July 29th, 2008 · No Comments

By John DeFore

Even those among us who spend a fair deal of time daydreaming about living in a solar-powered home may stop short of actually shopping for the required equipment. You can’t just hop down to Home Depot and pick up a photovoltaic rig, after all, and we all know it’s expensive.

Happily, some pioneers are making themselves guinea pigs and sharing their experiences with anyone who’s interested. An excellent example is Loyd Case, whose experience as a popular commentator for Extreme Tech makes him unusually well qualified to put the topic in consumer perspective.

Launching his first-person account with the words “This is not about being green,” Case made it clear in January that budgetary concerns were motivating his project; he wasn’t going to spend tens of thousands of dollars just for the sake of feeling righteous. His work-at-home lifestyle and tech-testing career — he had “four to eight PCs” in the office at any given time, plus a home theater and two fridges — meant his monthly utility bill was far higher than average: “our annual electric consumption is over 17,000 kilowatt hours and about $4,400.”

Initial research suggested it would cost $50,000 ($65,000 without counting government rebates) to install enough solar equipment to completely meet Case’s electric needs. “In other words, we’d be paying into our line of credit just a little more than we’re paying the power company today,” though rising power rates would likely tip the balance in favor of solar before long.

In May, Case recounted the bidding and installation process, in which he grapples with “the classic technology dilemma: wait for something better and cooler, or go with what’s currently available?” but eventually settles on a bid costing around $36,000, not counting permits, for a planned payback time of just under 9 years. By this time, the project’s green benefits had begun to impress him: “Our tiny, 6.1KW system would result in an annual greenhouse gas offset of 6.6 tons. According to the bid document, that would be the equivalent of planting 4.4 acres of trees.”

In a bit of vicarious Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House material, Case devotes a page to the inevitable glitches and delays the project faced, then supplies a very detailed look at the physical nuts-and-bolts of the installation.

The end result? Case waited a few weeks after completing installation to post an assessment of the project. He offers a thorough breakdown of electric-rate intricacies and usage minutiae, but readers looking for a bottom line will be impressed by one number: His first electric bill post installation (covering 19 days instead of a full month, but they’re peak-rate summer days) was $11.34.

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