My rooftop solar is actually fairly typical, it’s just that we’ve been very aggressively reducing electricity usage since the solar was installed. Home heating is the biggest user of electricity here, and so we’ve reduced winter air temperature in the house to about 54-60F (about 12-15.5C), while using the techniques in the book Heating People, not Spaces by Kris De Decker, author of Low-Tech Magazine, and other techniques as well. Just as an example, instead of heating the house overly hot all day and watching TV after dinner, we’ll keep the house cool, use an electric mattress pad on the pull-out couch, and snuggle while watching TV. This not only uses almost no electricity, but it’s also more fun.

We also haven’t used our clothes dryer a single time in 4 years now, using the clothesline instead, despite living in a cold place (USDA Zone 5). We look ahead on the 10-day forecast to anticipate best times and it works out fine. In a few days we’ll do 3 loads of laundry, 1 each 3 days in a row. The savings aren’t just the ~1kWh from each dryer load. Next time you do a load of laundry, go outside and put your hand by the dryer vent and feel all that indoor air being vented outside for up to an hour. Now imagine the same volume of cold winter air equalizing air pressure in the house by slipping through gaps in the doors. That’s a LOT of cold air that is then reheated (typically using fossil methane, or electricity largely created by burning fossil fuels). It’s the same story in summer: the dryer pulls in all that hot air that makes people use more AC or electric fans.

We’ve been doing extensive solar cooking for a few years now, typically cooking at least one thing about 6 days a week for 8 months of the year. Curry, bread, banana bread, corn bread, muffins, apple pie, sweet corn on the cob, veggies, pizza, pasta, leftovers, many many dishes. That keeps a ton of cooking heat out of the house while using no electricity, while also being the safest and most ethical cooking method (caveat: parabolic solar cookers are not safe, I’ve never used them and don’t recommend them. They’re pretty cool but should be treated with extreme caution, just as with a fresnel lens.)

These are just a couple changes we’ve made; there are dozens. Just to name one more, reducing our indoor shower/sink usage is worth mentioning, as it takes significant energy to heat water. Using a showerhead that uses 50% less water, and taking a 50% shorter shower on top, saves a ton of hot-water energy. Same for efficient sink aerators.

Some upcoming projects/plans:

• get a heat pump with mini splits
• work on passive solar heating, even though our house is poorly situated for it
• figure out how to safely pull enough snow off the solar panels after a snowstorm, possibly using a telescoping handle and squeegee
• improve shading for summer (we don’t use AC, but still…)
• get a heat pump based water heater

If you want to get started saving money and carbon, I’d suggest lowering your winter house temp by one degree. Once you’ve adjusted and kinda forgotten about the change, lower it again by one degree. Keep doing this over a period of time and do it slowly so you can stick with it, making it a change that lasts the rest of your life. Do the same in summer, increasing the temperature slowly from the previous normal. At first the change is kind of meaningless, it’s so small, but later you’ll start looking for ways to comfortably go further. You’ll find or invent ways to hold on to heat longer in winter, and get rid of it faster in summer.