The big decision to “Go Solar” is well intentioned and based on several well-planned measures, usually involving the ability to Go Green, save from rising electricity rates, and even enable greater energy consumption without the shame of over consumption. For my family, the greatest value of solar broke down into these tiers:

Great investment for our home’s value
Lower monthly electricity bills
Free rein to use my A/C
Cool “It Factor” of early solar adoption
Insulation from rising electricity rates
Saving the environment/doing our part to go green
At some point, the excitement and bragging rights of solar quickly dwindled down, and the realization crept in – this is an investment that should provide value for 25 years, and I want it now! With the installation in the rearview mirror, and PNM officially commissioned the system and “turned it on” 3 weeks laters, I’ve been living the solar life without a PNM bill to knows its real.

So imagine my excitement when I finally got my first PNM bill since my soalr system was turned on! If this was the movies, there would be a sweet montage of me anxiously checking my mailbox every day, hopefuly to finally get my bill inthe mail. However, this is the future, and I simply got an email reminder and checked my PNM online account to view the bill.

As you can see, the only payment I make to PNM is for my connection to the grid. Connecting to the grid is essential for residential solar, because it means that we have unfetetred access to electricity at any time – day or night. If you take a look at my electricity usage chart, you can see that my normal bill triples or quadruples during the hot summer months. This is because we run our air conditioner as a feeble escape from ABQ’s summer heat.

The best part of the bill is actually on the back side, where you can see our renewable energy credits. In this case, my soalr energy system produced much more energy that I was able to consume within the month. As a result, the unused energy is rolled ever as a credit of 605 kilowatt hours, meaning that our home has the abilty to use an additional 605 kWh more than our system can produce. This will come in handy during the summer months, when our typical energy consumption is highest, and will probably be more than our solar system can produce.

So there you have it, my family’s first foray into solar energy. It was an exciting decision that was simple to execute, and it was fun because of how well we were treated at every step. Huge appreciation to our install crew, project manager, and sales team, they were all wonderful and enabled our solar experience to be everything we hoped for!

We even have our Enphase online portal to check on the daily energy production for our system. I can use it to see updates throughout the day, and even generate monthly reports to ensure the system functions properly. As an additional peace of mind, Affordable Solar monitors my system too, and can alert me if any issues arise. All in all, a perfect way to know that my solar system will keep taking care of our needs every day for the next 25 years.

If you or your family/friends have any questions about solar, feel free to reach out so i can provide answers. I love to chat about solar, and have a ton of experience visiting with people as they begin their solar journey. Thanks for reading along with me to learn about my solar journey, I hope it provided some fun info should you ever decide to go solar.

Shine bright my friends!