About Me

Hey all. My name is Mike Richter. I live just outside of Portland Maine, one of the most beautiful places in the world. I enjoy sailing and fishing in the summer months and skiing in the winter. I’ve been a landscaping foreman for the last 27 years. I have three children: Sophie, 19, just left for Brown University; Michael, 16, Getting through high school; and Rachael, my angel, 9. I decided to write this blog because I’d love to see more people interested in sustainable energy. I think there are many of you out there in my position, who want to do something, but aren’t really sure what to do, or how to do it. Hopefully you’ll be able to use some of what I’ve learned the hard way.

I became interested in Green Technology and Green Energy when started to think about how our energy uses will affect the world of our children. Now I’m not the guy who thinks he’s going to save the world by buying a Prius and bragging about it, but I do think that there is a lot of little things we can do to make a difference. I’ve found that it doesn’t take a huge amount of time or money to invest in some of these new technologies. So my recent passion has been to identify and try to complete some of these easy projects. I call them low hanging fruits.

I first started thinking about installing solar panels in my home a few years ago, back then I really didn’t know anything about electricity or solar energy. I started looking at our local Home Improvement Fair, and found a couple vendors with good products so I got estimates. The best estimate I got priced the solar panals at $950 each, which would have been $18,769 all included. Unfortunately this was outside of my budget so I had to look at other options. While I don’t want to make this only about solar panels, I’m happy to report that I have six functional photovoltaic cells on my roof now, and they’ve cut my electric by about $110 dollars per month.

I have several other hobbies outside of home improvement. I like to consider myself a part time worker and a full time dad. I’ve coach Rachael’s soccer team (The Destroyers) for the past 2 years, which has been quite an experience. If you’ve never coached before, you should. I also like to ski and snowshoe (weather permitting). In the summer (rain permitting) I like to hike.

So that’s me in a nutshell. I hope you find my blog interesting, helpful, entertaining, or anything else.