My Solar Adventure - Part 2 - Selecting an Installer

In Part 1 of this series I discussed some of the incentives that are available to homeowners interested in installing a photovoltaic (PV) system.  As I mentioned, understanding fully what incentives are available, what you'll have to pay out of pocket, and how long it will take your system to pay itself off is often confusing and time consuming.  That is unless you have a good installer to help you navigate the process.

Once I completed my evaluation of incentives I turned my focus to understanding exactly what the payback would be if I installed a system.  I've had linked on this blog since the beginning a clean and renewable technology blog that I read regularly and still do today.  That blog is cleantechnica.com  and at the time I was doing my solar research, CleanTechnica was sponsored, and I believe, partially owned by another organization named One Block Off the Grid (1BOG). 1BOG's mission is, as their name suggests, to help communities go solar by organizing group purchasing discounts with installers.  Anyone interested can go to 1BOG's site and sign up to see if there is a group purchasing plan available in their area.  I would suggest checking out 1BOG's site and signing up as you might be surprised at the number of people around you that have already signed up.  There is no obligation to buy anything or to even participate if there is an active program in your area, so it's a good place to test the waters.

Unfortunately for me, there was not yet an active 1BOG program in place in my area, but the site referred me to some installers near me as a place to start, so I checked out the websites of each of the installers that 1BOG recommended. This ended up being a great next step because a few of the installers had some really good tools on their sites where I could input my address, my energy use, and a few other details and the sites would provide a detailed explanation of what incentives were available to me, what the energy producing potential of my property was, and even what my payback interval would be.

I checked the information that each of the installers websites provided me against what I already knew from my incentives research and surprisingly, the information jived.  Next, I met with each of the installers to discuss my options further and finally arrived at my decision to go with Astrum Solar as my installer.

I chose Astrum for a number of reasons. My first impression of them was through their website, which was the best I saw in the way of providing tools to show me, with some pretty stunning accuracy, what a potential system was going to cost me and what incentives I would be able to take advantage of.  Astrum had a good offering of products and everyone I spoke with there seemed to know their stuff based on the research I did.

To make a long story short, a good installer will make the incentive process as easy for you as possible.  They should know their products and why certain products are good in different applications, and lastly, they have the whole process for selection, from financing, to installation, through product support and SREC sale, locked up.  My installer had all of this together and verified what I already knew, so I had to peace of mind to know that I wasn't being taken for a ride.

More on the process through installation next time... Happy New Year!

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.

Good Day Sunshine!!!

And for those Ice Cube fans in the crowd... "Today was a good day. I didn't even have to use my AC."  I took a little creative license there...


The screenshot below is what a perfectly sunny day looks like.


Mild temperatures, no air conditioner, and lots of sun = 48 kWh (and money) in the bank today.

Happy weekend!

July Energy Production - Still Positive Territory!

I know I haven't written about this yet, but I have a 10 kW solar array on my home. I'm planning a post on the economics of purchasing the system and probably most importantly, the payback, but July was a big month for us.  Given the extreme temperatures we saw in Pennsylvania and the amount of time that our air conditioner had to run, I was not optimistic at our chances of producing more power than we use. Well the results are in (Emonitor and Enphase Enlighten data) and we edged it out by about 240 kW hours.


This keeps us on pace for about a 5 year pure payback and a positive cash flow situation in year 1. More to come on this...

Kickoff!

In the spirit of the recently ended NFL lockout and seeing as how this is the inaugural post, I felt “Kickoff” was appropriate as a title. Hopefully I don’t outkick my coverage, so anyway, here we go…

The general gist of this blog is based on the idea that the cheapest unit of energy (for a number of reasons) is the one that you can avoid consuming.  Being a self proclaimed “energy geek” I’ve dedicated my life and irritated my friends, classmates, relatives, coworkers, and anyone else in ear shot with my constant search for new and innovative ways to reduce my personal energy use and help others do the same.  I've named this blog “Potentially Energetic” mostly because “Potential Energy” was already taken.  Also, for those that know me, you know that I can be rather passionate (to say the least) about the topic, so I felt “Potentially Energetic” was appropriate for that reason as well.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my rants and attempts at humor, but also find some of the product reviews and links I post both relevant and helpful to you!

Cheers,

Dennis