Date: 2/22/2023
Regarding your excellent article about saving money on utilities. I am referring to page 11 of the Feb 9th edition, titled,”Utilities costs are skyrocketing, here is what you can do about it.”
It gives many ideas about weatherstripping and conservation which are all good ideas but there is one glaring omission. What about installing solar panels? Solar energy is not even mentioned.
We put in a free standing solar array in 2017 and have not had an electric bill since. There were incentives for help with the cost and a “Smart Program” that pays us every month based on the electricity we sell. In 2022 we were paid $1,400 plus the value of no electric bills. Now we have installed four mini splits which are heat pumps that run on electricity and we have not turned on the furnace yet. This will handle air conditioning as well. We have a half tank of fuel oil that we will probably never use.
National Grid charges us much more per kilowatt hour when we buy electricity during the nighttime hours than they pay us when we are selling electricity to them during the daytime hours.
Therefore, it is to our advantage to use more of the electricity. When we decide on an electric car we will not have the expense of gas either.
Solar panels on the roof do not create as much power as a free standing array that moves every eight minutes to always be perfectly perpendicular to the sun’s rays. Still rooftop panels can greatly reduce an electric bill if not eliminate it.
There should have been some mention of solar power. Rooftop panels are relatively cheap and there is help for installation as well.
Malita Brown
Wilbraham
