After Going Solar, I Felt the Bliss of Sudden Abundance

Most people who put solar on their roofs realized they had more juice than they thought. It went from being weird to being guilty.

Consider the case of a child. A digital artist who teaches at the University of Denver uses a lot of power to make art. It really hurts the graphics card. He says his computer is going crazy. He would be unnerved by the energy demands if he relied solely on greenhouse-gas producing sources. His entire outlay is covered by his household's solar array.

He says we are more relaxed and comfortable.

I asked my followers if having solar panels had changed their energy use. It gave them a similar thrill of abundance, and many joked about the air-conditioning.

Sandy Glatt, a Denver resident, says "We have these 90-degree days, now and I walk in and the house is cool and I smile."

Many people told me that they were shifting their energy usage to daytime hours so that they could use all those photons themselves instead of handing them off to the grid, where we often get ripped off by our utilities, who buy our electricity at a cheap rate and sell it back to use. They are installing electric water-heaters to generate a full day's worth of hot water while the sun is shining, and charging all their major appliances during the day.

After a household gets solar panels, their energy use goes up, according to a solar-installation project manager.

It might seem odd to discuss the emotional impact of renewable energy.

Politics is driven by emotions. This is the reason why some renewable advocates are trying to tout that a world powered entirely by renewable energy would have lots of fast, sporty cars and comfortable homes.

The agenda is the abundance one. He argues that a massive build-out of solar, wind, and storage mechanisms would make renewables reliable while also being much cheaper than what we now pay for fossil-fuel produced electricity.

He has seen it in his homeland of Australia, where 30 percent of houses have solar, and the cost is less than what I paid. He says that the price barriers in the US are all about regulations. If people wanted it, it would change quickly.

It's time we should. Take it from me, it is enjoyable.