I opened the `Friends of Alf` team for anyone who wants to go hector *their* mutuals to chip in. Open invite--go raise some money, have some fun with it

Gonna commandeer the podcast recording tonight to talk about it, maybe dust off the Stupid Stream Kit this week and make some of you come hang out

met a celebrity #NoKings

every git… has its last commit

#notblessed

theoretically we'll produce more electricity in summer months (up to and maybe a surplus), and less in winter months, evening out over the course of the year to 75% of electric costs. now the electricity we do have to pay for in winter will be cheaper. good deal if it works out!

as for electric use: we have heat pumps for heating and cooling, so low costs in the summer, high costs in the winter (the inverse of many NE home's electric bills). MA is introducing discounted winter rates for homes with heat pumps installations through MassSave (huge)

we wanted to go through a family-owned or local shop but it just didn't work out. those groups can be price-competitive with bigger companies but under the short timeframe we had different tradeoffs, like faith in being able to make the EOY deadline.

the process of choosing an installer is tricky. recommendations from neighbors and friends didn't pan out and we went with one that contacted us through EnergySage. you're optimizing for lowest $/kW and total energy output, but also for a company that stays in contact consistently.

it's actually easy to mess around yourself with your home layout with the free version of OpenSolar. it's helped me learn what to expect, where to push back, and influence the final design. several installers use the same software (the more professional software being Aurora)

several neighbors have solar and that can be misleading: fire code changes adopted in 2022 by MA are much stricter about fire setbacks, including from the top of your roof (ridgeline) and walkways on the sides of the roof. pre-2022 installs had fewer restrictions. so in 2025 fewer panels will fit.

there's also more comical possibilities: what if Somerville YIMBY succeeds at upzoning residential (good!) and someone builds a six-story next to us? (lmao) so solar makes sense at this point through the end of the decade but less so as time goes on.

while it’s cool to get rooftop solar, Somerville has a community choice program that fixes a cheap rate through 2028. it also has a 100% renewables option which we’ve been paying for. so strictly speaking we’re going to be as “green” whether or not we go through with it.

up front we chose to do this if we could 1) pay the same amount for electricity and 2) pay it off in five years. rn payback period looks like it’s 4 years so pretty happy with that