What has five times the ROI of solar in the desert?

Published on June 16, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: New Jersey.

Plugfoot brings tidings of new Solar Group Discounts

Published on June 15, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

Hey Y’alls, quick up date on where group purchases are now available at 1BOG:

Homeowners in Orange County, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, and the southern part of New Jersey are now the newest areas of the U.S. that now have access to a 15% group discount on home solar energy installations. The discount is offered by my other company 1BOG which helps you buy home solar by negotiating group discounts with local solar energy companies. So, 1BOG is now available to more than 23 million people, woot.

Taking the Mystery out of Solar Energy

1BOG has established installation and performance standards for its installers, which include Heliopower (Orange County and Inland Empire), Trinity Solar (Southern New Jersey), and REC Solar (Los Angeles). To see all of the details you can sign up right here on SolarPowerRocks.com.  Once signed up, you’ll see specific information on the solar panels used by each company, pricing, timeline, and your personal checklist for what it takes to go solar. After checking that out, you will be contacted to determine if your home could make a suitable site for a solar installation by using the online estimation tool. If you’re interested in moving forward, the installer will get in touch and perform a free home assessment.

If you’re not in one of these cities and you sign up, we will tell you how many people near you are signed up so we can get closer to launching a solar group purchase program there!

Need your help

Published on May 27, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: tax credits.

From our friends at votesolar.com

Friends,

Building a strong solar industry, complete with local jobs and new business growth, is a national economic imperative. Congress gets that, and that’s why it passed a Treasury Grant Program as part of the Recovery Act to help make solar and other renewable projects more cost-competitive with heavily subsidized, dirty fossil-based energy sources.

Just launched in July 2009, this Treasury Grant Program is already scheduled to sunset later this year. Can you ask Senators not to pull the plug on support for solar right when we need it most?

One of the most important federal policies supporting renewables today, the Treasury Grant Program awards selected commercial solar project developers an upfront grant totaling 30% of the project cost (an alternative to taking the solar investment tax credit). In less than a year, the Treasury Grant Program has resulted in 400 large solar energy systems that have supported 17,000 construction and manufacturing jobs across the country. That, my friends, is policy success. Now is not the time to call it quits on a program that’s putting Americans back to work.
We are asking Congress for a two-year extension on the program to strengthen our growing renewable industry and create another 65,000 domestic solar jobs. Can you help?
Onwards,
Annie + The Vote Solar Team

The Vote Solar Initiative
300 Brannan Street, Suite 609
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.votesolar.org
http://twitter.com/votesolar

Another post about New Jersey Solar and SRECs in general (and TRECs)

Published on March 24, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: SREC.

Solar TRECs

As I’ve posted before, the economics for solar in New Jersey are crazy. With relatively pricey power costs, a good state rebate, and the Federal tax credit, solar makes strong financial sense in New Jersey by itself, even without the SRECs. But the SRECs and TRECs take everything to a new level. They help get solar to where it should be by making the financial benefit so strong you can’t overlook it.

What’s an SREC?

SREC stands for “Solar Renewable Energy Credit”. Think of an SREC as a coupon. Every time your solar power system finishes generating one megawatt of power, it spits out one of these coupons. If you have a nicely oriented, non-shady roof and 5kW of solar panels up top, you’ll generate about 7 of these SRECs a year. You can then redeem each coupon for cash at whatever it happens to be worth at the time. Now, here’s the tricky part… what it’s worth at the time… is weird… and how you “redeem” it… is weird.

What’s a T-REC?

TRECs are simply SRECs with a different letter in the front to confuse you. All that’s different is that the ‘T’ stands for “tradable”. This potentially means money for homeowners who start trading the RECs their systems produce. Eventually, even California will have TRECs.

What’s an SREC worth?

Short answer: Depends what state you’re in but in NJ, about $700. If the New Jersey utilities don’t meet certain renewable standards, they are penalized. Therefore, they gladly buy SRECs at any rate under what they would be penalized for (surprise, the penalty is about 700 bucks). In 13 other states, the worth of SRECs are all over the map. The good news is, if you own a solar system outright, you are already generating SRECs (woot.). They may have a shelf life (and so you may not be able to monetize all the ones you’ve created), but once they are available to trade in your area, you can reap some cash.

