My journey with deploying solar panels in NYC began a little over 10 years ago. 12 years, to be precise. Yes, it took roughly 20-24 months for me to do proper due diligence (including visiting Sunrun headquarters in San Francisco), conduct research, learn about panels, products, process, engage suppliers and installers for interviews, meet site dependencies, followed by finally executing a contract with a local supplier and installer on a solution that fit my criteria. By the time permitting had been approved and installation was completed, it was already August of 2015.

I’ve written about bits and pieces of my journey in earlier blogs. As time had gone on, I’d gotten involved with other solar panel deployments, consulted various friends and relatives, including personally experimenting with Tesla Powerwall batteries. (More on this later). In the meantime, seeing as we’re experiencing pretty much the last of the warm weekends before autumn winds finally blow in, I wanted to pen and share a quick per annum summary of the impact of my initial solar panel deployment.

Keeping it very high level, and letting the illustrations do the talking, I’m happy to share that over the last 10 years my humble NYC solar project has produced over 90 Megawatt hours of energy.

In the process:

• saving 70 tons of CO2 emissions,
• avoiding consuming over 7100 gallons of gasoline,
• not driving over 158,000 miles, and
• having over 1000 trees planted and fully grown

Besides lowering my ConEdison energy bill, all this makes me feel quite productive and proud in terms of my contribution to global sustainability efforts. As an energy consumer it is easy to leverage the utility company’s auto-pay feature and not worry about the bill and what goes into it — with occasional reminders to explore why exactly has the cost gone up. Yet if you’re at least border-line serious, know that the technology to make this happen is here! While each individual’s circumstances vary, if you’ve not yet explored ways to lower your energy bill with sustainable solar energy, or would just like to reach out and ask questions about my learnings — please feel free to reach out. Let’s get crackin’! Find me on X @hypervisaac

Have an awesome day!