Tag Archives: Solar Production
Getting the Most from Solar through Energy Efficiency
Guest Post by New England Clean Energy Customer Eric Richard “You cannot manage what you cannot measure… and what gets measured gets done.” – Bill Hewlett Mark likes to say his customers become more energy-efficient after installing solar in an effort to zero out their electric bills. That definitely happened to us when New… Read the entire post »
How to Build a Solar-Friendly Home
Often, people are crushed to learn their roofs aren’t solar-friendly — the neighbor’s towering pines cast too much shade, or the roof faces the wrong way to capture sunlight and convert it to electricity for your home. The good news is, more and more, home-owners, architects and builders are thinking solar before they design new… Read the entire post »
Tree Math: Solar Panels vs. Trees, What’s the Carbon Trade-off?
On December 13, 2012, I published my original “Tree Math” article here on The Energy Miser. Nearly three years later, it continues to be our most visited blog post. But much of the source data for my original analysis has since disappeared from the “Inter-Tubes”. So, I wrote “Tree Math 2” with updated and, I… Read the entire post »
Think Globally, Buy Locally
Originally published as a guest blog post on Independent We Stand. Reprinted with permission. The main way that buying local benefits the environment is straightforward: a shorter distance between consumers and local businesses means less transportation-related pollution. Answering these questions when considering a local business could further boost the environmental advantages of buying local: Does… Read the entire post »
What’s in a Solar Production Estimate?
A potential customer contacted me a couple of weeks ago. She lives in a town with a municipal utility. She asked me about a solar array on her house. The first thing I did was pull up the satellite image. From the satellite image, you can see that the roof is nearly east/west facing. I… Read the entire post »
Sanyo Panel Performance: Real World Data
We’ve been installing Sanyo solar panels for some time. I’ve always known they were good performers. Now I have data to prove it. Here are the results for a site we have in Eastern Massachusetts. Later I’ll publish more results from other sites. The first site is pictured above. Just under three years ago we… Read the entire post »