How do I get money from my SRECs?

Two options.

• Option 1: Trade them on the open market (which may or may not be possible).
• Option 2: Sell them to an aggregator.

Option 1: Register your solar system with WREGIS-Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System, and then trade them yourself on the open market. Online marketplaces will become more and more prevalent and there are a few that exist already. I hesitate to link to these because I am not sure which ones are the best to use. I’ve been getting into this more lately and will have better input to update this post. But for now it’s a considerable amount of work and option two is what most people opt for.

Option 2: There are companies that make a business trading these and there will be more coming. They will pay you cash for SRECs under a contract, where they basically purchase all the SRECs that your solar system will generate for a number of years. I’ve seen 1-year, 5-year, 7-year, and more contracts for this. SRECs only have a current day value, so the aggregator is making a guess as to what they will be worth. If it’s a 1-year contract, you can probably nail down the spread they are taking (difference between what you could get trading it yourself and what they will pay you for it) and… it’s probably worth it. In multi-year contracts there is more speculation about their future value, so it’s really impossible to say what’s a better deal, it’s just about risk. You’d be paying them for not having to take the risk on what they are worth in the future.

Solar increases the resale value of your home… fo’ reals.

Published on March 16, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Affordable Solar.

I cooked up this video on 1BOG and thought it would be helpful to post here.  Take a look. I’d love to see some real estate data on this.  Seems like enough time has passed to have some solid data on turnover of homes that have solar installed.

If you look at Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data and you’re considering buying a home, or you’re a real estate agent, you can basically sort by everything down to “granite counter tops.”  But there’s not much in there in the way of any energy saving value–yet. Having solar will be a check box that you can sort by soon enough. Here are the math and details behind this video on how details on how solar effects the value of your home.

I’m moving to New Jersey just to buy homes and put solar on them. Seriously.

Published on March 2, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: New Jersey.

The Solar Situation

There’s a situation. With Solar. In New Jersey.

Did you know New Jersey is the #2 solar market in the US just behind California? Well, there’s a reason such a tiny state has more solar per capita than the best solar market in the United States. The reason is SRECs. SREC stands for “Solar Renewable Energy Credit.” They are a certificate for renewable energy production you can trade on the open market.

How do you get an SREC?

You own something that creates renewable energy. In this case, solar.  When your thing that you own that creates renewable energy pumps out 1mWh or 1000kWh (1000 kilowatt-hours) of juice (enough to power a big giant home for a month), you get one.

How much is an SREC worth?

At the moment, $700. Why you ask? Because if the utilities don’t meet their RPS standards, which they are not, they get ding’ed to the tune of $720. It makes sense then, that they’d be happy to buy your SREC’s for anything under $720, so it’s pretty easy to set the market rate for them. If they all the sudden start magically meeting their RPS standards, that could change, but for now, SRECs are a freaking gold mine for any homeowner who has a good roof setup in NJ.

Why is solar in NJ such a sick investment?

This is best shown with an image. Here is a financial breakdown of an example system estimate in New Jersey taken from 1BOG’s solar estimate tool (it only works where they have active solar group purchase campaigns).

In other words, the SRECs, which are money in your bank, are four times as valuable as the money you spent on the system in the first place. That DOESN’T EVEN INCLUDE your electrical savings. Yes, it’s crazy. Yes, I know it sounds too good to be true. I know, I know, I know. Believe me, I know. Most are skeptical, and yah sure there’s some fine print:

The Small Print – What’s the catch?

There’s not a REAL catch, it is actually a ridiculous investment where you get a free solar system that makes you money for 40 years. But here’s the small stuff you should know.

