A Google Maps image of our house (circled) with the 5.59 kW home solar system we had installed in June 2010. This Google image was clearly shot in the summer (notice the green leaves), but it wasn't added to Google Maps until sometime in the past few weeks.

Ever wonder how often Google updates its Google Earth and Google Maps images?

Me too.

I'm still not sure exactly how frequently Google does this, but I do know that sometime in the last few weeks Google updated the satellite image of our Aurora, Colo. neighborhood.

How do I know?

The 26-panel, 5.59 kW solar system we had installed on our roof in June of 2010 is now showing on Google Maps' satellite shots. -- and it wasn't showing just a few weeks ago.

That's the cool news.

The not-so-cool news is that we're the only house in our neighborhood of 50-plus houses with solar. This despite the fact that about 30 of those houses have good to outstanding roofs for solar. Of course, we did just find out that one of our neighbors with an even better roof for solar than ours -- we have a great roof for solar -- will be getting a 5.7 kW system in April 2011.

Come spring, I'm going to watch the Google Maps satellite shots to keep an eye on when that one goes online for the whole world to see, just like ours recently did.

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