Solar Hot Air

Made in Minnesota solar hot air panels

Wondering what we’ve been up to with our plans for solar? We’re moving full steam ahead to meet the Sept 15 deadline for project completion for the Make Mine Solar program.

We’ve installed two solar hot air panels on the south side of our house, which faces a street so we have very good sun exposure. The inside work — a blower fan enclosure — is being completed this weekend. We believe this system will heat the second floor more than sufficiently. We’ve been told to expect 85 degrees or more on sunny winter days and as we only heat our house to 55 degrees, that would be amazingly toasty.

In a few weeks, we’ll have the solar electric panels installed on the roof.  Unfortunately, Xcel Energy’s Solar Rewards program has run out of funds for 2011 and it’s unclear if we’ve made the cutoff. Our installer, Innovative Power Systems, thinks not.

That doesn’t mean we won’t get our rebate – we just won’t get it this year. We’ll get both the Xcel and the federal tax rebates next year.

What we’ll get this year is heat in our bedroom in December (yippee!) and – we hope – electricity flowing from our roof by October.