Charged

Perhaps the weirdest thing about getting solar panels installed on my roof was that it all felt perfectly normal. Three friendly, experienced installers from Northwest Electric & Solar came out to the house last Tuesday, along with a roofer who was needed for his expertise in working with PVC membrane roofs, and by mid-afternoon Thursday the job was done.

Twenty black-framed solar panels from SolarWorld in Oregon. The 5.5 kW system is slightly larger than typical residential installations here in the Seattle area.

The array is not “on” yet—Puget Sound Energy will come by in a couple of weeks to ensure that the juice produced works and plays well with the grid—but the infrastructure is now in place for my home to be a power producer, not just a power consumer. Next summer I am guessing the sight of my power meter spinning backwards will not be an uncommon one!

I’ll periodically update this blog with data from my power bills about how the system is performing, and any pleasant or unpleasant surprises along the way (for example, will cleaning and maintenance be more of a pain than I think?).

In my next blog entry, I’ll let you know what I witnessed with last week’s installation, step-by-step. (Just in case there are others out there who are considering going solar at some point.)

Then, in later blog entries, I will circle back to discuss some of the key decisions I had to make in selecting this particular system.