13 Oxford locations featured in National Solar Tour

Thirteen Oxford locations will appear on the National Solar Tour, hosted by the American Solar Energy Society, on Oct. 4-6 for either open houses or driving tours.

The tours, organized by Peggy Branstrator, an Oxford Environmental Commission representative of the Climate Action Steering Committee, will allow anyone interested in installing solar equipment to view it in action by driving by the locations or speaking with property owners who have already installed solar.

Branstrator said the idea to bring the tour to Oxford came after she attended one around 30 years ago when she was a senior lecturer at the Richmond campus of Indiana University East. The tour had a location at the Miami University Ecology Research Center, where solar panels had just been installed.

The next year, she brought students with her to see the center, but eventually the tour seemed to skip over Oxford.

When she moved to Oxford around 10 years ago, she became involved with an environmental club at the Oxford Seniors center and a member of the Environmental Commission, which was trying to spread awareness of the city’s commitment to zero carbon emissions by 2045.

At first, she said the city brought in people with electric cars, solar panels and heat pumps among other solar equipment, as well as vendors, who set up fairs for locals to attend and learn more about solar. But last year, she brought back the tour.

“I think a lot of people in Oxford maybe aren’t quite ready to get a real ad put to them by a vendor,” she said. “So I thought maybe they would be interested in talking to people who had already done solar and find out, get their questions answered, find out what the process is like.”

Brastrator said of installing solar, “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. … So to counteract that, I thought, ‘Why don’t you talk to somebody who’s actually done it?’”

This year, she said there are more Oxford sites on the map, with nine in-person tours for attendees to meet and talk to homeowners who have already installed solar equipment. There are also four additional sites where drivers can see panels from the road if they cannot attend the open houses. Five of the in-person locations may also be seen from the road.

Some of the sites include the homes of City Council members David Prytherch and Chantel Raghu, as well as the Hopedale Unitarian Universalist Church. The tour is sponsored locally by the Oxford Seniors Ecology Club.

While all of the sites on the tour have solar panels, some of them have heat pumps or other equipment homeowners may discuss during the in-person tour. Branstrator will be showing off her solar panels, in addition to her heat pump and a Solar Cooker, a black pot on a reflective shield that slow-cooks food in the sun.

Branstrator said she predicts solar panels will “take off” in the coming years like cell phones did previously, as panels don’t necessarily require a connection to the grid.

“There’s a lot of good ideas out there to make the world a better place,” Branstrator said. “We’ve just gotta start doing some of them.”

Prytherch said he installed his panels around 2023. Although the panels brought his monthly electricity bill down to $0, he said, “The most significant benefit is more just peace of mind of knowing you’re doing what you can for the climate crisis.”

Prytherch estimated his panels, which he received a tax credit for, cost him around $14,000, and it will take roughly 12 years to break even if he continues to not receive an electricity bill. 

In the evening or during the winter, he said property owners can either store up their energy in a battery that they continue to draw on, or they can plug into the grid and keep an electricity meter that will run backwards during the day. When it’s cold or the sun goes down, the property owner can then pull that unused energy back from the grid.

“I, like many or most in Oxford, believe in sustainability and are worried about climate change. And so, many of us are working to make our homes carbon neutral, and solar is a really big part of that,” he said. “When I see my solar panels, it gives me a good feeling and hope that I’m making a positive difference.”

Those interested in participating in the tour can see all the locations, as well as info about equipment at each site by visiting nationalsolartour.org, navigating to the map and clicking each of the pins in the Oxford area. A schedule of the locations is also available in the print copy of the Oxford Free Press.