If you’ve spent much time on our website, you’ll notice that the products we source are a select few. Not because there aren’t dozens of potential choices; there are. Not because we don’t have the ability to provide a larger selection; we do. And not because the products are vastly different in their operation; they aren’t.
At ACK Smart Energy, we serve a small, local community. The likelihood of spending the day at an install site and then running into that person later that evening at Stop n’ Shop is high. In being from such a small community, we’re all aware that our personal choices and actions effect others. It’s why we do what we do. Each of our carbon footprints is going to drastically impact other inhabitants of this island.
So when we set out to become Nantucket’s first and only solar firm, we knew we had to keep all of this in mind. More specifically, we knew that if we were going to best serve our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and community at large, we had to provide the best quality products.
We spent hours researching, studying, and comparing different models of different technologies so that you wouldn’t have to, and so that you knew when you chose ACK Smart Energy to bring your household to energy independence, you had the best of solar energy technological advancements in your possession.
There’s only one small problem. The very concept of solar panels is that the work is all at the beginning, and really only on our end. Once your array is installed, whether on a roof or ground-mount, your daily operations are identical to what they were before. Of course every now and then you’ll receive a very small, very exciting energy bill in the mail, but with such a big and impactful investment comes a certain desire for more knowledge and participation.
Enter Sense, an app that monitors your home’s electric use and live reports what’s happening under your solar paneled roof. It can read the current one million times each second in order to process the data right in the palm of your hand.
No, this isn’t sponsored. We wish. Call us solar nerds, but it really an incredible way to understand what’s going on with your newly converted energy system.
Martin Charns, a recent ACK Smart Energy client, had visited Nantucket frequently for almost 30 years before he made the decision to purchase a home. He found himself on island on and off throughout the year, primarily in the summer, and intrigued by the notion of solar energy.
“So we bought the house two years ago and we wanted to put in mini split heat pumps. The house was non-air conditioned and it has a propane-fired heat,” Charns said. “So the electricity for AC I thought was going to be expensive and the propane heat was also expensive. So I figured I’d put in a new heating and cooling system and power it with electricity that was solar.”
After debating between a few solar firms, Martin consulted a friend who he calls the “queen of solar.” She compared the product quality and without hesitation encourage Charns to go with ACK Smart Energy.
“Two reasons I went with ACK Smart: they seemed more on top of what they were doing, and the equipment seemed to be of higher quality. [The guys] were terrific. Tobias even met me once on Main Street to sign some papers. They went out of their way to make it easy. There’s nothing they can do about the application process on Nantucket, it is what it is, but they try to simplify it, and talking through the alternatives was very helpful.”
Now that his solar installation is complete, Martin finds himself using the Sense app to keep tabs on the energy production in his home. Even though he hadn’t even seen an energy bill yet, he knew from the Sense app that he was generating more power through solar energy than his home was currently using.
“You’re generating 6500 watts of power and your’e using 1,000. That’s, you know, that’s good,” he said. “The Sense app has the capability of sensing how much [energy] different devices in the house are using. So every time the fridge door opens, it knows that because it actually senses the light.”
So when you’re thinking of investing in solar, you can rest assured that ACK Smart Energy has selected a product line that you never have to think twice about. Unless of course you want to. As we mentioned before, yeah, solar nerds here. We more than get that. Let’s get connected together, and chase the sun with Sense app in hand.
