Was Sun One of the Powers That Created Captain Planet? 

It took about 4 months of back and forth and permitting. Two and a half days of actual work on the room. A couple of visits from a friendly inspector to make sure everything was kosher. And, finally, a 30 minute visit from a nice tech to setup the wifi.

In the end, we’ve got an array of 26 solar panels producing energy on our roof (and setup in a location that you don’t really see from the street).

Screen Shot 2017 03 27 at 4 27 54 PM

Unfortunately, we’ve only had a couple of sunny days since then, but on a cold, but sunny, day in March, they produced about 40 kWh of power, which I think is more than what we’d use on a normal day. It’ll be interesting to see how we do in April and May. I’m optimistic this will have really nice returns for us.

So far the only real issue has been the monitoring software, Enlighten from Enphase. When working, it’s really nice. But, while my end is reporting pretty regularly, the website seems to go long whiles between updating. And, over the weekend, it just seemed flat out down. I’m hoping I can figure out a way to pull info from it. It looks like there’s an API, so I might be able to wire up a Homebridge plugin to pull data from it and then list usage on my HomeKit apps.

(And, no, Sun wasn’t one of Captain Planet’s people. Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Heart. I guess maybe Fire counts?)