About sunnySide ↑

Welcome to sunnySide ↑ Solar Lab & Orchards.  sunnySide ↑ is situated on a 0.37 acre corner lot in a small, quiet valley in the Timberland Knoll Acres development in Burnsville, MN.  The 1963 suburban homestead is a 2200 square foot, two-story home with a walk-out basement.  I purchased the property in 2010 & began the process of retro-fitting my 1963 home for the future.  In April 2018, I installed a 10.67kW roof-mounted solar array.  The idea began & was inspired by my first AirBnB in 2011 to a beautiful, off-grid, solar-powered cabin situated on a serene lake in greater Alaska that was built to promote sustainable life.  I could tell the owner of this cabin cared about Earth, so I needed to figure out how to do this to my own home.

In 2018 & 2019, I replaced a large portion of the systems & appliances that support the home.  Included in the list: Carrier Infinity HVAC system with heat pump, HTP hybrid water heater, Kinetico water softener & reverse osmosis drinking water system, & a 200 amp Square D electrical main panel upgrade with a 100 amp garage sub-panel for future workshop & electric car needs.

Our specializations & interests will be listed out in separate blogs in the primary menu to allow you to see who we are & what we represent.  I am planning to do a lot of blogging throughout my life, so I needed a clean slate to begin with to document my specializations & interests.  I realize there’s value & a certain importance in promoting & maintaining long-term knowledge.  Comments are always welcome & encouraged, so long as they are respectful.  We love feedback & are always looking for ways to improve our lives through open knowledge.

The Solar Production menu provides different methods of visualizing our energy production, consumption, outside temperature, & solar radiation data throughout the day, week, month, or year.  The links in this menu will re-direct you to data & graphs hosted by pvoutput.org or egaug.es & should be considered trusted by all solar energy (PV) enthusiasts.

Most residential solar array owners are not aware their production links, or they never look at them due to it being an obscure URL.  I am choosing to openly share our production & consumption data, so you can see what the impact of we are doing looks like in a single-family home in Minnesota.  I promote technology & sustainability, but I also want to be careful with our consumption.  Our hope is that by sharing our data, we will have inspired someone else to try solar energy for their family or home.

Enjoy & welcome.

-Jordan