You”ve got to be fired up to allow a Saturday-full of strangers to traipse through your yard and inspect your home.
That would describe Pat and Stuart MacRobbie, who traded their Jamestown Beach waterfront house for a solar-powered place at 942 East Oak St., in Sequim.
The MacRobbies moved two years ago into a 1,700-square-foot home, where a solar panel array does as the Beatles song says: It follows the sun. Even when it’s behind the clouds.
Solar power is plentiful in the Pacific Northwest, despite misconceptions to the contrary, said Pat MacRobbie.
The MacRobbie place was among 22 North Olympic Peninsula stops on the 11th annual National Solar Home Tour organized by Solar Washington, the Washington state chapter of the American Solar Energy Society.
Businesses such as Port Townsend’s Annapurna Center for Self-Healing, homes and public buildings such as Sequim High School and the Pacific Ecological Institute Solar Kiosk in Quilcene showed the variety of solar systems operating across Clallam and Jefferson counties.
Sequim, with its vaunted sunshine, is a likely spot for a solar-powered house. But the MacRobbies’_ system works also when the sky is overcast, Pat MacRobbie said.
“We enjoy having company and showing it off,” she added.
Stuart MacRobbie, a retired psychiatrist, and Pat MacRobbie, a retired middle-school teacher, are often seen bicycling around Sequim.
When they must drive, they hop in their Prius, a gas- and electric-powered Toyota.
Even the leaf blower they use every autumn runs on solar-generated electricity, soaked up from the often-touted “blue hole” over Sequim.
Port Townsend
In Port Townsend, Jonathan Clemens gave all who entered the yard outside his 1,000-square-foot home at 907 19th St., his workday spiel about energy efficiency and solar power.
Clemens owns Port Townsend-based Olympic Energy Systems. He describes himself as a renewable energy consultant and system developer.
A portion of the electricity used in the home he shares with his wife Diane is generated by two large solar panels fixed outside his house.
His bicycle uses a solar battery unit.
He said when thinking in terms of renewable energy, one must look at the bigger picture.
For instance, it would take three years for one of the solar panels on his house to soak up enough solar rays to create the amount of energy needed to manufacture the panel.
“None of this will work unless we have a crash course in energy efficiency,” Clemens said.
“The ‘new world order’ is, you’ll be conscious when you use energy and know exactly how much is solar.”
He said that right now a solar-energy system would cost about $20,000, or from $8 to $10 per watt.
“In the next three to five years, these systems will come down in price,” Clemens told a family considering building a solar-powered house.
