LAKE WORTH — Amid the row of darkened houses and the thud-thud-thud of a neighbor's generator, something stands out about the brick home with the peeling pink driveway.

Chris McVoy uses a bicycle to power a small television set. He also has solar panels to power lights, fans, computers and his refrigerator in his home

It's not just the glow of the floor lamp through the living room window. Or the Beethoven violin concerto wafting from the stereo speakers. Or the refrigerator stocked with ice, frozen vegetables and soy milk.

No, you have to look closer — at the dark silicon panels perched atop Chris McVoy's roof, and the wires dangling discreetly from walls and ceilings.

They point to the source of McVoy's post-Wilma comforts: His house draws its power from the sun.

So while others squint over candles, cursing Lake Worth's city-owned electric utility or Florida Power & Light, life is close to normal for McVoy and his fiancée, Kimberly Kirby. And going solar means they don't have to crank up a noisy, fume-spewing generator or stand in long lines to buy gasoline for it.

"We've been very luxurious," said McVoy, an environmental scientist at the South Florida Water Management District, who also relies on natural gas for cooking and hot showers. "We were at somebody's house Saturday night who had a little battery lantern and candles, and I thought, 'Boy, we made it really good.' "

Of course, luxury is a relative term for McVoy, who is so conservation-minded that he doesn't own a car or clothes dryer, powers his kitchen television with a stationary bicycle and ventilates his bedroom with a dangling rack of low-wattage computer fans.

He and Kirby couldn't run their refrigerator on solar power until last month, when he taped 3 inches of insulating foam around the fridge to reduce its electric demands. They've had to negotiate about such matters as when to turn on the air conditioning — which runs on city power — and whether to run their watt-hogging toaster.

"It helps that I'm very flexible," said Kirby, who met McVoy when the two were teaching yoga. "I've come to enjoy living a simpler life."

Then again, they're not enduring their second straight week of canned tuna.

Despite its advantages, solar power has yet to catch fire in the Sunshine State. That's partly because gasoline-fueled generators are less expensive to set up than an assemblage of solar panels, batteries and other gizmos providing the same amount of electricity.

McVoy said he's spent more than $2,600 on his setup, which consumes about 5 percent of a typical household's monthly electric usage — although he estimates it would cost just $600 for a barebones system powering some lights and a fan. Industry spokespeople say a solar system powering a typical house's year-round needs can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Solar also doesn't receive any subsidies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has promised to reimburse South Florida hurricane victims who buy generators. But solar is a far more sensible long-term solution, advocates say.

"We can't pump gas in South Florida (right after a hurricane), but FEMA is saying, 'We'll pay you to buy a gas-powered generator,' " said R. Bruce Kershner, executive director of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association. "That doesn't make any sense."

And when gasoline is available, those $3-a-gallon prices add up fast. Meanwhile, a solar system costs almost nothing to operate, so residents can run it year-round to reduce their power bills.

The association has complained for years that Florida lags behind states such as California in providing incentives for homeowners and builders to adopt solar power. Kershner said lawmakers should change that, for instance by including solar in the proposed requirement that all gas stations have backup generators.

Solar has its skeptics, however — including, perhaps not surprisingly, FPL.

"Even though we are nicknamed the Sunshine State, we have a little too much cloud cover to make widespread solar power economical," FPL spokeswoman Pat Davis said this year. "If we could harness the hurricanes. . . . "

But it's not just environmentalists who are interested in solar. Developer Guy DiVosta said he hopes to include solar panels in 31 energy-efficient homes he's planning to build on Central Boulevard in Jupiter — if he can overcome the price factor.

"The cost is the hard thing for people to justify," DiVosta said. "Florida is not promoting these types of things."

Meanwhile, McVoy said his only major preparation for Wilma was to take the solar panels off his roof before the hurricane, then put them back afterward. And having solar power year-round means he sometimes hasn't even noticed some of Lake Worth's frequent outages.

Even if solar costs a little extra, McVoy said he has no intention of switching.

"It's fairly cool to be able to live this way," he said.

For another article about Christopher: www.yogapeace.com/christopher.htm