Whenever a dinner party has an awkward pause and could use a horror story to liven it up, I tell my story of shopping for solar panels. My wife and I started in 2008 and spent months finding an installer. Some never returned phone calls. Estimates ranged over a factor of two. It was hard [...]

My neighbors took a newfound interest in my solar array after Hurricane Sandy. Most of our town in New Jersey lost power for two weeks, and everyone who knew about my panels was asking: Did they keep my lights on? Alas, no. When the grid goes down, our array goes down. The inverter mounted on [...]

Editor’s Note: Scientific American’s George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in 60-Second Solar. Read his introduction here and see all posts here. When people talk about using renewable energy to save both energy and jobs, the jobs they’re usually referring to are engineering and construction. But if my solar experience is [...]

Judging from responses to my earlier post, not everyone is happy about incentives for installing solar power. One person said the government shouldn’t encourage projects that don’t make financial sense on their own. Another complained that I’m a “freeloader” taking advantage of the grid to keep the lights on at night without paying my rightful [...]

Editor’s Note: Scientific American’s George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in 60-Second Solar. Read his introduction here and see all posts here. The first step in installing solar panels, not surprisingly, is to call an installer. I contacted one through Home Depot and, on a Saturday earlier this month, Cameron Christensen [...]