Shine on

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

Sorry to say it, but summer is officially over for me. Hunter's back in school. I've written my syllabus for my class. I've signed up for and purchased half my books for the classes I'm going to take. I've got one last barbecue planned, but since it's on the day before classes start, I'm going to have to behave myself.

Darn it. While I had a great summer, that realization makes me a little sad. I still have so many things to do that I used to do every summer, but somehow I didn't have time for this summer. I didn't camp once. My gardening was maintanence. I had no vegetable garden. I might not even get a winter garden in unless I re-skin my hoophouse.

Still, I have one more yard project, and one more home improvement project I want to get accomplished before the fall equinox. You're probably don't want to hear about how I'm going to put in a bit of decomposed granite in the front, to replace some grass I cut out, but you might be interested in my solar project.

The idea is to lease a solar vehicle. I'm not going to go into details, but suffice it say, I want to figure out how to power it without paying NV Energy.

That means I'm going to have to put PV modules on my house. Peculiarly (but not really), NV Energy dictates how many modules you can put on your house. I think it's roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity a person used in the previous 12 months. I'm fine with that (well, not exactly), it just means I'm going to have to do it in two phases.

I'm looking into financing, and so far, I've found that Nevada State Bank, Umpqua Bank and Admiral's Bank have specialized lower interest loans for “green” projects. I expect it's going to take months to figure all this out, and I expect I'll be writing more about it, but if anyone has any particular expertise or advice, feel free to drop me a line.