For the first time we tried not mowing sections of our back lawn and just letting the grass grow. This meant much less use of our gas powered lawn mower. We will look into electric mowers. For fall leaves, we rake only. No leaf blowers!

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I am an energy producer!!!!!

Just in time for long summer sunny days my rooftop solar system is in place and now connected to Eversouce.  I used EnergySage.com which made the process of shopping for a good installer much easier.  They even offer a free consultation with someone who knows residential, rooftop solar systems and the install process extremely well.

Through EnergySage I was given a dozen or so proposals from potential installers (just open an account with EnergySage online and provide some basic info).  I chose SmartRoof Capital.  Not because they were the cheapest but they use top-tier equipment and proposed a suitable system (OK they were almost the cheapest).  The EnergySage consultant I was paired with helped me understand the pros & cons of each proposal.

My wife and I decided to look into solar when we realized the huge pine trees around our house had to go.  A couple neigbors had trees fall on their house or across their yard.  It got to the point were we were sleeping downstairs on windy nights  - so the trees had to go.  That opened up the sky over our house and to offset the air conditioner working extra hard we looked into solar.  Bingo!  The numbers work out such that I think we will get payback in less than 5 years.  Also hearing homes with solar are getting a slight premium when being sold.

I suggest contacting EnergySage as a first step.  Then contact me if you like.  Or a neighbor who  has solar. The process takes a few months and I suggest owning your own system if you can swing the initial financial outlay. 

Now I honestly feel excited about producing energy.   I did not expect that.  I may do a battery car and heat/AC pump down the road.  This just feels right.

Peter

I highly recommend the Kia EV6!  This is a brand new model for Kia and I love it.  So many people have commented/stopped me and asked about it because it is such a nice-looking car!  It is very fun to drive too.

The range is about 300 miles.  I have had it for just a few weeks and I do not yet have a charger installed at home, so I have been charging at Bank of America in Medfield.  It takes about 40 minutes to charge so I will drop off the car, and pick up a few groceries at Brothers while I wait.  Very convenient.  Kia offered a promotion for 1,000 kWh free charging with Electrify America as well.  I have taken one longer trip to Portland, ME, which is about 129 miles, so I just charged once while I was up there and had no trouble finding a charging location.

Since we installed 15 PV panels on the roof in 2016, the system has been reliably making money. For much of that time, the array produced about as much electricity as we consumed on an annual basis.

Now (2022) electricity from the grid has become more expensive, so the PV production is worth about $1300 annually. Plus we also still get an annual SREC check for over $1500.

(As of June 2022, electricity from the grid costs around $.26/kwh; the array conservatively produces 5 MWH each year. The pic is from the monitoring software, which I rarely check.)

We got rid of our plastic tupperware, and started using glass containers. Feels much better. All that plastic not going into my body.