We did it! Twenty panels on our roof

My wife and I got our start in solar energy way back in the 80's, as shown on this page. Our sites made the covers of Scientific American and Popular Science, as well as other news outlets around the world.

We met each other because her father hired me to create all control and monitoring software for several of the world's biggest (at that time) solar energy power production fields. EJ worked summer shifts for her dad at that time, helping to crunch data and put her strong math skills to good use.

That was the best job I ever had, working side by side with a team largely drawn from the Viking Mars Lander project, where we each had our strong niche, and cooperative in-house efforts were way more effective at making progress than at most all other places I've ever worked.

The tax credits went away, and that caused the parent Oil and Gas company to drop us, but alternate energy has been my passion since. I've authored books on how to calculate high accuracy sun position, created software to aid engineers working on the tallest wind turbine tower designs, invented a new type of sundial that evens tells you the date as well as the time, and have dabbled in archaeoastronomy, solar forensics, and creating other, similar computer programs and smartphone apps.

   

During these many years we kept putting off putting solar panels on our own rooftop, for a variety of rather weak reasons. The technology, capabilities, and cost kept getting better over time, so it was always tempting to wait until things got even better yet. I had a friend who did the same thing when personal computers first came out - he waited and waited for an even better computer to hit the market, and he never did catch up to the world of computing once he actually bought one. 

Finally, in the summer of 2016, we learned of a great local Colorado solar panel installer. We learned how the recent changes to the industry now make it a total "no-brainer" to get going with solar, so we took the plunge and now have twenty panels cutting our electric bill way, way down, and over time these panels will put more and more money back in our own pockets. We're now more pleased with our decision that we ever thought possible!

There's a lot to this story, and that's what I want to share here. This is our personal story of why and how we went solar, and what it's meant to our family. Being informed is extremely helpful, and I only wish I could have read a similar learning experience while struggling with our rooftop solar decisions over the years.