Chris & Janet Morgan originally began thinking about putting a solar energy system on their home because of Chris's interest in tropical plants. He has a beautiful collection of tropical plants in a green house on the south side of his home. However, keeping a green house heated at 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Oregon using fossil fueled energy did not sit well with Chris's commitment to reducing his family's impact on climate change. Chris and Janet began researching a solution and soon came up with a plan to eliminate their natural gas connection, reduce their energy use through energy efficiency, and add a highly efficient electric ground source heat pump to heat their home. The Morgan's then added a 30.6 kilo Watt solar electric system which has produced more energy than they use on an annual basis for the last several years. Chris is looking forward to using the extra electricity he is producing with his new all electric car.

The Morgan's system is composed of four separate solar arrays. Two roof mounted systems, one ground mounted system, and a large trellis in their front yard with a building integrated solar roofing system that we design and build locally. Building integrated roofing systems create a weather tight roof built of individual solar panels. There were many system design challenges to find enough non shaded area for a 30.6 kilo Watt array on a residential building and have the home still maintain its charm. The trellis array helped immensely with this; at 14.4 kilo Watts, it is almost half of the systems size.