From Janet Cavanaugh
The interview with Jesse Ausubel contains some inaccuracies about solar panels (28 January, p 44). They don’t need to be cleaned “every other weekend”, and they don’t take up too much land. Our panels live on our roof. I seem to remember cleaning them about a year ago while I was also cleaning gutters and the hot water panels. The batteries in our stand-alone system require a lot more maintenance, but this is not a huge sacrifice given we don’t pay power bills or need to maintain a power line easement through our forest.
Whiporie, New South Wales, Australia
