Mustafa Abdul-Hamid has been playing the Game of Life in a way that’s anything but timid. From 2006 to 2010, Mustafa served as the point guard for the UCLA Bruins basketball team. He then had a four-year professional career that took him all over Europe. Mustafa met his wife-to-be, Kona Shen, while studying international policy in graduate school at Stanford. She, too, has been living a life that’s all in. Kona started a nonprofit in Haiti, where she lived for three years. The group created soccer fields where players got the opportunity to be part of teams by participating in health education, community cleanup programs, and more. Two businesses and two children later, the couple has enjoyed blazing their own path, creating their own team and culture.
Kona and Mustafa love living a full life and aspire to do so as efficiently and sustainably as possible. “It’s the right thing to do,” states Mustafa. He recalls when this mindset first caught hold of him. It’s about 1998, and a little Mustafa sits in his family home in St. Louis, flipping channels, when he stumbles across a fascinating program. It may have been on the Discovery Channel. Those types of details have long since faded away. The impression left on young Mustafa wasn’t going anywhere, though. He learned that homes could be built or modified to be completely self-contained by using greywater systems, solar systems, and more. The possibility of living so efficiently and sustainably was simply amazing! Spring forward approximately two decades, and Mustafa and Kona are recent first-time homeowners in Seattle. They didn’t waste any time and started strategizing in order to bring this inspiration into reality.
Mustafa likes to take the lead on structural and maintenance projects for the home, so he set out to gather all the information he could about installing a solar system on their roof. Mustafa was fortunate to have a buddy who sold commercial and residential solar, though he was not local. Together, they researched nearby installation companies. Sunergy Systems made the initial cut. When contacting companies for the first time, Mustafa found that Sunergy Systems replied promptly and professionally. Another one of the contenders never even got back to him. Adam Cox, a Senior Solar Design Consultant with Sunergy Systems, prepared a design and quote for Mustafa. “Adam was great! With a purchase like this, you’re never going to be an expert. Contractors and service providers are always going to know more than you do. He made me feel more comfortable making the investment. He followed up, and everything was really detailed. He worked me through the process very carefully. I felt great about the whole thing.” Mustafa shared the designs and quotes that he received with his buddy. Together, they concluded that Sunergy Systems was “solid.” Mustafa brought all his findings to Kona, and they determined that Sunergy Systems would be the best solar players for their new “carbon footprint reduction” team.
The solar installation day came and went before they knew it. “Everything was cleaned up so quickly, and all the work was solid. We had an overall, very good experience.” Mustafa said. He’s very pleased with how his new solar system looks on their home. On the one hand, he doesn’t feel like it should matter too much what the system looks like. On the other hand, the clean, low-profile, solid black matte look of his new 7.4 kW Silfab system doesn’t hurt. In fact, it looks pretty sweet! Mustafa says, “People walk by the front of the house, and they go, Wow!” He also loves how low-maintenance it is. They can check the production on their app as much as they want, but they prefer to be more relaxed about it. “We look at our app every once in a while; we know it’s working. The system stays pretty clean, and that’s that.” With their solar system installation, a plug-in hybrid vehicle, and a new greywater system (installed around the same time as the solar), Mustafa and Kona have made enormous strides toward living a sustainable lifestyle. This sounds like a slam dunk, or maybe Kona would prefer (as the famous sports commentator, Andres Cantor, would put it), Goooooooooooooooooal!
