Happy New Year!

Just a quick note of inspiration for the new year! I hope everyone has a great 2012!

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product...if we should judge the United States of America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. 

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.” 
― Robert F. Kennedy

My Solar Adventure - Part 1 - Incentives

It all started about a year and a half ago (insert dream sequence here)...  I found myself needing to research solar incentives for a graduate class I was taking.  One thing lead to another and fifty-two solar panels later,  my house produces more energy than it uses.

I know... it's quite a leap going from a spring semester research project to a financial decision that you would think will keep my kids in student loans for the rest of their lives.  It turns out that it's one of the better decisions I've ever made (and I just sprained my shoulder patting myself on the back!).

So how did I get here, you might ask.  Well, it started with a web site where you can find any and all incentives available to businesses and homeowners interested in renewable energy installations in the United States. That site was created by the US Department of Energy, NC State University, the National Renewable Energy Lab and a few other organizations and in typical government program naming fashion, it has an strange acronym. DSIRE (careful Google-ing that one!) or the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency is your one stop shopping location for everything energy.

As you can see, you simply click on the state that you're interested in learning about incentives for and those state's incentives are listed.

In a nutshell, what I learned from this site was that Pennsylvania, my home state, had a program called the PA Sunshine Solar Rebate Program, which provided a $1.25 per watt rebate for the installed cost of electrical grid tied photovoltaic systems up to a 10 kilowatt size.  One item that I want to note a about this program, however, is that the grant has been mostly allocated and new installations are currently placed on a waiting list. More on that later, though, as there are additional incentives in place that I will discus at a later point in this topic series. 

One other PA state program that I wanted to mention is the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission - Solar Alternative Energy Credit program. This program provides owners of qualified, grid tied, PV systems with something called a solar renewable energy credit or SREC for every megawatt hour (1,000 kilwatt hours) of energy produced.  Public utilities in most states, Pennsylvania included, are required to provide a certain amount of their energy portfolio from renewable sources, so these SRECs can be sold on an open market to these utilities, restricted to some states, to help these utilities meet their renewable energy requirements.  The price of these SRECs goes up and down based on supply and demand of their market, but their purpose is to provide a longer term, performance based incentive for installing a PV system.

On top of the state rebate, the Federal Government offers a 30% tax credit on the installed cost of a PV system with no limit on size and some utilities offer additional incentives.  Some states, not including Pennsylvania, offer other incentives such a property assessed clean energy or PACE loans that allow homeowners to finance the cost of installing renewable energy systems by adding the cost to property taxes paid on the home and paid over a term of around fifteen to twenty years.  This loan stays with the home should the original owner move and spreads out the cost over time to the point where it's less of a financial burden. 

So, to keep this topic manageable, I will stop here and pick up with choosing an installer next time.  Unfortunately the incentive landscape can be very local and, I believe, is largely the reason why most people immediately think that installing a system is outside of their price range.  Honestly, I thought the same thing and only found out otherwise after I was forced to do a tremendous amount of research for my graduate course. 

To be clear, I know that the financial case for installing a system is very good under the right conditions especially when you consider the volatility of energy prices across the globe. If I didn't know this fact, I would not be writing this blog. In year one, my system is cash flow positive on a month to month basis and the pure payback of the system is under five years at current energy prices.  So, stay tuned and hopefully I can help clear up the fog.

And We're Back!!!!

I've spent the last few months finishing up an MBA, so I haven't had much time to be Potentially Energetic.  I'm feeling more energized now that my coursework is complete, so I'm hoping to shock readers with more electrifying wisdom... OK, this is horrible, so I'll stop, but stay tuned. Thanks for visiting!