Solar Panels

Back in April 2015 we were shopping at Home Depot and one of the Solar City reps had approached me. I had looked into solar panels when we first bought our house, but Solar City wasn't working with our electric company (IREA) at the time and getting solar panels would have cost a minimum of twenty-thousand dollars out of pocket. When the rep approached me I inquired if they were working with IREA yet and to my surprise they said yes.

On December 15, 2015 our solar installation was turned on. See my solar production overview here.

One of the reasons solar panels may be a great option for everyone is the potential for cost savings. Only time will tell if this indeed comes to fruition.

The other reason and the more important one, in my opinion, is the ability to generate clean energy. My system only is set to produce 85% of my families production needs.  But I hope that I can make that into 100% coverage by making changes to my usage.

Something else I hope to have installed down the road is a battery so we have the opportunity to have power even if the grid were to go down. Tesla Energy is working on a home battery that is will allow for this.

Another thing I find very interesting about the rise of solar energy is the coverage of solar panels required to meet our energy needs in society. I'm excited to see the changes in our world this will make.

Buying The Homestead

In 2012 we welcomed our third child into our family. We were renting a house that we had an option to buy, but it only had 3 bedrooms. With our third child we really need more rooms. And so began the hunt for a bigger house.

I have owned horses almost all of my life and up until we bought our current house I had always boarded them with someone else. I had been doing a lot of learning about natural care for horses and still hadn't found the right boarding option for them. Since we were looking for property we decided to focus on horse property so I could control their care how I wanted to.

Initially I was looking for property with over 20 acres. We had found a house we liked and even had it under contract, but there were too many problems with the property and that deal fell through.

The house we fell in love with had been on the market for almost two months. I had seen it multiple times in the home listings, but it had black carpet, a pool, only 2.66 acres and no horse facilities. The home options were slim at the time and we went to see the home just so we could have a home to go see. When we walked into the house I knew it had to be ours.

We bought our house at the beginning of 2013. And so began my journey into learning to care for a small acreage homestead.

First Year of Solar Production

Our Solar Panel installation went live on December 15, 2015. We have a 9.88 Kw system.which is supposed to offset our power usage by 85%.  Our electric company will only allow up to a 10Kw system and I've heard that other electric companies will only allow up to a certain percentage of usage when installing solar panels.

The Solar City software reads our solar production as well as our consumption.  The consumption measurement isn't available to everyone, but I find it an invaluable resource to learn what uses the most power and to find ways to lower my power consumption.

 December 2015 - Winter time is a lower production month in regards to solar production. The sun hours are usually less than or equal to 9 hours a day.

I learned that our dishwasher consumes more power than our clothes dryer, because we had it set for a heated dry. I turned that option off and it helped reduce power consumption.








January 2016 - Our first full production month.  We had a couple of snow storms. The thick cloud cover still produces a little solar production seen on the 7th, but the snow covering the solar panels pretty much stops production as seen on the 8th.

I have become obsessed with turning off every unneeded light. My kids think I've gone crazy.  I have also become obsessed with checking my power usage throughout the day. Which has contributed to my husband thinking I've gone crazy too. But knowledge is power! It's the power to change or stay the same, whichever is better.