Going green!

Mandy and I consider ourselves moderately environmentally conscious and would like to be more so. We recycle all containers and papers (Mandy occasionally throws around the word nazi when I chide her for putting recyclables in the trash). We started composting – though Lola has decided that compost is the most intriguing thing ever and has mortally wounded our current compost bin. We justify our purchase of an SUV by telling ourselves that we work at home. We replaced almost all non-dimming lights in our house with florescent bulbs (they make all sorts of bulbs at http://www.1000bulbs.com that look just like normal bulbs) which I highly recommend as they last much longer (like 10 times) than regular bulbs and are a lot cooler, which is nice in the summer time!

But to top it all off, we have been working on getting solar panels installed. What, solar panels, those ugly 70’s things that heat your water? No, I mean real electrovoltaic solar panels that generate electricity. This wasn’t an entirely altruistic decision, though it does assuage our guilt at the fact that the two of us consume about twice the national average energy for a house.

XCel energy has been told (Colorado Amendment 37) it must generate at least 3% of it’s energy from renewable sources this year and at least 10% by 2015. So to get them there, they have set up a “Solar*Rewards” program (link here) that provides fairly generous rebates for consumers to set up Solar Panels as long as they can claim them as part of their renewable energy portfolio. The rebates are so generous that they cover more than 50% of the cost of the panels.

Given our perfect south facing roof, we can accomodate a lot of panels, so we decided to go with a 6.5kW system (that means peak production will be 6.5 kilowatts) that was installed on our roof over the past few weeks. The installation included the panels, two inverters and now we’re just waiting for XCel to come and install a new net-meter that will allow us to put juice back into the grid if we produce more than we consume. Once it’s all switched on, we’ll get a readout of our power generation and we hope to be able to get a real-time and historical view of the production so we can feel good about our expenditure. I also hope that in time, solar panels will become a real selling feature to the new eco-conscious youth of America, but that may be hoping for too much!

Here you can see our red house (second from the left in the front) and its 36 solar panels ready for action (thanks Dave Fish for the aerial photo)!

Here are the two inverters – yet to be turned on – and the soon to be replaced power meter.

We hope this makes up for the fact that we are using disposable diapers with Elsie. Sorry Earth!