Above is what our system looks like from my phone app. I have the battery set to self-consumption so we can use anything over 50% charge to run our house rather than send it back to EWEB. My reasoning is this: we pay $0.095 per KWh to have electricity delivered and when we have a surplus and send it back to EWEB, they only credit us $0.036. I’m going to monitor and adjust this to get the best value.
But that isn’t today’s story. Today is about Twende Solar.
Twende is Swahili for “let’s go”. It was Brandon Little and John Grieser, from Elemental Energy and “bridges the gap between renewable energy experts and economically marginalized communities with a need for a reliable, affordable source of clean energy to power their work.”
We donated our old inverter that I mentioned earlier in this series. When Elemental Energy removes and updates equipment such as what we did, if the homeowner so chooses, we can donate that old equipment to help add solar to marginalized communities in developing countries and even here in the US. Here is a great example of a local project at the Portland Rescue Mission.
This vision makes our choice of Elemental Energy even more satisfying.