We recently sat down with Dave Drago, owner of solar-powered 1809 Studios in Macedon, NY.

What is 1809 Studios and what makes it unique?

1809 Studios, I opened this with my family about 8 years ago. We moved back to the area from California 10 years ago and found this cool old bar by the Erie Canal and renovated it. We did all the work on the first floor ourselves and transformed it into this 1,800 square foot recording studio. There’s accommodations here, a bunk room and lodging for artists to come from all over the country and stay here and work on their visionary projects.

How/why did you decide to install solar power at the Studio?

Solar just honestly made a lot of financial sense to us. Obviously we are very attracted to the benefits of solar with regards to the environment and all that but, ultimately it was a really intelligent move for us to make financially. The tax incentives were massive for a family of people that are small business owners and sole proprietors and make their money off of 1099s. Those tax credits have saved our lives. Plus, the solar panels offset the amount of money that we spent on this really old, old building, what we were spending on heating and cooling and all that prior to having the panels we’ve saved a ton of money since the panels have shown up.

How was the experience of going solar with GreenSpark?

Working with GreenSpark has been amazing since we made the first phone call to the office and they sent somebody out, they were just as excited about the project as we were, had incredible ideas, and also educated us a great deal on what the process was like, even to the point of saying that certain things might not be a good idea and might not be a good return on investment. So, we kinda settled on what the project should be it was built quickly, the crew was amazing, my kids were playing outside and making friends with them, and when the job was done we immediately saw a savings in our yearly utility bill.

We are accruing this incredible asset on our roof, and using the power of the sun to power our home and my recording studio.

What do the neighbors say about the solar panels?

We’ve had plenty of neighbors come up to us and ask us what we’ve done on our roof, why we did it, and if it made sense, and we’ve only had good things to say. We have definitely sent a few people over the GreenSpark to talk about a solar project. In addition to that, my clients love it when they arrive for the first time and park on the south side of the building and see those panels, they are like ‘are we making a record powered by the sun?’ and I’m like ‘yeah’ and they get really really excited about that. It’s a unique feature that we can offer here at 1809 studios.