By Mike Renner
It started out in the early 80’s with an article in Popular Science magazine. The article showed a detailed plan on how to build a small solar heater that could be mounted in a window to provide heat for a house. I followed the instructions and mounted it in the window of our rent house. I was amazed at how well it worked and from then on I was hooked on solar.
In 1984, I got married and we bought our first home. It had a small porch which we enclosed and heated with three homemade flat plate solar water panels mounted in the back yard. In 1997, we moved to a five acre lot in the country and built our own energy efficient home. We built with cinder blocks filled with concrete and insulated on the outside, which provides a great deal of thermal mass that stabilizes inside temperatures. The house also includes R50 insulation, a radiant barrier in the attic, and LED and CFL lighting. Over the years, little by little as tax incentives allowed, we installed a solar PV system that is grid connected with battery backup. Four years ago, a 10kW wind turbine on a 100 foot tower was connected to the system. Each year, when we added more PV, our electric bill kept dropping. We belong to an electric cooperative and do not have net metering, so our electric meter only records incoming and not outgoing power.
In late August of 2010, we installed a whole house electrical monitoring system and it opened our eyes as to where all our power goes. I recommend that everyone have one; it is like having a fuel gage for your home. In the month of September, we were billed for 360kWh but if you subtract the power returned to the grid, the bill would have been for 74kWh. In October, we were billed for 115kWh and if you subtract the 434kWh that we returned to the grid, the power company owes us 319KWH. As of November 28, we produced 1,008kWh and used 106kWh from the grid but returned 572kWh. This means we are 466 kWh to the good for the month of November. I am proud to say that we have been at net zero for at least the last two months thanks to the information provided by our home monitoring system. It is possible to start small and let your system grow over time as funds become available. The main thing is to get started. We must all take our fight to the Texas Legislature, starting in January, to help pass laws that make fare billing available to everybody. This will promote large growth for renewable energy industries and create jobs for the state of Texas.
Mike Renner is the Chair of TXSES Chapter North Texas Renewable Energy Group