Condo Changes

Phase 1: The first order of business is to reduce consumption. We needed to replace all the incandescent lighting in the house. It was very helpful to use a Sense monitoring system to find where all the incandescent lightbulbs were located. We would just watch the consumption of the house as we turned on each lamp and if the amount was high, replace the bulb with an LED.

Phase 2: Replace the builder's model furnace and A/C with an air-to-air heat pump system. We chose a Dakin heat pump with a Dakin variable speed motor gas furnace backup. We would have installed an all-electric backup furnace but the cost of up-sizing the condo electrical service was prohibitive.

Phase 3: We installed a 7.3 kW solar system with 2 Tesla Powerwalls. This is a balancing act with not much to guide you. Knowing how much solar coupled with how much battery to optimize the system without breaking the bank is difficult. We spent as much on the batteries as the solar panels knowing from experience that being able to store solar panel output for after the sun goes down is very important when the utility is not paying well for any excess power produced. Our roof area along with the limits imposed by the fire code gave us real estate for a total of 22 panels on the roof.

We proposed the solar system before we purchased the condo to see if there would be any resistance to installing these panels on the condo roof. We proposed to accept all the liability that could be caused to the shared property by the installation and found our condo association to be quite willing to allow solar.