I know that this could be considered a controversial subject matter, but it isn’t my intention to sell you all on the benefits of slapping solar panels on your roof. In the graphic above, you’ll see just that: a glimpse of a part of a twenty four panel solar system on a roof. That roof happens to be my house, and we’re one month into this experiment. I’ve been a proponent of going solar for a while, if nothing else, to save money on skyrocketing electrical costs. We discovered an opportunity to do a cost effective rental for twenty five years, so we went for it. If you’re interested in doing the same, feel free to contact me and I’ll give you more information. For now, let’s see how this fits into our digital life.
The solar panels were installed a couple months ago, but, as you can imagine, the electric company isn’t in much of a hurry to switch everything over to a two-way meter that will allow the homeowner to get a credit on their electric bill and, in essence, sell electricity back to the grid. Once they finally did, the solar company came back to the house and ensured that everything was set to go. When they did, they gave us access to a website and mobile app to monitor the output of our panels. The solar company has a server that is connected to our system to let them know if a panel has malfunctioned, as well as how efficient each panel is. The website and mobile app give us this same access. It’s updated periodically throughout the day, and shows how many kilowatt-hours were produced, as well as the peak power, and latest power. There is a graphic representation of the solar system, with changing colors that offer a visual of how effective the panels are in generating energy over the course of the day. There are also interactive graphs depicting production by the hour, day, or month, and easy to understand comparisons that show how long a refrigerator can run based on your solar production, how long a cell phone can charge, etc. The name of the monitoring service described above is MyEnlighten, and apps are available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone.
This is my story of putting solar panels on our own home. Before we started, I had no idea how interactive solar panels would be, but it does make sense. Every day we excitedly monitor our panels to see how they’re doing, and so far, the drought we’ve been experiencing has been a positive thing for our solar production. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!