a thrilling feeling. There’s so much sun energy to be had in the world – far more than we could ever use – and now, we are part of the unfortunately small but also fortunately growing percentage of people tapping this clean, abundant, renewable, pretty much never-ending source of energy (okay, the sun will go nova in 5 billion years or so).
Wasted rooftop space
There’s so much potential here – and so little of it being harnessed. In our immediate neighborhood of 51 modest single-family homes, about 40 percent have a perfect-for-solar, south-facing, essentially shade-less roof just like ours. An additional 30 percent have good, shade-free west-facing rooftop space. That means 70 percent of the home rooftops in our neighborhood could support a good-sized, economical solar system.
Yet not a single one has solar PV, although two have late 1980s solar thermal systems (I’m not sure if they’re still functional).
So much wasted rooftop potential – and that’s just in our small corner of the world.
At least our roof no longer qualifies as wasted space – and that’s a fantastic feeling!
We’ve gone solar, and we’ve done so at a very reasonable cost – with our out-of-pocket expenses about $8,300. That’s about $1.50 per watt, out-of-pocket.
Without an electric car, it would take about seven years for us to reach payback, with a car – because, yes, solar electricity will replace gasoline for us soon! – it’ll take about four or five years. After that, we’re looking at 25 to 30 years of nearly free electricity and gas (we will have to replace our solar inverter somewhere between year 12 and 15, although that expense is calculated into the solar payback time).
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