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It’s now almost the end of May, and the solar panel installation is almost done.

Back in January, I discussed our investigation into home solar power. We received a total of three bids, but the final decision was surprisingly easy.

The bidding process itself was illustrative of the ongoing evolution of solar power. The first bid was presented by a classical sales guy, who was in his sixties, and talked endlessly about keeping the customer happy. I don’t mean that as a negative; he was pretty knowledgeable about the tech, but when we’d ask deeper questions, he’d have to defer his response. The document arrived in a classical sales binder, with all the salient information.

The second company was much more high tech. Two guys arrived in a van brightly decorated with the company’s logo and color scheme. The main sales guy had a light meter attached to a Pocket PC, and did all his solar readings using actual measurements from our roof. They supplied us with a PDF file of the preliminary bid, on the spot, using a laptop and the readings collected with the Pocket PC. They were also potentially attractive, because the company had cut a deal with the city of Sunnyvale, offering additional discounts to residents.

The third company was again represented by a single person, though a much younger guy. He was very up front about the process from the beginning, and laid out all the options and costs, including full power conversion, best rate of return and best “green” option, which lay somewhere between the other two options.

The neat thing about all the companies bidding, completely separate from the mechanics of the sales process, was the enthusiasm for solar energy. So which did we choose? Continued…