If you live in Charlottesville you’re probably familiar with the mouth watering pastries and delectable brunch offerings of MarieBette Café & Bakery. But what you may not know is that in addition to having a penchant for French patisserie, the founders, and their family, are also passionate about solar.

Jason Becton and Patrick Evans, who named MarieBette after their daughters, first went solar with SunDay in 2016 on their Charlottesville home. In the years following, Patrick’s parents went solar with SunDay, putting up a 11.5kW roof mount on their home. And most recently, SunDay installed a 15.8kW ground-mount on the country home Patrick and Jason are building. All combined this Sunday Solar family boasts over 38kW of residential solar energy. Annually these three systems produce 48.7kWh, enough to offset 93% of their utility consumption!

2 story yellow country home with rooftop solar

Parent’s country home with 11.5kW solar

SunDay had the chance to catch up with Patrick and Jason to ask them a few questions about their SunDay Solar experience.

What motivated you to go solar? We wanted to do our small part to offset our carbon footprint. We were already renovating our house and thought it was a good time to do it.  Now that we are building a house with more land around it, we wanted to maximize the amount of solar power we could harvest so it made more sense to put the array on the ground.

Why did you decide to go solar with SunDay Solar? Richard and the rest of the staff were always so helpful and responsive when I expressed interest. We love that it’s a local company and all the staff is so friendly and passionate about what they are doing.

With your new solar system, what are you most excited about? Because we had the space, we were able to place our array in the perfect direction. I’m really excited to see the solar panels reach their maximum harvesting potential.

As business owners in Charlottesville, what steps would you like to see taken to improve sustainability efforts in the community? We try to do what we can in our business to improve sustainability but it would be great if there were more infrastructure to help businesses and individuals do their part.  We currently pay for a composting service as well as a recycling service but aren’t able to go solar at the business because we rent the space. Perhaps if there were more incentives for buildings to go solar, it could be a win-win for the environment, the business owners, and the landlords.

Red roofed house with solar array

Charlottesville home with 10.8kW solar

We’re thankful Jason and Patrick are doing their part to make a difference in the community through solar and some of the best pastries the region has to offer!

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