Here at Uprise, we’re all about our customers. Our client relationships are very important to us, and we love hearing your solar stories. Today, we’re thrilled to launch a new blog post series, Humans of Uprise, to share those stories with our solar community! Meet Nina Hamedani and Erkin Ozberk — and Millie! — who went solar with Uprise in December 2022.
Is Your Home 100 Years Old? We Can Install Solar On It
Washington, DC is full of history — and that includes the city’s homes. Any construction company working in the area needs to be aware of the finicky needs of older architecture. Hamedani and Ozberk live in a rowhouse built in 1927, and they’ve had contractors in and out over the years to make changes to their home. They invested in a new roof right after moving in, and were very interested in going solar but also, as Ozberk puts it, very sensitive about their roof. Uprise worked with them to install a 7.2 kilowatt solar system tailored to their concerns — making their almost 100-year-old home more environmentally friendly.
Hamedani and Ozberk have lived in DC for around 15 years. She’s from upstate New York, he’s from Canada, and they met at university in Montreal. Like many DC transplants, they moved here for work, and they’ve made a home in the District.
“We’ve been enjoying living down here in the city and we have a lot of friends and really like DC,” says Ozberk. “I work for DC government, Nina works for the University of Maryland, and we’ve been in this house for ten years now.”
Their home, a brick rowhouse in Brightwood Park, is bright, cozy, and modern inside. The couple aim to balance updating the home with maintaining its charm.
“We’ve still got the original plaster walls and actually the original hardwood. We’ve been trying to save as much of it as we can,” says Hamedani. “But yeah, it’s an adventure. We always have a list of projects we want to do. But the house tells us what actually needs to be done.”
DC Highlight: A Very Walkable City, Perfect For Blue Heeler Millie
One aspect of the city the couple loves is how uniquely walkable DC is, which is also great for their blue heeler, Millie! Ozberk, a city planner, notes multiple differences between DC and other cities in the United States, saying, “A lot of American downtowns have these big, fast-moving streets with lots of traffic. And there are a lot of people out in DC, which is also different from other American cities where people drive more. The buildings are shorter because Congress requires them to be, so we don’t have big tall buildings here, which is different. People say it feels more like a European city where the buildings are more like 10 stories. And then there’s just a lot of trees in DC. Especially on our streets. Sometimes they create problems when they bring down power lines. But that’s why it’s great everybody has solar on their roof.”
And now, Hamedani and Ozberk have added their roof to the growing list of DC houses with solar. Hamedani says, “[Solar] was actually something we were interested in for a while but all the companies were so different and we weren’t quite sure how to compare them or engage with them. So when Chris started the company, we were like, Ooo!”
The couple met Uprise founder Chris Sewell years ago living in the same apartment complex right after Sewell moved to the city. When they heard he was starting a solar company, they were thrilled.
“He’s so knowledgeable about everything. He’s a wonderful person. And so we reached out and started to get the quote and documents they prepared. They were super informative and had cool graphics, which we always appreciate to digest the data,” says Hamedani. “With Uprise there wasn’t really pressure. It was like, ‘Okay, here’s all the info. Let me know what you think.’ That is a comfortable relationship to have with a company that’s coming in and working on your home. And so we were like, all right, let’s do it. There was nothing that was a barrier at that point.”
Not even their roof. “Chris and the crew conceived of a way of building a frame that goes between the party walls, bracing against the existing brick structure and then building the solar on top of it,” says Hamedani. “So not one tiny hole or any nail or screw came through that membrane that we have on the roof. We were super happy.”
Solar: One Piece Of The Sustainability Puzzle
Solar is part of the couple’s larger plans to reduce their energy use and get rid of gas appliances, and according to Hamedani, “fits with our composting, reusing lifestyle.” They feel more self-sufficient generating their own clean power; plus, they’ve seen a big difference in their Pepco bills. Ozberk says their panels typically produce more power than they use. They essentially just pay Pepco service fees, “so it’s like $18.54 or whatever every month.”
To date, their solar array has generated nearly nine megawatt-hours. “We get this cool monthly report,” says Hamedani. “This is how we get sad on rainy days because we see the generation go down. And on sunny days, we’re like, we’re generating so much power! Now we have a different outlook on the weather.”
Solar Monitoring In Action
The couple has already benefited from Uprise’s commitment to monitor all of our solar systems. When they had a microinverter outage, Uprise caught the issue.
Ozberk says, “We didn’t have to troubleshoot anything ourselves. We found out about it from them, and how they were gonna deal with it, and it got dealt with, and we were like, great, thank you. Having that peace of mind that it’s being maintained and managed professionally for us is really great.”
Overall, the couple found their solar journey to be easy and minimally invasive. They appreciated all the communication from Uprise throughout the process, and liked going solar with a company they could trust to do a good job and be respectful of their home.
“That’s the thing with some of the other companies: will they care? Do we have to go up on the roof and check everything every day? Those are some of the concerns that prevented us before,” says Hamedani. “But the installation was super smooth.”
Do you have a century-old home and want solar on your roof? Uprise has experience with historical homes in the District and we would be happy to talk with you about your project. Call us at (202) 280-2285 or reach out online.
We’ll be sharing more solar stories in the upcoming weeks, and check out our brand new Humans of Uprise page in the meantime to meet more of your neighbors who have gone solar!