Garner Residence

Customer Comment:

"They did a nice job and cleaned up after themselves. Earlier in the project, they had to do an inspection in the attic and made multiple trips. Each time a certain amount of nasty fiberglass insulation fell out, they brought their own vacuum and cleaned it all up. It looked as good as it did before when they were finished."

The Challenge:

Don and Mary Garner split their time equally between Utah and Montana. With two homes, they were concerned about keeping their carbon footprint as small as possible. After attending a University of Utah seminar about solar energy, they decided to approach Creative Energies about installing a solar PV system to offset much of their Salt Lake City home's energy use.

The Creative Energies Solution:

We installed a 6.48 kW grid-tied rooftop solar PV system on the Garners' home. The system was designed to offset 90% of their existing annual power usage in order to take full advantage of net metering through Rocky Mountain Power. The system is expected to pay for itself within 9.5 years.

While their south-southwest facing roof was almost ideal for solar, the Garners' roof required some structural reinforcement in a difficult-to-access area of the roof. Creative Energies' installers were able to address the issue in a safe and timely manner before installing the system's 24 panels.

Because the home is located on a hillside, it is possible to glimpse the panels from the street. The Garners chose the black version of panels in order to better blend with the appearance of their roof. Don reports, "the installation is great visually, pretty close to zero impact- there is no exposed wiring (and) the all-black panels make it look sleek and high-tech."

Don especially enjoys being able to track his system's power generation online in real-time, even when he and Mary are in Montana. "It's fun to be able to check it. There is some low background power consumption that happens even when you're not there. It's very nice to know that we're producing more power than we're using (at those times)."

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