• The SREC incentives are so sick, that they state will try to keep you from gaming the system and installing a system in suboptimal conditions. You can only have the state rebate (which is currently $1,750 per DC kilowatt) if you have a roof situation that will be 90% efficient (good orientation and no shading). Some people who do not have this install systems anyway just to get the SRECs and abandon the state rebate)
• There is enough money for the state rebate at $1,750 per kW to last a few more months, then it drops to $1,550. That’s about a $1,400 decrease in rebates on the average sized system in NJ, so you better get moving.
• If the utilities all meet their RPS standards, albeit extremely unlikely, the SREC market could become volatile. They will still be worth considerable amounts of money, but they won’t have a clearly defined market value like the current penalty is pinning it to close to $720.
• SRECs are hard to trade personally, although there are some online tools coming about to help you do it. Most people sell them to aggregators (which the solar installers help you with). The aggregators of course take a cut, I think around 10%
• The utility penalty I talked about drops 3% a year, so expect SRECs to do something similar

If you live in New Jersey and you are interested in solar (hopefully you are now), sign up to find out if solar works on your home in New Jersey. There is currently a group purchase program in the north and there will be one coming soon in the south.

C'mon Solar Industry! We can do it.

Published on November 18, 2009 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

Let’s sell solar like the other industries sell their stuff!

I was inspired recently. I sat on a panel with Danny Kennedy from Sungevity at Solar Power International. Danny gave a great speech about how (and of course, I’m paraphrasing) we’re never going to get anyone to buy solar if we don’t start removing words like “inverter,” and “photovoltaics,” from our lexicon, and instead start talking about how solar makes your beer cold, your kids popsicles hard, and puts money in your wallet.

That’s what we’re all about here at SolarPowrRocks.com. We try to simplify the rebates and incentives for your state, and we’re also interactive. If you leave a comment under a post, we’ll get back to you in a couple of days. We also try to present the info in a fun way, while still being serious about solar. If you can’t see how solar applies to your budget and your life now and in the future, then we’re not doing our job.

Sadly, we think that other installers are doing worse than us at explaining solar. Why? Solar in the U.S. is at about 0.2% market penetration for residential rooftops. That’s weaksauce. But hey, the market is huge. The sky is the limit. If you look at California’s PG&E’s territory alone, just a good chunk of northern California, there’s over 700,000 customers who would show savings with SunRun’s PPA or SolarCity’s lease on day one. Even for people buying through a conventional home loan, the savings can be with in a year after taking the 30% Federal solar tax credit and write off the interest on the mortgage. The same with PACE/municipal financing.

As more financing options like these come online, how can a homeowner say no to $0 to very low-money down, clean energy, and saving money from the very first day? They can’t, but first they need to be educated, and that’s why we want you to educate yourself here and to get a quote from a local installer who will take you through all of the advantages for your home in your area.  The great thing about getting a few quotes is that you can prove that solar is right or wrong for you. No more guessing and thinking “it’s a good idea, but…” It costs you nothing but a little bit of time.

With that in mind, here at SolarPowerRocks.com, we’re going to continue to make solar easy to understand and show you what you’re missing.  We also urge all solar installers to clearly and patiently show potential customers how much they would have made with solar instead of stocks or real estate for the last few years. Where else can you get such a high and fixed return? We’ll be the first to tell you that it doesn’t pencil out everywhere, but where it does, it’s our job to let people know that solar’s not just for rich environmentalists. It’s for people with Hum Vee’s who have high electric bills, too.

Solar Power in Phoenix, AZ – Dry Heat? No, it's a Hot Heat!

Published on October 18, 2009 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

Phoenix, AZ is one of the US’s hottest solar markets right now. Maybe the hottest.  (FYI, Solar Fred recently updated the Arizona page if you’re looking for solar power rebates, incentives, and tax credits in Phoenix, AZ).

I recently got back from Phoenix where my coworker, Brad, and I were meeting with local solar installers to pick a winner for 1BOG’s Phoenix solar group purchase program.  I’ve had the luxury of traveling around and looking at different cities for 1BOG and it’s interesting to see the differences between them. Solar markets are so nuanced geographically.

Why is Phoenix’s solar market so hot?

• GPEC – GPEC‘s chairman is also the president of the AZ Cardinals, and they have worked heavily to get the solar industry to come to Phoenix, and they’ve succeeded. They’ve worked on legislation to make AZ attractive to big solar business.
• Lots of Sun – As simple as it may sound, the residents of Phoenix know they get a lot of sun.  There’s a heat tolerance of solar panels that makes crystalline silicon solar products perform poorer in the heat, but that effect is outweighed by the massive year-round sun.  Technology aside, the year-round sun makes its citizens more receptive to listen to the idea (something we have to fight in SF, or Seattle, for example).
• Large rebates – Both utilities that service the region, SRP and APS have handsome rebates.  SRP does $2.70 per DC watt (although the cap at a 5kW system is a real hindrance in a place with huge bills due to year round AC), and SRP does a whopping $3.00/DC watt.  Pile on a $1000 AZ state solar tax credit with the 30% federal tax credit and you’ve got a solid financial proposition for most everyone in Phoenix.

