At first glance, solar may not seem to make financial sense in Ohio since Ohio’s electric rates are relatively low and the upfront costs of solar appear high.  However, installing solar panels makes financial sense in Ohio for three simple reasons:           1. Electricity costs continue to rise,     […]

A career change is often a frightening thing to contemplate, maybe especially so when you’re in your 50s. But for Jeff Miller of Columbus, Ohio, age 54 was the perfect time to hop into solar. In his words, he had finally found his people. Jeff Miller Miller’s winding path to solar started in the ’80s […]

The most important thing you can do before going solar is to make your house or office building as energy efficient as possible.  Energy efficiency may not be as flashy as solar, however it makes sense to improve energy efficiency, because the payback for energy efficiency improvements is much faster than the payback for solar, […]

If you are going to drive an electric vehicle (EV), you’re going to have to learn to speak the language of electricity. Some people think that’s asking too much—that even though you understand units like inches and feet, meters and kilometers, cups and gallons, milliliters and liters, kilobytes and megabytes and gigabytes, you’ll never learn […]

At Ecohouse Solar we regularly get calls from people who want our advice about where to buy solar equipment so they can install it themselves. We respond by letting them know that trying to install a solar electric system by yourself is a bad idea. Here are the reasons why: SAFETY Working on roofs is […]

Increase home value 3-4% by installing a solar panel system Multiple studies have shown that homes with solar panel systems are valued and sold at prices above similar homes in their area. Early studies focused on established solar markets such as California found that home values increase by four percent or more when homes are […]

Ecohouse Solar recently installed a small solar electric system for a customer near Lancaster, Ohio. This customer had just finished building a “Passive” house and we added a solar array. The home is powered almost completely by clean solar energy. A Passive house is designed to be super energy efficient. It incorporates design concepts that […]

One of the most common barriers homeowners face when deciding to go solar is the upfront investment it takes. The strength of the investment is easy for installers like Ecohouse to quantify, but still it takes money to complete. In fact, that is one of solar’s great advantages: that by owning a small power plant, […]

  In our daily work at Ecohouse, we get the chance to roam around on roofs, providing us a unique opportunity to breathe fresh air, and to get a sense of scale of the neighborhoods where we work.   It also provides a sense of scale of what I like to call the “solar window,” […]

Columbus may not be what anyone thinks of as a solar energy hotbed – especially in the midst of another gray and cold central Ohio winter – but local experts say that interest in solar panels is growing across both the residential and commercial sectors.   Read more