We have a new Humans of Uprise story for you today! Meet Peter Peart, who’s lived in Washington DC since 1977 and went solar with Uprise in July. Peter shared stories not only of his recent 21-panel solar installation, but of his career as an information technologist before that was a thing, and his adventures scuba diving all over the world — including between two tectonic plates in Iceland.
A Career At The Dawn Of The Information Age
Peter was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Jamaica, moved back to Brooklyn, and then attended college at Howard University, where he majored in zoology and minored in chemistry. He’d wanted to be a doctor as a kid, but he didn’t go to med school and now he’s glad he didn’t. Instead, Peter says, “I made up a career. I was at the very beginning of the information age.”
Peter was at the forefront of online searching, back before Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, or Google. He worked for the Gillette Company in one of their research facilities, tracking down information and scientific papers. After that, he became an index editor for BNA. Back then, there was a small group of searchers, and they all knew each other and saw each other at the same conferences. Peter says, “We were the ones responsible for what searching is.”
“I used to have to dial up, literally,” he says. “The baud rate was really slow and you had to dial up and hook the phone into the machine and you get this beep and then you’ll be able to search. This was before PCs. It was a dedicated machine, and dot matrix printing. I’m really dating myself. But that’s what was available.”
Peter said people were charged per usage to search, so part of his job was helping people refine their searches. At the Gillette Company, for example, there were a lot of skin products, and when people came to Peter needing information, they would sometimes ask for everything related to skin.
“You’d look at them and say, ‘No, you’re gonna get too much garbage. What about skin?’” Peter says. “They wanted chemical reactions to skin. You try to guide them through that whole thing; that was what our function was before I went online.”
As an index editor, his job was slightly different. He made articles accessible and findable with keywords. But his searcher skillset came in handy; he had a good idea of what people would search for when they tried to find an article.
“You had guidelines for indexing, but there were instinctual aspects of indexing,” Peter says. “So that was really cool being at the forefront. And seeing how things change.”
A Solar Installation With Uprise: From Skeptical To Satisfied
With his interest in tech, of course Peter already knew about solar power, but he thought it would be too expensive. So his curiosity was piqued when he met one of Uprise’s solar canvassers, who knocked on his door and told him about Uprise’s no-cost program.
But Peter wondered what the catch was. When he met with Patrick Cavanaugh for his sales meeting, he says, “I asked him like ten times, ‘What’s the catch?’ But he said, ‘There’s no catch. If it breaks, we fix it. Basically, you’re hosting, but you’re getting the benefit for hosting.’ So that was what convinced me really. He answered all the questions I wanted, where are the panels made, and how y’all make your money.”
When Uprise’s construction crew came out for the site visit, Peter asked them what the catch was too, and they also assured him there was no catch.
“I was skeptical,” Peter says. “But when the guys came and they looked through the house and went on the roof and checked in the attic and all that, I said okay. And the installers came and I saw all the panels getting offloaded off the truck and all the equipment. The installation went pretty darn smooth. The whole process was really pretty painless. Those guys came, did the work, and then the next day they sent Anthony over to do the plastering, and he’s a master at this, he’s meticulous with what he does. I sat in the basement and watched him. Master. When he was gone, you never knew he was here. I’m very happy with that.”
And Peter still has roof access, which he appreciates because he enjoys stargazing. “I have a friend here, she’s actually NASA, she’s part of the Artemis program, so sometimes she’ll say, ‘The International Space Station will be crossing right over the horizon,’ and it comes right over the roof,” he says.
Since we spoke, Peter’s received his first few power bills with solar. Comparing the last three months, the energy charges on a bill without solar were $86, then he received permission to operate in the middle of a billing cycle, so that bill was $29. His bill after one all-solar cycle was just $8.59, 10% of what he paid before. He’s excited to see significant savings.
Peter is a photographer, and snapped photos of the installation process, which he agreed to let us use for this article! Check out his behind-the-scenes photos of his solar installation.
Scuba Diving Around The World
Photography and solar aren’t Peter’s only interests. He first went scuba diving in the late 90s, after loving reruns of the TV show Sea Hunt as a kid. “I was fascinated, but I was terrified of the water,” Peter says. “I couldn’t swim, but I still wanted to scuba dive. A lot of people, really fantastic lifeguards, took me under their wings and tried to teach me how to swim. And I was like, negatively buoyant. I would just hit the bottom.”
Around 1997, Peter got the opportunity to do a resort dive in Australia. He says he really shouldn’t have gone because he was congested. But he didn’t want to miss his chance to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef.
“I geared up and went down and blew a tank of air in less than 15 minutes,” he says. “When I came up, I was bleeding through just about every orifice. I was spitting blood through my nose and out of my ears. Fortunately I didn’t go too deep, but because of the congestion I did pop a few things. But it wasn’t permanent, fortunately.”
Luckily that wasn’t Peter’s only diving experience. In 2001, he decided to try and get certified while he spent a few months in Dominica. The people he was staying with connected him with an instructor.
“I said, ‘I’m going to tell you right now, I can’t swim,’” Peter says. “And he said, ‘That’s not a problem. Come and we’ll deal with it.’”
Peter started lessons, and discovered the instructor was right. “Within a few days I was certified. I didn’t have to know how to swim. I did have to learn how to float on my back. [The instructor] said, ‘You’re going to have to float on your back for ten minutes.’ It was the most amazing ten minutes of my life. I’m laying there and I thought I was there for like one minute, and I said to him, ‘How much longer, man?’ He said, ‘Oh, about 30 seconds.’ I got lost in the sky, just looking up.”
Now, over 20 years later, Peter has has been diving everywhere from the Caribbean to Indonesia, and goes twice a year now that he’s retired. You can check out photos of his scuba adventures on his website. One of his all-time favorite trips was to the Silfra Crack in Iceland, where he dove to celebrate his 60th birthday (here’s a link to his video!).
“The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates separate right at the Silfra Crack in Thingvellir Park, and you dive right there and actually touch the two tectonic plates,” Peter says. “It’s an adventurous place. I love Iceland. The diving there was the most exciting.”
DC Highlight: Trees And Flowers — And Hot Peppers
Although Peter initially moved back to New York after college graduation, he returned to DC less than a year later, and says he came back because of the trees. He’s been here ever since.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world like Rock Creek Park. I love Rock Creek Park. Lady Bird Johnson did the beautification society and people took that to heart in the sixties and it just carried over. So all the flowers, and because there are so many trees in the fall, it’s always beautiful. And it’s clean, it’s quiet, it’s livable. The only thing I hate is that it’s not a state.”
Peter adds to the District’s plant life through the hot peppers he grows at three different locations around the DMV: in his front yard and back deck, at a friend’s home in Virginia, and at a community garden north of Cleveland Park, where he’s grown vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant, and okra for around 40 years. But he says he’s known for his peppers. He grows Scotch bonnets, habaneros, and Trinidad scorpions.
He makes gallons of hot sauce with those peppers. “It’s famous worldwide because I’ve sent it worldwide and everybody’s waiting for it now,” Peter says. “‘You’ve got the sauce yet?’”
We Can Help With Your Solar Installation Too!
Do you want to save on your electric bills, but have been worried, like Peter, that solar’s too expensive? You’re in the right place! We can help you with a solar installation through our no-cost program. The process starts with a free consultation, like Peter had with Patrick, to walk you through the process, answer questions, and show you the potential of solar for your roof. Fill out the form here to schedule your consultation, or call us at (202) 280-2285.
And be sure to check out our other Humans of Uprise stories here!