On running the meter backwards

Shan and I have a long list of things we would like to do to the house. On the list of things that I'd like to do is to actually have some small set of solar panels to at least partly power the house. Believe me -- I know that this is not the sunniest place in the US. But I figure that even if 30 or 40% of the days are sunny, that's still enough to generate more than the 0% of our own energy we do now.

The thing is, last time I googled solar panels, I couldn't find anything even remotely feasible. I know that there is a house in the Pleasant Hills neighborhood in Pleasant Gap (we used to live in Steeplechase, the neighborhood next door) and that the Friends School on Whitehall both have solar panels, so that there are others out there who have actually done this, but it's not the kind of thing that you can turn up information about easily.

So the other day, I saw this headline, and thought maybe there will be info there. Well, if you read the article, the project cost $0.5M, and the guy himself put $100k of his money into it.

Clearly, this isn't something that will be easily replicated.

I guess I'll just have to keep sitting around waiting for a utility company to call me up and offer to use my house as their testing ground.