All posts by Mickey M.

Solar Vs Oil; Wall Street Short Sellers, Dangerous to US Economy

For most of 2011, the stocks of solar power companies of all kinds, from providers of raw polysilicon to developers of finished utility-scale plants, have been taking a beating on world and U.S. stock markets, partly because solar has been the industry most singled out for attack by bearish short sellers.

In an article for MSNBC, Garvin Jabusch writes ” I cannot describe this phenomenon any better than did Roberto Pedone in a recent column for thestreet.com”: Besides the banking sector post-2008 financial crisis, I can’t think of a group that’s as hated and despised as solar stocks. … For whatever reason, this entire complex of solar energy has become a favorite target of short-sellers. There are so many names in the solar sector that are heavily shorted that it’s hard to find a name the bears aren’t leaning all over. Continue reading Solar Vs Oil; Wall Street Short Sellers, Dangerous to US Economy

Home Solar Installers, Chronicle of My DIY Journey Into Renewable Energy

For many reasons, decided that installing my home solar panels was the best approach the least of which is the significant labor and markup cost savings over contracting with professional home solar installers. After some investigation and research, I took a big gulp, then moved forward.

Sizing my own residential solar system was relatively easy for two reasons. The first is that our utility bills give the usage for each month for the past year. This eliminates the need to make up a whole system load chart. We could decide the size of the solar array we needed simply from these utility bill numbers. The annual total showed that we are using an average of 5.87 KWH per day, which I rounded up to 6 kWh per day. Continue reading Home Solar Installers, Chronicle of My DIY Journey Into Renewable Energy