When the Wind Blows

 

So today marks a bit of a landmark on the renewable energy front. The eventual goal is to install solar panels (Surbiton Manor has an excellent southwest-facing roof). This, however, will take some doing. I've been reading and looking at calculators. One really fun tool is the Google Project Sunroof, which will show your exact address and the amount of solar you can plan for. 

In the end, it looks like a solar system that will provide for most of our needs would be a grid-tied system and run about $20,000. It should be possible to get a 0 down 20 year loan on such a system.

It seems like a decent deal. While this would not save a fortune (payments on the loan would slightly overbalance energy bill reduction - we'd do slightly better), it would do the right thing, and make us less dependent on energy price fluctuations. 

Unfortunately, by my calculations, a completely off-grid (my preferred) solution would cost something like $40,000, mostly attributable to the batteries needed. 

I'd tentatively hoped to move us in that direction this coming summer. 

But there is a certain enormity in such a project. It will involve contacting people. We'll need to pick a contractor and acquire a loan and sign agreements with Xcel Energy. 

It's daunting. 

Reading on the Xcel website, we discovered another alternative: signing up for their Windsource program. According to their website, "Windsource® allows customers to get more or all of their energy from renewable resources, and it costs less than the price of a latte." It appears that our energy bill will rise by $9/month, and we will be using 100% wind. 

It isn't as dramatic as putting up solar and running the house entirely off the grid. But it achieves something like the same end, and it obviates the need to deal with contractors and loans and lots of legally binding agreements. It also enables us to not have to go through the hassle of unfreezing our credit (something that's been made necessary by not one, but two identity thefts in the past week...yet another reason to disconnect from Digital World). 

We'll see. One small step.