What’s interesting there?

• The way they quote the Federal tax credit:  Here’s one super interesting thing.  I’ve now seen SF, LA, San Diego, Denver, Sonoma County, New Orleans.. and this is the first market where many solar installers are quoting the Federal tax credit differently.  Typically, it’s 30% of your out-of-pocket expense (the correct way, although hey, legal small print: we are not tax professionals and please consult yada yada….).  But many installers are quoting the tax credit as 30% of gross price, making it look much more attractive. I think one lawsuit (poor tax advice makes you liable to the tune of 3X your damage I believe) will settle this dispute once and for all.
• Two separate meters!  Most places that allow net metering will come and swap out your meter with a net meter when you get solar.  In Phoenix, they come and put in a second meter which is your “production” meter, and then they come every month and compare the two.  Not a biggie,  but just another piece of evidence that shows we need some national standards if you want big companies to be able to scale quickly.
• Spanish tile – Er… there’s a ton of Spanish tile and most companies don’t seem to charge adders for it because it’s so common in Phoenix. But typically tile roofs are more expensive install.  You have to be delicate with it and replace the tiles you break.

What does Phoenix’s solar market still need?

• Inspector training - It’s a relatively new market.  It’s like Denver two years ago, and so a few installers noted that there is significant expense dealing with new inspectors, who in this country, are allowed to interpret electrical code.  Because they have not seen a lot of solar, they’re likely to hold up installs, sometimes unnecessarily.
• Standards in permitting and coding:  Line side taps are not yet legal in a lot of places in Arizona, but those make solar easier (some people have to change their electrical service to get solar, which is very expensive.  A line side tap is a cheap, and excellent, alternative to that solution).  Some neighborhoods disallowed a roof mount system called tile trac (which is a great system) for whatever reason.  Things like this make it difficult for install crews to do scalable business all over the city.

When it’s all said and done, however, Phoenix is still the land of the sun and solar. Get a free quote and find out if you can take full advantage of this abundant natural resource.

Sonoma County Municipal Solar Financing

Published on September 19, 2009 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

(Disclaimer: I co-founded and manage One Block Off the Grid, so I will be pumping its Sonoma County program in this post… But I co-founded this blog too, so do I even need to disclaim? Better safe than sorry, I guess.)

Sonoma County now has the largest municipal financing program for solar and energy efficiency, modeled after the Berkeley First program, but run by the city themselves instead of a program administrator. $100M and they’ve burned through about $20M of it in a very short period of time. This is our favorite flavor of solar financing. It’s called the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program. First, you get a quote for a solar system or energy efficiency. Then, you apply for their financing. You can get it over 5, 10, or 20 year periods, and the interest rate is 7% (or better, depending on the bond deals they get). Finally, you pay through your property taxes.

Why people love property tax solar financing:

There’s a couple reasons why homeowners love getting solar and energy efficiency through this municipal financing program. First, it’s elegant if you decide to sell your home. The solar system goes with the home as does the tax bill… easy peasy. Second, some people like to use it as a way to take cash out of their home. If they finance, say, a $20K solar system, at the end of the year when they claim their 30% federal tax credit for solar, they get $6K in cash. It’s almost like an equity line. Third, it doesn’t require a credit check. If you can prove you own the home and your title is clean, there’s very few hurdles after that.

One thing that’s cool is that with our new solar panel discount program in Sonoma County with 1BOG, you can get an online estimate for solar, and then use that solar estimate to apply for the SCEIP solar financing program, with no one ever coming to your home.

How to sign up for 1bog’s Sonoma County Solar Campaign:

• Sign up!
• We get in touch with you to answer your questions and help you decide if solar is right for your home.
• If you’re ready to move forward, schedule and receive a free home evaluation from the solar installer.
• Get a proposal under the 1BOG Discount!

