solar panels – greenandprofitable.com

Guest Post by Denise Rushing

Have you thought about investing in solar energy? Perhaps you want to consider solar but just haven’t had the time to sort out your options. Or perhaps you began looking into solar only to face confusing choices and unanswered questions.

You are not alone. Some homes are perfectly suited for solar energy and yet the homeowner hasn’t yet made the switch. Up until now, homeowners felt okay waiting… for “better technology” or “lower prices”, or simply avoided thinking about it at all. But now, with solar panels appearing on one neighbor’s home after another, with neighbors bragging about saving energy and money, and with rumors about the phasing out of tax credits and incentives, they (and you) might wonder: is it too late?

You can stop worrying today… it is not too late to go solar and it is easier than you might think. In this book, award-winning renewable energy expert Denise Rushing shows you how to say goodbye to ever-increasing utility power costs… and go solar with confidence!

This book is a good fit for you if…
• You wonder if you should make the switch to solar energy;
• You definitely don’t want to create complexity, headaches or hassle for you or your family;
• You worry that solar incentives are gone, that the advantageous utility solar rates are in the past and wonder if solar is still worth it economically;
• You want to save money on your electricity bill and add thousands of dollars in value to your home and wonder if solar can help you do that;
• You want to do what is right for the environment, but worry about making the wrong choice;
• You wonder if solar energy is right for your situation;
• You want to know how to go solar with ease and confidence.
Today, switching from expensive, dirty, utility power to clean, renewable, solar energy is easier and more economical than ever before. Go Solar With Confidence takes you step-by-step through the process and shows you how to say goodbye to ever-increasing utility power costs and buy a solar energy system that is right for you.

Go Solar With Confidence is a clear and practical guide to:
•Learn how you can save money on your electricity bill and add thousands of dollars in value to your home;
•Determine if your home qualifies for solar;
•Discover the most important things you need to know about solar systems before you buy so that you can go in with the best knowledge possible;
•Understand what you need to expertly interview any prospective solar provider.
•Empower you to take the first step towards going solar so that you won’t have to worry about electric bills going up ever again!

Imagine running your home, and maybe even your automobile, on clean, renewable electricity generated from sunshine. You can gain the confidence and information you need to take the first (and the next) step toward solar energy for your home. Visit: https://www.energyqueen.net to learn more.

A solar building at the Earthship Community, outside Taos, New Mexico. Photo by Shel Horowitz

Let’s Make Puerto Rico The Poster Child for 100% Fossil-Free

Seize the opportunity!

Tragic as it is, the wipeout of Puerto Rico’s fossil-based infrastructure via Hurricane Maria creates a powerful opportunity to do it right the second time. With its vast solar and wind resources, why not make this sunny, breezy island the pilot project to develop 100% renewability in buildings for a populous island—using microgrids to build in resiliency, so if part of the system goes down, the rest still delivers power?

A storm-damaged pier. Courtesy freeimages.com

There’s already at least one island country we’ve all heard of that is near-100% renewable if you don’t count vehicles: Iceland (hydro and geothermal). Solar/electric entrepreneur Elon Musk has already converted several tiny, obscure islands, like Ta’u in American Samoa, and he says he can scale up to serve the 3,670,243 Puerto Ricans.

Of course, converting PR to renewables requires the re-invention of funding. We need mechanisms that allow a bankrupt country (technically part of the US) to front-load a huge infrastructure and then repay out of savings even when many pressing needs will be competing for those funds. The private sector won’t step up if they don’t have complete confidence that they’ll get paid back. Eco-economists, this is your moment!

But also, justice demands that a big chunk of financing come from outright grants, from the US government and various foundations and disaster relief agencies—just is occurred in storm recovery after other superstorms like Katrina, Rita, Sandy, and Irene. Even the heartless occupant of the White House, possibly the least compassionate and least competent man ever to hold that office, must not be allowed to marginalize Puerto Rico just because the population is Latina/Latino and the language is Spanish.

And wouldn’t it be cool if someone (Elon Musk perhaps?) stepped forward to fund a switch of the vehicle fleet to non-carbon-emitting sources? If the island had solar on every sunny room, it would be easy enough to supply the vehicles as well.

In some ways, converting the entire island to clean, renewable, resilient energy would actually make rebuilding cheaper and easier. Fossil fuel infrastructure is expensive, complex, and subject to environmental catastrophe. But if the money that would have gone to build tanker ports and refineries went to establishing on-island solar panel factories and training installers and to bringing in the raw materials to make millions of high-efficiency panels to deploy in every neighborhood in the Commonwealth, it’s doable.

I’m not the only and certainly not the first to say this. In addition to Musk, Time Magazine, Renewable Energy World, safe energy activist/author Harvey Wasserman, the deep-story news outlet Democracy Now, to name a few, have all said this is possible and desirable.

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Is it Too Late to Go Solar?