Wendy Hawthorne wrote a wonderful piece on solar panels, Friday, 03 August 2007, and it began with the sentence, “Every time we use electricity, we contribute to our “carbon footprint” or greenhouse gas emissions.”  She went  on to inform us that every kilowatt-hour we use in our home is almost two pounds of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere from coal burning at the local power plant that supplies electricity to northern Denver. There are many northwest Denver families that are changing that their own equation and are reducing their carbon footprint by getting their electricity from the sun using solar photovoltaic panels.

One great solar example that she informed us about was in the Highland neighborhood of northwest Denver.  The home owners, Donna Vetrano-Pryor and William Pryor installed a 5 kilowatt photovoltaic solar system on the solar roof of their garage. Donna reported to Wendy that they installed the system “out of a sense of social responsibility and for general concern for the environment”. Their solar system has been running since October 2006 and it has cut their electricity bills by about seventy-five percent. She showed a second example on new town houses built in the Sunnyside neighborhood on W. 43rd Ave. between Alcott and Bryant in northwest Denver.  The best way to see the solar system was from the alley, the entire southern wall of the building is covered in solar photovoltaic panels and the new owner said the solar energy system played a large role in their decision to buy the home.