(Editor’s note: A thoughtful, highly informative, and engaging article by Gerald Sharp about how he came to provide his house with electricity and power his car with solar energy.)
When I added a floor to my house on Edgefield Road about 10 years ago, I had the electrician run a tube from the attic to the electric panel in the basement, thinking that someday I’d want to put solar panels on the roof. And I also had a door installed on the roof so I could get to it from the attic without using a long ladder. I even took a night class at Montgomery College on photovoltaics where we were actually taught how to install the panels, but still I delayed having a system installed. Last year I asked myself what was I waiting for? Did I think we’d have better government subsidies to pay for solar panels? Were prices of panels going to come down? Was PEPCO going to be reducing what they charged for power? With the answers to all these questions being “no”, I made the leap in 2023 to tapping the free electricity coming from the sun. And then I also ended up buying an electric car that would be powered by sunshine.
The deciding factor for me was last August when I learned about the Washington Area Solar Switch program where they get bids from local solar panel companies and give home owners in Montgomery County (and DC and Northern VA) access to the lowest bidder. This seemed like such a smart idea, and it also took the decision of having to figure out which company to hire out of my hands. I figured the program would pick a company not only with the best prices, but one that they had vetted that was likely to do a good job. Last summer Lumina Solar in Baltimore was one of the contract companies, and, according to the Solar Switch website, about 2,000 houses in our three-jurisdiction area signed up for the program. Lumina told me their price was a 20% discount from the usual cost plus there was a 30% federal tax credit and a $1000 state rebate from Maryland. I paid the Solar Switch fee of $150 to find out how many panels could be installed on my house and what the system would cost.
Parkwood Residents Association 