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Men may be from Mars, and Women may be from Venus, but both share an interest in Solar Energy. What’s interesting is the products each gender tends to buy. At risk of sounding stereotypical and seriously impacting my home life, I decided to write this post anyway. I have fairly hard data behind my opinion, so I figure I can get away with it. I have found that men are the primary buyers of Solar Electric (Photovoltaic) Systems in Southwest Florida. On the other hand, women and men equally or collectively tend to drive the decision to buy solar pool heating systems. The last 10Read More →

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I don’t need to say much about the graphic below. The total amount of solar electricity capacity installed in the U.S. is nearly doubling each year. This is truly an exciting time to be involved in the solar industry! Considering that Germany with a much lower solar resource availability has over FIVE TIMES the installed solar electric capacity of the U.S. and over TWENTY TIMES per capita, there is a lot of room to grow still!  

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I just finished watching to the webinar from the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, “Tracking the Sun VI: An Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2012.”  The data definitely backs the trends we are seeing locally in Southwest Florida. Here are some observations: Prices have continued a downward trend over the last decade, but have leveled off in 2013. With photovoltaic (PV) prices starting to tick back up, installed system prices are likely to increase in the near-term (installed price changes tend to lag PV module wholesale price changes). This is exactly what we are seeing andRead More →

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This Washington Post article reports that the White House is installing solar panels this week. That’s a great move, and a great statement. I wonder if the Obama’s are eligible for the 30% Federal Tax Credit on the purchase. I did notice one interesting point in the statement made by the unnamed White House official. They said that the  solar panels are being installed as part of an overall retrofit to make the building more efficient. I’m one of those annoying people that insists on always being accurate and correcting people that make minor factual, grammatical, and technical misstatements.1 The point I want to makeRead More →

Enphase Microinverter Solar Electric in Cape Coral

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One of my favorite solar electric systems to watch is located at a customer’s residence in Cape Coral. It’s a favorite because there are solar modules on roofs facing due South, East, and West. This provides an opportunity to validate that solar electric modules are best mounted on south roofs, followed by east, then west. That’s great news for us, because we are often faced with locating solar pool heating systems and solar electric systems on the same home. If there are clear east and west roofs, the solar electric system performs best on the east, and solar pool heating performs best on the west.Read More →

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The Law of Conservation of Energy is a basic recognized law of physics, and one I occasionally forget when writing and speaking about solar energy. Solar power does not “create energy.” It simply converts energy to usable forms in our everyday lives. For example, solar thermal technologies move heat to where we want it. Photovoltaic systems convert solar radiation into electrical energy that we can use to power electronic devices. If you catch me saying the phrase “create energy,” please pinch me or something. It’s a bad habit that I’m trying to break. I was reminded about this as I spoke to an employee aboutRead More →

Enphase MyEnlighten on iPad

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Enphase has updated its solar electric monitoring portal for system owners, updating the site to the new MyEnlighten design. The new user-friendly design provides an amazing amount of information at a glance, including a cool new 365 day view that uses color to indicate the relative production on every given day of the year. This unique view allows drill-down reporting of energy produced for finer detail. As always, Enphase provides per-solar-module level performance reporting over time. The old Enlighten site is being re-branded as Enlighten Manager, which continues to provide installers granular performance monitoring data and comparisons against expected results. Solar installers can dig intoRead More →