Well, OK, not at night. But the wait is over — my solar panels are hooked up and I am powering my house and this computer right now with electricity generated by the sun on my very own roof! And on all sunny — and even overcast days — any electricity that’s leftover gets sent back to the grid to help power the rest of LA, or at least a little corner of it. And yes, I’m pretty excited about it!

Here’s what my new electric meter looks like: It’s specially made for solar, I guess — and unfortunately they didn’t design it with blog photos in mind, because the only way to tell when we’re drawing from the grid or producing extra for the grid is this little tiny triangle. See it?

I thought not — let me point it out. Here’s what it looks like when we’re generating power: And here it shows that we’re taking from the grid: (Could they have made it any smaller? Doubt it. But I digress…)

The point is we’re really producing electricity with solar panels on the roof and I think it’s really cool, even if not very visual.

I’m posting this on Earth Day for obvious reasons, and not that I feel like the Greenest Mom around, but I did feel like pointing out a few things we’ve done around the house that at least attempt to do less harm to the Earth. When we moved in years ago, we took out all the grass and planted drought-tolerant plants instead. And quite frankly, we didn’t even do this to be Green; we did this because my husband didn’t want to mow any more lawns and I was too bored by watering. We tried a soaker hose irrigation system, but even that was annoying. (To me.) So we just never water our yard at all now. Only when starting a new plant, which is pretty rare, because all the plants we have thrive year-to-year through the summer and fall droughts and just soak up all the rain in winter and spring. Turns out, however, this is a very Green thing to do and people all over LA (and especially in Mar Vista) are doing it. This weekend’s Green Garden Showcase on April 25th boasts on nearly 80 homes in Mar Vista doing similar things — feel free to check it out.

This past fall we got one of the rain barrels the City was giving out as part of a pilot project, so now we have a little leftover water after each rain that we can give to the driest of the plants. A couple of years ago, we got a tankless water heater so as not to store 50 gallons of heated water all the time. By the way, check out their motto: I think there’s something naughty going on, but I’m no expert…

And now, the solar panels.

I’m feeling pretty green after all. Happy Earth Day!

Special thanks to DWP for connecting my panels to the grid and to SolarCity for installing them. And extra special thanks to John Ayers of GravityTen for adding the red arrows to my shots of those very small triangles you might not otherwise have seen. John’s very skilled and very nice to those of us who aren’t.