If you recall, I replaced the roof of the DeKist house next door with a metal roof, with plans for a solar install there to power both that house and my own, next door to it. Well, this long-term dream has now come true!
I WISH! Actually, the solar planels are there, underneath the newly fallen snow on the roof. See? Proof? The building permit is still in the window. Whole Sun Designs
did install the solar array on the DeKist house that will serve both my house and that one, 70% of our current electricity usage, with two separate meters. Notice on the photo, a solar array on the side of their funky truck. They power their tools and advertise their product, all in one, without words. Hopefully, both houses can bring usage down, now that we’re motivated. Well, not yet, because I don’t yet understand what’s going on. There’s weird new boxes in three places, two on the DeKist property,
and one at my house next door, between the rabbit cage and the greenhouse. 
And there’s some new service boxes in each house and the DeKist garage as well. We’re powering up! In fact, Ryan Zaricki of Whole Sun Designs says I’m now “considered a power plant.” Oh my goddess, did my chest swell when I heard those words. Huh? Weird! Why?
As you can see, the place looks much different now. Not because you can actually see the arrays, but because the three days of the install were ugly, miserable, and somewhat drippy, threatening to rain the entire time, and then, on the final day, just as they were finishing the job, the drip turn to sleet, and then, as you can see from the photos, snow. Check out the GANG garden pond now!
We got at least 8 inches, maybe more. My car doors are still frozen shut.
Today I walked to the store to get food. Puppy Shadow refused to go, since the salt they put on the streets hurts his paws. (He’s in the very middle of the photo below.)
The garden, however, is beautiful in this light, and I find it wonderfully ironic that on maybe the brightest day of this entire year (not even any chem trails), my new solar array, though it is “turned on,” must wait for the snow to melt to power up. And I, it’s proprietor, must wait until Monday when Ryan will return to explain the whole system to me. It’s amazing, how they slid this one as their final job of the year during the three days just prior to a large snowstorm. Whew! It worked out! We were biting our nails there for awhile.
Oh yes, one more thing. The gutter guy also came by, to retrofit my house with 6″ gutters rather than 5″. They managed to do that on the final day before the storm as well. (I had expected them two weeks earlier.) As if the whole thing was divinely choreographed . . . With 6″ gutters, they can all feed into just three holding tanks for water catchment. I have yet to install the tanks. Here’s one corner with the new gutters where a small tank will be installed. One of them will be quite large.
We plan to put new 6″ gutters on the DeKist house as well, and of course, feed all the water to the garden, one to the pond, the other to a tank. So far, we have the tank, but the new gutters there will have to wait until the cold lets up.
Ann, It is my understanding that here in California, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) which is supposed to regulate our power companies, still maintains a law that only gives monthly solar enery billing offsets to one house. The PUC regulation discourages cooperative neighborhood solar arrays… i.e. 2 or more of us can’t join together, build a solar array on say an empty lot we all back on to, and disconnect from the grid. Maybe I misunderstand our PUC rule. Your area seems more creative. (PS my old email got hacked and sabotaged my new email is RichBuckley7@gmail.com)
It has never happened here before either, but was surprisingly easy, most likely because I own both houses. I bought the Dekist house to create the gang garden. Perhaps it is a foot in the door, both here and there. Bloomington city tried to find a city law against it, but couldn’t. Duke went along with it because some kind of regulation that they had had just been changed.
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Also, both bills come to my address (I pay the utility bills and tenants pay me), which also made it easier for Duke to get behind it. The whole thing is connected to the grid, no batteries. So, hopefully, sometimes we will be throwing energy back into the grid. I did it on that house, because of the south-facing roof that had very little shade (a tiny bit on the east side in the morning hours is in shade).
It’s obvious that we’re going to have to start applying pressure in all sorts of ways to either get around existing laws or to change them. Part of what I liked about this project was that I could go to the city and find out that there wasn’t a law against doing what I did (because they hadn’t thought of it, most likely). In my life, I’ve found that it often pays to be first to do something; that by the time the second person comes along and tries to do the same thing, that “loophole” has been filled . . .
I’m not sure why but this website is loading incredibly slow for
me. Is anyone else having this issue or is it a issue on my end?
I’ll check back later and see if the problem still exists.