Friday, March 22nd, 2013
It is that time of year again, but you would not know it from the weather outside in Washington, D.C. It has been cold and breezy, yet the sun is shining and if you have your solar panels out, you have been producing lots of solar energy. We have just updated our site with a new selection of new home solar panels, so if you are in the market, or just want to compare various options, then please let us know. If you don’t have the big bucks to shell out for a home solar panel system, then you may want to think about other solar offerings. As soon as the sun comes out, people start thinking solar powered lights and solar fountains. Every year, the solar light options get increasingly better, more efficient, brighter and more attractive. The SolarTown learning section provides an overview of solar powered lights, what applications they can be used for, a brief description of the lights, and how long they will work when operating at a full charge. Probably the most popular lights are solar path lights, but solar lamp posts are also quite popular.
Tags: home solar panel, home solar panels, solar fountains, solar lamp posts, solar light, solar lights, solar panel system, solar powered lights
Posted in Solar Energy Products | Comments Off
Monday, November 26th, 2012
Are you looking for green or eco friendly gifts to give for the holidays? Every year, we at SolarTown are compiling a list of some gifts that you may want to consider. Take a look at our solar gifts that we are recommending this year in our learning section.The first gift you can give is to educate yourself and your friends about the power of solar energy. My family and I went to the Science Museum in Baltimore over the Thanksgiving weekend. It is easy to forget that the sun is 1.3 million (yes, million) times as large as the Earth. If you open up the sun and dump over a million earths in it, you can begin to imagine that the sun carries a pretty large punch. The challenge is of course how to garner all of that energy. The answer is that we don’t need to garner very much of that energy to meet our energy needs; we just have to do it efficiently.
Tags: Eco Friendly Gifts, home solar panel, home solar panel system, home solar panels, Solar Energy Systems, solar fountains, solar gifts, solar lamp post, solar landscape, solar lights, solar panel system, solar wall
Posted in Solar Energy Products | Comments Off
Monday, August 27th, 2012
As most loyal SolarTown customers know, we try to get you the best guidance on selecting solar energy products from our selection of home solar panels to solar water pumps and other products. We recently played with the idea of doing the same thing with our selection of solar inverters, but came to the conclusion that the inverter market may not have as many objective standards or features to make that kind of comparison as useful as with solar modules. Some excellent brands, like Outback, don’t stack up in the numbers because they are specialized in other areas like being installable in almost any tropical or harsh environment or switching between on and off grid mode. That said, sometimes the numbers have a point, and we want to share that point with you so at least you have some information on which to base your decision of which solar inverter to choose for certain size solar panel systems. So here is our first rundown of Solar Inverters: Best in Show!
Tags: home solar panel, home solar panels, Solar Energy Products, solar inverter, solar inverters, solar modules, solar panel system, solar water pumps
Posted in Solar Energy Products, Solar Home Panels | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Manufacturers of home solar panels have ballyhooed their every increasing warranties. That is great, but what happens when that quarter of a century warranty goes down with the ship when the solar manufacturer goes out of business. I think that is what you call an illusory promise, because when it comes time for the company to honor the warranty, the homeowner who has purchased solar panels is going to call the manufacturer and get a recording: “that number is no longer in service.” We’re going to talk about warranties from solar panel manufacturers in this blog post so that homeowners may be able to take a few precautions when purchasing a solar panel system for their homes.
Tags: home solar panels, solar module warranty, solar panel manufacturers, solar panel system, solar panel warranty, solar power system, Solyndra
Posted in Solar Home Panels | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012
Just a few feet from a tree that had fallen in the storm, I saw some other workers who had nothing to do with the clean-up—they were installing a solar panel system. They had somehow managed to maneuver around the fallen trees and the strange traffic patterns as the signal lights all over the city were not working. I am particularly interested in this installation, for if you are an avid reader of this blog, you will know that not far away in the neighborhood of Cleveland Park, the historic preservation committee voted down a solar energy system on a home not far from where I live. Our neighborhood, however, is not part of a historic preservation district so the homeowners have a freer hand in placing a solar panel system on their homes.We also carry at SolarTown other off grid products that will allow you to weather the storm. A solar refrigerator can be used to maintain your food, and one model of a solar fridge allows you to maintain medicines. If you are digging out any everyone on your street doesn’t have power, if you had a solar oven, you could prepare your food so long as the sun is out. And of course, if you can’t live without your computer, we have solar bags or small portable solar backup systems to provide just enough juice for your computers or handheld devices.
