Our Site Visit from SolarCity

This afternoon we had our site visit to see how big a solar system we would need and what the best place to put it would be.

Don Giberson was the guy who came out from SolarCity. I gave him a year's worth of electricity bills (actually, a year's worth of projections because the work I've done in the last few months to reduce our consumption hasn't yet been fully reflected in our actual bills). We then went up on the roof.

I had expected that the best spot for solar panels was the east-facing roof (the side away from Bush Street), but Don found some shading problems from trees two yards away, and also from the numerous vent stacks on that side of the roof. Our south facing roof is very small, and also had some shading issues from utility wires nearby.

Don said that the west-facing roof is definitely the best place for solar for us. PG&E pays more for electricity produced in the afternoon, so a southwest orientation is ideal. We'll end up paying somewhere around $10,000 for a system that will virtually eliminate our electricity bill. (I project that we will use about 5,000 kWH per year in the future.)

While we were up on the roof two neighbors came by to talk about solar. One asked Don to call her to schedule a visit to her house. Cool!