Personal Story:

My husband and I joined several garden and environmental clubs after we retired from our software development careers a few years ago. We felt that clean water, good quality air, healthy food systems, and the beauty that nature brings to our lives are some of the richest assets we have on this earth. We wanted to learn how we could start living in a way to reduce our negative impact on the environment and hopefully lead others to change by example. One thing lead to another and we ended up attending a DuPage Clean Energy Coalition meeting in December of 2018 where we learned about the environmental benefits of solar and the federal and state incentives that made installing solar a possibility for us. It fascinated me to learn that you could produce enough energy to power your home just by putting solar panels on your roof. It also surprised me that you could get a significant portion of the cost of solar panels covered by incentives and even more amazed at how much money you could save on electricity over the lifetime of the panels. The combined benefits of solar on the environment and the cost savings made installing solar an easy decision for us. We also decided to add a battery to our installation even though this was a hard decision due to the substantial cost it added. Long term power outages are predicted to become more frequent due to climate change and we liked the security of adding some off grid capability to our system.

What tips do you have for someone who might be considering moving forward with solar installation?