Point Breeze turned out to be the leading neighbourhood in the Solarize Allegheny campaign and the only one to reach the goal of doubling solar installations. I like the way it has made our family so energy conscious that we actually made more energy than we used over the first year, better than was predicted from our previous consumption. How many new kitchens are expected to pay for themselves? Right from the first month, we have not paid for any electricity from the grid! The system will take a long while to pay off (in our case 13 years), but I see this the same way as other investments in a house-you invest in the way that works for you. I like the fact that they notice solar panels wherever we come across them. I like that my kids are growing up knowing that changes can be made to help the environment. Whilst the detailed specs of the system are fading a bit from my memory now, I still frequently look on my cell phone and monitor the electricity production. Reducing our family’s impact on the environment was one the main one. So why did I decide to install solar? Probably a combination of reasons. In May 2015, we had a solar system installed-it took less than a week-and ever since it was switched on a week or so later it has been working away generating free clean energy. There were also the sceptics, influenced only by the economics, that tried to persuade me it wasn’t worth the outlay.īut when the tour rolled around a year later, I didn’t need to drag my family out of the house for the solar tour-we were on the solar tour. There were those whose main motivation was to do the right thing by the environment-replacing dirty power with clean and reducing their carbon footprint. There were those that were quite proud of the fact that they had no idea how it worked but were glad that it did. There were the solar geeks who knew every data-point about their system, the expected production rates and who had the print outs of how much power they had produced each week, month and year since installation. I only managed to drag them to two or three different houses close to ours in Point Breeze, but even from that small number and a few chats and online exchanges I had with friends afterwards, it was clear that people install solar for different reasons and with different levels of technological grasp over exactly how it works. I was pleasantly surprised that there were several solar installations on houses around our neighbourhood. Spurred on by the Solarize Allegheny campaign, I figured we should look into this for ourselves. Two years ago I dragged my somewhat reluctant family out on the 2014 Pittsburgh Solar Tour.
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