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I recently set up a Wattvision meter on my Fort Myers, FL home to evaluate its effectiveness. I have to say, I love it! It definitely clues you in to how much energy you are using, when you are using it, and what appliances cost to operate. The device pays for itself by identifying power hogs. For example, I cut down the time my pool lights come on each night because they were consuming 600 watts! On the other hand, I decided to run my fountain longer each day because it uses next to no energy. The charts on the Wattvision website are excellent. YouRead More →

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You may have seen the promise of plug-and-play solar panels coming to a store near you. I’ll try to make sense of these “new” products and tell you what they will and won’t do for you. There are two kinds of “plug-and-play solar panel” promises floating around out there. There is the solar panel that you can plug into your house and use or sell back to the utility, and there is the solar panel system into which you plug devices directly. The first “plug-and-play solar panel” product promises that you can plug your solar panels into an existing outlet and feed power back intoRead More →

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Don’t panic! It’s not here yet! Time-of-use metering allows a utility company to charge you different rates based on the time of day. This billing approach is popular in places like California and the Northeast US where there are large peaks in electricity demand. Utilities deliver power by producing a “baseline” amount of power that corresponds with the lowest amount of total expected power demand for their customers at the lowest possible cost. It costs more to meet power needs that are above this baseline amount of power because production costs are higher to meet the peaks. Total demand changes based on the time ofRead More →

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Fafco Solar has completed the FGCU Naples Botanical Garden photovoltaic system installation. I am particularly proud of this system and the expert installers that did the heavy lifting. The system includes 164 SolarWorld 245 watt solar photovoltaic modules, 164 Enphase M215 microinverters, a Unirac SolarMount mounting system, and S-5! Clamp attachments. Because of the existing electrical system at the facility, the photovoltaic system is divided into two sub-arrays backfeeding power into two 208V 3-Phase electrical distribution panels. Commercial 3-Phase installations are always interesting from a design standpoint because typically we are dealing with various existing transformers and often generator backup systems. It was truly aRead More →