Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

As I was sweeping snow off of the solar panels (again), I realized that I had never blogged about our solar project. Our photovoltaic solar array came online Dec. 29, in the midst of the holidays and the year-end crunch to get the tax credits. We can now claim that all the energy needed to power, heat and cool WineWeb's office space comes from the sun.

I'm still amazed at the ability of the solar panels to generate electricity in less than sunny conditions. Currently it's totally overcast (one of those rare days in Santa Fe) with a few snowflakes coming down, and they're generating 345 AC watts, enough to power a computer and lights. It's a grid-tied system, so excess energy is fed back to the utility. The incentives are great to install solar panels. 30% Federal tax credit, 10% state tax credit, net-metering for all energy sent back to the utility, and an additional credit for every kWh that we generate, regardless of whether we use it or give it to the utility. Our payback on the investment is about 5 years.

Of course we opted for the ability to monitor the system in real-time over the Internet. The monitor was installed over the weekend, and now anyone can see the statistics on our solar system by going to solrenview.com. I like talking about this to anyone who would listen, and am happy to see the results of many years of research.