Going Solar - Part 1

We are going solar. Back in the spring we started to look into the viability of adding panels to our roof. I always thought that we would  be shaded by an adjacent roof turned out we were looking pretty good. We looked around, asked for a few proposals and settled on a company that was comprehensive in its service, conservative in its numbers and recommended a reliable and locally made panel system.

I really liked that our panels would come from a local manufacturer. Great thing about local sourcing, you don't have to keep large stock to achieve shorter turnarounds - no long boat-ride for product - you just need a flexible local manufacturing centre and you can make to order. (yippee local!) And once our our funding program application was approved we had a couple of guys on our roof installing rails  - didn't even take a day. Manufactured in no time our bespoke local panels arrived yesterday, made to our size requirements,  the guys started at 10am and were done by 3pm.

Our awesome solar babies look like this when they arrived...

and by the afternoon our roof looked like this!

In case your wondering the bubble where the missing panel is is our suntube, brings a wicked amount of passive light to an area inside.

Sadly, we now wait. We have to have the local power co. disconnect us so can power up then reconnect us again so we can start supplying power. This will take a couple weeks at the most to schedule in I hear. Once thats done we figure we will be able to produce enough power to cover Little Footprints electrical use and half our homes power use too. We have a handy online system that will helpus monitor our system and the energy we produce.

Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it is going!

barb