For years I’ve been waiting for a time when solar is made easy. Even though solar power has been available for a couple of decades now, the practicality of the technology being within the reach of the average American homeowner has yet to appear on the horizon. For as long as I can remember my wife has taken full advantage of the passive solar energy in the winter by opening the doors and curtains that face the sun during the day to allow the sun’s rays to warm up the house as much as possible, and making sure to close them all again when the sun started to wane. And in the summer, as much as we enjoy having a house full of sunlight, we pull down the window shades and close the doors to the hot sun, to help keep the house cool and to reduce the work and energy usage of the air conditioner.

Even so, we would ultimately like to take better advantage of the newest technology when it becomes within our financial reach, of putting solar panels on our roof to help reduce our electricity usage and to help heat and cool the house. Just the idea of not having to pay the electric company, or the gas company for our lights, heat, and air conditioning gets my juices flowing! My wife has even suggested that we look into getting a small windmill to see if we could generate our own electricity with it to help cut down on our electric bills. With so many people living in our house, and everyone being on a different schedule of wakefulness and sleeping, our lights and climate control are constantly going, so our bills for electricity and climate control are probably a lot higher than many families bills are.