That one neighbor who laughed at my solar panel idea still bugs me

Tbh I was telling my neighbor Dave about wanting to put solar panels on my garage roof last spring and he just snorted and said they don't work here in Portland because it's too cloudy. But I checked the city data and we get like 150 sunny days a year which is more than I thought. Has anyone else had someone shut down your climate action idea with bad math?

3 comments

3 Comments

josepha3220d ago

Well, I guess I'm the last person who should be giving advice about neighbors and bad math, since I once confidently told a friend that solar panels would melt our roof in the summer heat. I was dead wrong, of course, and he still brings it up every time I visit. But honestly, I looked into it after that and found out Portland gets more than enough light for solar, especially with the newer panels that work in cloudy weather. So Dave's comment sounds like the kind of thing people say when they haven't updated their information since the 1980s. You were right to check the actual data, and it's frustrating when someone shuts down a good idea with a guess instead of facts.

robinf5121d ago

Dave's math was way off, Portland gets plenty of sun for solar.

fiona98521d ago

Plenty of sun for solar" - yeah that's what I used to think too. I live in Seattle so I get the whole cloudy reputation thing, but I put panels on my roof three years ago and they work great even in winter. The key is not just counting sunny days, but total light hours and how much the panels can pick up through clouds. My system covers about 80% of my electric use year round, and that's with a south facing roof that doesn't get direct sun half the day. People always assume solar needs Arizona desert conditions, but modern panels are way better in low light than people realize. If Dave crunched the numbers wrong, he should check the actual solar maps for Portland instead of guessing.