(You can always contact Cameron, the Sonoma County Campaign Specialist, cameron@1bog.org or 707-703-1330)

The 5 Most Remarkable Solar Energy Markets in the US

Published on June 14, 2009 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

When you subsidize the free market, things sometimes get weird. For example, combine a change in Spain’s (and a few other countries’) solar subsidies, a US-wide absence of corporate tax hunger, and a massive spike in solar module production, and now you’ve got plummeting solar panel prices. I’m talking like… half, compared to a year ago. I remember toward December 2008 my old company had to throw away a couple of giant deals just because we couldn’t get our hands on the modules we needed. Today there is cutthroat pricing from solar panel manufacturers trying to move inventory.

Big commercial solar deals in the US usually rely on tax equity financing. That means if businesses purchase systems themselves, they need to be turning tidy profits to be able to take advantage of the tax credits. Therefore, there aren’t a lot of those deals being sold now. Silicon production has ramped way up in the last few years, as has the number of companies producing solar modules from the silicon, as well as the manufacturing throughput of those companies. All this results in is a lot of supply coupled with diminished global demand, meaning you’ve got lower price. Since the market is subsidized, some common market trends are amplified and expedited.

AND THAT’S JUST INTERNATIONALLY. Break it down by country, then state or province, then to city, and even to neighborhood, and you have markedly different solar energy markets.

Here are the five most remarkable solar markets in the United States:

1) Hawaii

Not the best subsidies for photovoltaics, but Hawaiian power is EXPENSIVE! Think about it, Hawaii has to boat in all the fossil fuels to their island, making the cost per kWh of electricity higher than just about anywhere. Couple that with a lot of sun and you’ve probably got the first market to reach grid parity. A hot market here would have greater changes than other places since most of Hawaiian power is derived from pretty dirty fossil fuels. Hawaii is working hard to change this, and I expect the solar market to take off.

2) Seattle

Here you have pretty crappy subsidies, a population that assumes solar doesn’t make sense because it’s too cloudy and rainy (not true), and pretty cheap power (over 50% of which is already clean hydro power). What you end up with is no one being able to sell solar panels.

3) Palm Desert

LA is a great solar market. The Palm Desert market is ridiculously great. Here you have a lot of homeowners who have been there a long time, and thus still have home equity. They also have magnificently large power bills and air conditioning. Add to that SCE’s tiered rate structure (the more you use, the more it costs), and selling solar energy is like shooting fish in a barrel. The only negative (which is greatly outweighed by the positives), is that heat negatively affects the voltage of crystalline silicon products. As a result, I bet you’ll see some of the first residential thin-film installs going up around places like this (even though it doesn’t make sense for everyone – thin film takes more space and a lot of people in Palm Desert are already maxing out their roof real estate).

4) New Orleans

New Orleans has the best residential subsidy in the nation. 50% Refundable state tax credit coupled the 30% Federal tax credit, means your systems are 80% off. The thing that makes this an interesting market is that the subsidy is only a year old, which means solar never made sense before. So you have a very small number of people who can install, and their experience is new. Politics are moving very quickly as well, and the new tax credits will probably soon be transferrable, allowing for both commercial installations as well as third party ownership options (like Solar PPA’s or Solar Leases).

5) Denver area

A recent pilot of California’s AB811 style municipal financing in Boulder was hugely successful, but small. The rebate from the utility there, Xcel Energy, dropped a dollar a watt, and Colorado energy is relatively inexpensive. So while the subsidy is making solar energy for homes is possible, it’s just not a slam dunk. Colorado also has lots of sun and a nice, cool, climate – ideal for solar power. As a result of the recent success of the subsidy that came online, I think, around late 05 early 06, lots of people jumped into the market with lots of success. Lately, with the pilot in Boulder complete, Xcel dropping their rebate, and a lot of the low-hanging fruit of customer base already absorbed, many installers are desperately clutching to low price as a solution for generating business to get themselves out of this economic downturn. I expect a consolidation in this market and for some to shake out, but that it will remain a robust solar market in the long run. One block off the Grid is kicking off a solar energy group purchase program for solar energy in Denver in a few weeks.