Energy From The Sun!

As of about November, 2003, our house has been solar powered. We have a system that was installed by Sun Star Energy and has been producing a great deal of our electricity. The system does not store energy, but actually pushes it back out when we are producing more than we are using. You can actually see our meter run backwards during the best solar hours of the day.

As a home-based software engineer, I am running multiple computers all day long in my office. The server that has served you this page is always on and has been for years (reliable Linux, but that's another story).

Our bill for the year of 2004 was $75. We figure that we will pay for the solar system in about 7-9 years. Since this indicates that we are probably producing more energy than we are using when averaged out, we can reliably claim that our computers are solar powered.

One of the tricks to making solar power work for you is to be on "time of use" schedule with PG&E. This means that you pay a low rate for electricity during the non-daylight saving months. But during daylight savings, you pay a low amount for the on-hours (mornings and evenings), and a very high rate for the "off-hours" (11 AM to 6 PM). However, since these are the best solar hours, you also get that rate when the electricity is being sent back into the grid by the solar system.

Of course, all financial things being considered, this is just the right thing to do for the planet.