Tags: columbia heights, solar bags, solar energy products for disasters, Solar Energy System, Solar Freezer, solar ovens, solar panel system, solar panels, Solar Refrigerator
Posted in Solar Energy Products, Solar Home Panels | Comments Off
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
Ever since skyscrapers started to capture our imagination, they have been recognized as a city’s symbol of economic power and financial might. They have not, however, ever been accused of being particularly energy efficient. Skyscrapers are notoriously huge energy consumers, which is why we were impressed by some recent efforts for building owners to try to reduce the carbon footprint of their massive buildings. A skyscraper with high-power rooftop solar panels and several floors’ solar glass can run as a vertical solar power station. Imagine, if all skyscrapers and high-rises become solar buildings, what will Manhattan be? At that time, Manhattan will become one of the largest solar power stations in the world, redefining the city’s symbol! Yes, solar skyscrapers are on the rise.
Tags: 60 Wall Street, rooftop PV, skyscraper roof, Solar Energy System, solar glass, solar panel system, solar skyscrapers, vertical solar power station
Posted in Solar Around the World, Solar Home Panels | Comments Off
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
We like the microinverter for residential solar panel systems and we respect Enphase’s market leadership. Just as the elevator was synonymous with the lift and Xerox was synonymous with photocopiers, Enphase has become synonymous with microinverters. Most of the residential installations of solar panels we see are with microinverters. As Enphase has extended its warranty, the microinverter has become an integral part of home solar panel systems. All of that is well and good, but we are wondering if Enphase is innovating into obsolescence by treating its microinverters as electronics, fundamentally changing its product every few months. We like the Enphase microinverter, but wish that they would spend less time on innovation and more time on improving its current products.
Tags: Enphase, Enphase microinverter, home solar panel, home solar panel systems, Microinverters, residential installations, solar inverters, solar microinverters, solar panel system
Posted in Solar Energy Products, Solar Home Panels | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 8th, 2011
SolarTown is pleased to be the host of the premier solar forum Solar Panel Talk. Hosting this solar forum is another way that we can help our customers get the information that they need to get the proper solar panels and other solar energy products that they need. If you have a question about setting buying a solar panel system for your home, or about setting up the system, or what you need to order, then you should join the solar forum and post your question. Likewise, If you enjoy sharing your experiences with other homeowners or installers, then you should visit SolarPanelTalk.com and answer questions from the many other homeowners who need guidance about their home solar panels.
Tags: home solar panels, Solar Energy Products, Solar Forum, solar panel system, solar pv
Posted in Solar Home Panels, SolarTown Current Affairs | Comments Off
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
If you have a home with solar panels and next door you have a home without solar panels, you would expect that there should be a premium for the home with solar panels. So you have just sunk $20,000 for your solar panel system—and you will get some of that back from incentives, but will you be able to recoup any of your out of pocket cost if you move in a year. If the useful life of the solar energy on the home is 25 years, and we use a discount rate of 5% per year, then the economic value of the solar panel system you have on your home is $11,000. All things being equal, and assuming that the market is rational, a purchaser of your home should pay an additional $11,000 over what the house next door is selling for without solar panels on the roof. You would expect that you would recoup at least the present value of the energy savings over the next 25 years if you go sell your home. There is scant evidence out there and we at SolarTown wanted to see if this assumption was correct. Accordingly, we are now completing a study to see whether homeowners do indeed receive a premium for the “solar savings” of having a solar energy system on the home. We are about to release the results of a study on this issue. Stay tuned to the SolarTown Learning Center to see the results.
Tags: energy savings, home solar panels, Solar Energy System, solar panel system, solar panels, solar panels for home, solar premium, solar savings
Posted in Solar Financing, Solar Home Panels, Solar Policy & Incentives | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
There is nothing like the fresh air and sunshine of spring to focus the mind on the new solar project you want to install on your roof, in your garden, on your pathways, or near your pool. We hope that you have read the learning article about the installation challenges that our solar engineer faced down during the installation of his home solar panel system. We enjoyed watching his journey as he went from the design stage to installation. In this blog entry, we discuss three major decisions that he faced: designing the system, choosing the solar module, and choosing the solar inverter.
Choosing your solar design. As with any home improvement project, the advance work is the key to the success of your solar energy system. You need to design your system, knowing that these home solar panels will be on your roof for the next 25 years. Even an experienced solar installer like our solar engineer may go through several alternative designs before settling on the optimal one, because every rooftop is unique. You need to take into account what conditions may influence the design. Every roof has a different configuration and different obstructions. When our solar engineer was conceptualizing his design, he originally intended to install more panels, but eventually changed the configuration and opted for a design with fewer panels.
Tags: Buy Home Solar panels, Discount Solar Panels, DIY Solar Installation, Enphase Micro Inverter, home solar panel, home solar panels, Installing Solar Panels, Micro Inverter, solar design, Solar Energy System, Solar Home Panel, solar modules, solar panel system, Solar Panels for the Home
Posted in Solar Home Panels | 3 Comments »
