This summer, we sat down to figure out the cost.  It cost a lot.  Then my husband Gary looked at me and said,  “If we don’t do this, who will?”

So we put a solar roof on our house.  It’s invisible from the street.  You have to climb up to our roof, which I did when the solar guys were still here and their ladder was propped up against the side of our house.

There are 28 solar electric panels. They look like those circuit boards from inside a computer, made of black glass.  And huge.  Together they’re nearly 45 feet long and 15 feet wide.

Every morning, Gary likes to watch the electric meter on the side of our house run backwards.  He looks so happy.  Instead of using up electricity, our house makes electricity!  The electric company pays us for the electricity we produce.  So I guess we’re sun farmers.  Our crop is energy.

And yes, it was expensive, but it lowered our electric bill big-time.  Our monthly bill, which is normally $200 a month, is now 95 cents.

There are two hurdles to putting up a solar roof.

1) You have to own the building.

2) It’s expensive.  But the more people who buy solar roofs, the more the price will go down.

Tell your family about solar roofs.  Tell your apartment owner.  Tell anyone you know who owns a building.  When I was young, adults needed us to bug them to quit smoking.  Your job is bigger.  Our world needs you to be a solar cheer leader. Rah!  Rah!  Rah!

On your mark, get set, go solar!

April Halprin Wayland is the author of many books including It’s Not My Turn to Look for Grandma!, Girl Coming in for a Landing—the award-winning novel-in-poems, and the picture book,  New Year at the Pier—a Rosh Hashanah Story.  When she is not printing manuscripts on the other side of business papers, she’s watching her husband watch their meter spin backwards.

From

Recycle This Book: 100 Children’s Book Authors Show Kids How To Save The World edited by Dan Gutman (Delacorte, 2009)