SEQUIM — Stuart and Pat MacRobbie have been making a big statement for six years now, and some neighbors are no more pleased than the day the statement first appeared.
It looks something like a movie screen: 12 photovoltaic, aka solar, panels gazing skyward from the MacRobbies’ Oak Street front yard. They’re reaping Sequim’s vaunted rays, providing heat for their home and even feeding some energy back into the Clallam County Public Utilities District grid.
These panels have also, the MacRobbies say, prompted the planting of what they call “spite trees.”
‘Only going to get worse’
These are fast-growing cypresses, rooted beside the solar array, just inside neighbor Pamela McClure’s property.
At least one of the trees, Pat MacRobbie said last week, is growing high enough to block the sunlight from several of the panels.
“This is the first year it’s been noticeable, and it’s only going to get worse,” she added.
The MacRobbies say McClure has opposed the solar array since it was installed in 2003. They said that after a series of quarrels, she stopped speaking to the couple.
Repeated calls requesting comment from McClure have gone unreturned.
Late last month, the MacRobbies sought help from the Sequim City Council, writing a letter detailing the cypress-tree issue and pointing out that other cities such as Ashland, Ore., have ordinances prohibiting trees that might keep sunlight from shining on a solar panel.
“No one shall plant any vegetation that shades a recorded collector,” as in a solar-energy collector permitted by the city, the Ashland Municipal Code says.
Sequim has no such law.
Mayor Laura Dubois said she forwarded the MacRobbies’ letter to the planning staff.
“You may see that come back,” to a future City Council meeting, she said.
Pat MacRobbie said the solar array’s size and position may have been the problem, compounded by the fact that she and Stuart built their house on what had been open space.
“It was the [neighbors’] backyard,” she said of the hillside parcel. “They could have bought it; it was on the market.”
Objections
Dick Petit, who’s lived on this street for 10 years, explained his objections to the MacRobbies’ array in an interview this week.
“I’m not against solar [power],” he said. “I am for solar panels in the proper location,” which to him is on a rooftop or large parcel of land, not in a neighborhood yard.
“That’s a site where there never should have been a house built,” Petit said of the MacRobbies’ place.
And as the array turns to follow the sun, he added, it sometimes reflects light into Petit’s home. That bright sunshine streaming in on his breakfast table, he said, is another sign that the MacRobbies chose the wrong spot.
More energy
When asked why they didn’t mount the panels on their roof, Pat MacRobbie said that a directional array harvests far more energy — called “solar resource” — than a fixed one.
Citing a report from the PUD, she noted that the panels generated 3,248 kilowatt hours of solar power from July 1, 2008, through June 30 of this year.
The report indicated that this was the lowest amount since installation, and the MacRobbies worry that their neighbor’s cypress trees are the cause.
Stuart, a retired psychiatrist, and Pat, a retired schoolteacher, started their retirement in a much bigger place on Jamestown Beach, north of Sequim. But by early this decade, their dream house had taken on a new shape. They left their 5-acre waterfront spread behind and moved into town, for reasons practical and moral.
“We wanted to put our money where our belief system is,” Pat MacRobbie said.
They were also getting older and didn’t want all that land to keep up. They wanted to bicycle around Sequim, and drive shorter distances in their hybrid Toyota Prius.
And they envisioned a smaller, energy-efficient home, warmed by clean energy from the sun.
System cost $21,000
They had their solar-energy system installed by Power Trip Energy Corp. of Port Townsend for about $21,000, Pat MacRobbie said. In addition to the free-standing array, there are panels on their garden shed, and Stuart hopes to add more to the house itself.
For several years including this one, the MacRobbies’ place has been a stop on the Clallam County Solar Tour, a self-guided circuit of solar-powered homes, schools and offices.
“They are pioneers for solar in this area,” said Nicole Mason, a staffer at Power Trip.
After they moved in, the MacRobbies themselves planted trees to provide a buffer between the large array and their neighbors’ yards. But — so far unlike McClure’s cypresses — they periodically have those trees topped, Pat MacRobbie said, to prevent any blockage of sun.
Petit, meanwhile, also said that a native Garry oak on the MacRobbies’ property is leaning toward his fence and yard, dropping leaves.
The MacRobbies said they’re loath to trim the old oak, since an arborist told them that could fatally harm it.
Even amid the disputes, the couple love their home and its natural environment.
“We can’t think of a more beautiful place to live,” said Pat MacRobbie. But “it’s been a terrible fight. It’s hard to live here knowing they don’t like what we’re doing.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.