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" We&amp;#039;re finally into a spell of fine weather. If there&amp;#039;s any place better than Vermont on a 75-degree, sunny summer day in July, after the black flies have retreated and before the haze of August sets in, well, I haven&amp;#039;t been there. Of course, this summer we&amp;#039;ve had about, oh, four days like that. But I&amp;#039;ll take what I can get.  Our Evergreen Solar/Wattsun/Outback/Southwest Windpower is keeping us lousy with power. On days like this, we&amp;#039;re producing 8 \u2013 10 kilowatt hours a day; that&amp;#039;s about four times what we use. Honestly, I thought there would be a real temptation to use more, but that hasn&amp;#039;t happened, mostly because our lifestyle was pretty comfy to begin with. And it has become so engrained in our psyche to conserve that we&amp;#039;re having a hard time burning more kilowatt hours. The other day I caught myself going through the house before bed, shutting down anything that might draw a phantom load during the night. In times of lean sun with our old system, this was an absolute necessity; these days, it&amp;#039;s blind habit. But a good one, I think.  I haven&amp;#039;t reporting in a while on our Thermo-Dynamics hot water system. With all the rain, it&amp;#039;s been a less-than-ideal spring/summer for making hot water, but yesterday, I checked our propane tanks for the first time in about three months. They were down only about 5%, which means we burned only about 20-gallons in that period. Whoa. That&amp;#039;s not very much. And there have been hot showers all around! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a723/3293606/>