In October 2023, I had 23 solar panels installed on my roof in the Boston area. This post series will summarize our experience with the system thus far.

Procurement Process

We went with a company out of Arlington, Massachusetts, for the project. I found the company using EnergySage, a quote aggregator. EnergySage is a convenient way to get multiple quotations from different local companies. There are others, including Solar.com, who provide a similar service. EnergySage is a Boston company, so I preferentially chose them.

One of the recurring joys of home ownership is plumbing. In 2021, the water heater in our home developed a small leak. Fortunately, the leak was small enough where we had some time to work out the next steps. Our long-term goal for our home is fully run on electricity for both comfort and climate reasons.

The domestic hot water system that existed in the home when we bought it used the indirect heating loop in the oil boiler and an unplugged electrical water heater as a storage tank. The boiler was setup to maintain a set point between 120F and 170F all year round. Looking at the summer usage of the boiler, we used between 0.5 and 1 gallon of oil per day to keep the boiler hot. Extrapolating this, I estimate that heating water was burning around a full tank of oil per year – around $900/yr at the $3.50/gal price in Feb 2022.

I’m trying an experiment with Cloudflare analytics and have enabled it on this page.

I’ve enabled a Javascript beacon on the page footer which supposedly allows me to collect pageviews.

According to Cloudflare, this beacon plays nice with keeping readers information private.

Cloudflare Web Analytics does not use any client-side state, such as cookies or localStorage, to collect usage metrics. We also don’t “fingerprint” individuals via their IP address, User Agent string, or any other data for the purpose of displaying analytics.

If you’re coming here from the Chelsea Research Festival, I’ll be uploading more information about the project in the coming days.

Comcast and I have long had a strained relationship. I recognize that the service they’ve offered in the houses and apartments that I’ve lived in has been reliable. However, I’ve never been a big fan of their business and billing practices.

For example, I purchased my own DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem some years ago when I first got their internet service. Some months in, I noticed that they were charging me for a cable modem rental. When I contacted them about this, they were insistent that I prove to them that I bought my own cable modem before they would refund the fees. I might recall this incorrectly, but I believe they had requested that I fax my proof of purchase to a number as they did not have an email address setup for such things.