Green Energy News and Views

By Nathan Wiser You may have heard about community solar farms. You may even belong to one. We recently joined one and this article describes why we joined and how it works for us. Our home electrification journey began in 2010 when we purchased our 5.8 kW grid-tied rooftop solar system. For those first several years, our solar panels annually produced more electricity than we used, and we “banked” the surplus kWh with our utility, Xcel Energy. Since then, we have added more

We were very excited to learn about a new IOS application that will soon also be an Android app. It is called ChargeBug and puts the information about the cleanest sources of energy at your fingertips. The Colorado Renewable Energy Society featured the programmer, Adrienne Blum from Sinton Instruments, during one of their March seminars. We also had some communication from the owner Ron, about how he uses the program to charge his EV with Xcel's Charging Perks incentive. Th

Heavy Duty Extension Cord Do you wish you had a large battery around when the power went out last month? Back up for your groceries, heat, and lights? We’re retired, but live in the “exurbs” in the foothills above metro Denver, which means my husband and I still need two cars. Both are now electric and we can’t imagine owning a gas car again. Our first was a 2021 Nissan Leaf S Plus. The “S” could stand for “simple”, as it’s a fairly basic car as newish EVs go. No heated sea

Did you know you can replace your gas water heater with a heat pump electric water heater even if you don’t have a 240V circuit? Yes, there are 120V heat pump water heaters listed on the Energy Star website as some of the most efficient . I often use the Energy Star website to shop for new appliances. I download the entire list and use Excel to filter by efficiency, size, and manufacturer. Models from A.O Smith are available from Lowes, and the Rheem models are sold at Home

by Angela Kantola Hooray – we now have a ducted, air-source, cold-climate heat pump – and it works great! We knew our ~27-year-old 90% efficient gas furnace wouldn’t last forever, so we’ve been planning to convert to a heat pump as part of electrifying our home. Talking to heat pump owners of homes on the Metro Green Homes Tour was immensely helpful (you can see video tours of homes on those tours here .) We live in the foothills above Littleton at 7,300’ elevation, so our ma