Hi,

My name is Bruce Joseph. I am the Organizer of the Solar Guild/Citizens for Solar Meetup, and I'm also currently the Chair of Citizens for Solar (CFS) and the Chair of Solar Guild (SG).

While I've been interested in solar power and living a greener lifestyle for quite a while, my first hands on experience with using solar power came about because of my interest in cooking.

About 10 years ago, I got curious about boiling water using only the sun. I Googled "boil water sun" and a whole bunch of links came up. I investigated several of them, and decided that I could actually build a solar cooker that would boil water. My few attempts were successful, but not very practical. Over time, I did more research and improved my designs, until I came up with a Fresnel lens cooker that would boil water and could also cook food. From that time on, I have built and purchased several solar cookers, and now have 6 of them. While I don't use the cookers every day, I do use them at home fairly often, and I enjoy doing solar cooking presentations and demonstrations whenever I can.

In the course of my solar cooker research, I discovered Tucson's Annual Solar Potluck, and attended my first one in 2007. While there, I met many interesting and knowledgeable people who shared my passion for solar cooking. For several years I volunteered with Citizens for Solar to assist with the Solar Potluck, and in 2011 I was appointed their Chair.

Over the last decade or so, I've made an effort to reduce my carbon footprint, and live a bit greener. When I bought my current home in 2002, I immediately replaced the old air conditioner with the most efficient one I could find. (I wanted to go with an ultra-high efficiency geothermal unit, but they do not work well in Tucson's dry dessert soil.)

I had always wanted to power my home with solar electricity and about two years ago, I decided that the time was right. I contacted local PV installers, and decided to have GeoInnovation do the job. They installed a grid tied 8.3 KW PV system on my home, and I couldn't be happier with it. The system is working very well, and for 9-10 months a year my electric bill is about $14 - which covers grid tie charges and taxes.. I get slightly higher bills for two or three months, but those are still much lower than my pre-PV electric bills.

Other things I've done:

I built a small grey water system that channels the drainage from my washing machine to several plants along the west side of my home.

I've replaced most of high use incandescent light bulbs and CFLs in my home with LED bulbs. Costco has a good selection of reasonably priced LED bulbs, and I prefer their light over comparable CFLs.

I use an induction burner instead of my gas stovetop whenever possible. The induction burner is far more efficient than a conventional gas or electric burner, and doesn't heat up the house the way they do.

The future:

I hope to install a solar water heater on my house within the next year or two. (This may become a Meetup event.) I also plan to start composting, and would eventually like to harvest rain water.

This year, Volkswagen introduced an all-electric version of their Golf. It should be available in the Tucson market next year, and I hope to replace my 2001 VW Jetta wagon with it, or some other all-electric vehicle by 2016.

Well, that's my "green living " story. Please contact me with any questions or comments you may have.

Thanks,

Bruce