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On a sunny, early summer morning, Matthew Milner waited in his driveway in the Berkeley hills. It was his solar install day, and he was excited. He greeted the installers and walked them around to the back of his house. But instead of pointing to his roof, he pointed to his wooden backyard fence. That is where these solar panels would go, tilted, with their bottom edge on the ground, and top leaning against the fence’s wooden planks.
The installation wrapped up in two hours, demanded minimal paperwork, and damaged Milner’s wallet only marginally, as far as solar installations go. By noon, he plugged in an electrical cord that snaked from the panels into an outlet on the outside of his house. Immediately, solar power coursed toward his electrical panel and then flowed back through his home.
With that, he was offsetting his home’s energy use…