Twenty-five years ago, as newlyweds, my wife and I fell in love with an old house in Andover, and it became entwined in our story. We first saw the place on a day when mud season had exploded into glorious spring! Daffodils were poking up, Mount Kearsarge loomed in the distance, and we saw pileated woodpeckers nesting in a hollow tree by the barn. What was not to love?
But once the place was ours, we soon discovered how inconvenient reality can be. The house had electric baseboard heat, an electric hot water heater, electric dryer, and a frighteningly inefficient fridge made in the 1960s. Ouch! A stabbing pain recurred monthly as the electric bill arrived. We quickly shut off baseboards in rooms, fired up the wood stove, counted minutes we spent showering, and even installed compact fluorescent light bulbs throughout the house. But electric bills still ran about $100 a month, even after we switched to oil for central heat and hot water. As years went by, electric rates in Andover continued to climb higher than almost anywhere else in the US. What could we do about this? Do we just have to take it, or is there some other way?
We hope to retire to this place, so controlling our future fuel and electric bills in anticipation of being on a fixed income seemed like a good idea. I estimate that most folks spend as much to make hot water as to heat their house. Couldn’t we use the sun to make hot water? The sun can make electricity too. What are the risks, if any? What are the benefits?
The obvious downside to collecting “free” energy from the sun is that it costs a bunch up front to buy and install the equipment – about $30K! That’s as much as a nice new car. How does anybody afford this?
Perhaps you too have dreamed about using “free” solar energy, and asked yourself some of these same questions. In this article I’ll outline how we reduced our startup costs through rebates and incentives, and how much our system has saved us so far. It would be great if this info helps some other folks in Andover to “go solar”!
Three years ago, the Concord Monitor reported that rebate money for home solar projects in New Hampshire was going unclaimed. We decided to look into solar hot water makers and solar electricity generators, designed to be effective, and to make the best use of the rebates. After all, somebody is going to collect that rebate money, why not us?
Before breaking ground on our project, we hunted for federal and state incentives available to homeowners installing renewable energy systems. We found that even our local electric co-op was eager to entice homeowners to install solar panels. All the rebates and incentives available to us stacked up to more than 60% of the total cost for installing our home solar energy system. A crucial requirement, though, was making certain that all the paperwork was completed before construction began, because our system had to meet specific federal and state standards to be eligible for the rebates. Another important requirement was that the work had to be completed by a qualified professional – I could not do any of the work myself (This worked out well for a lot of people actually, because state and federal money ended up in the pockets of local New Hampshire contractors we hired). After the systems were operating, they had to be inspected and approved before rebate checks were mailed to us. The upside to this inconvenience was that inspectors assured all parties that our systems were safe and of high performance.
Similar incentives may currently be available for your home or business, but be aware that agency funds are only replenished annually, and awards stop abruptly mid-year, when the funds are exhausted. You need to submit your plan early, or risk waiting until next year. Check energy.gov and puc.nh.gov/Sustainable%20Energy/SustainableEnergy.htm for up-to-date information. We were delighted that all the agency people we talked to were friendly and interested in helping us. The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (www.nesea.org/resources/incentives/) or a professional installer may also assist you in finding out what additional rebates and incentives may be available to you.
Now our systems have been running for two and a half years, and here’s their report card!
The solar hot water collector on our roof collects heat from the sun, even when temperatures fall below zero. The heat is transferred into an over-sized preheat tank, so our oil furnace never has to heat cold water straight from the well, but in winter it starts with 90 degree water. In the summer, the solar preheat tank is so hot (over 150 degrees) the oil furnace never needs to fire up to heat domestic water at all. Our total oil consumption now has dropped to less than 400 gallons a year, or about half the amount we used before installing the solar domestic hot water system. The total installed cost of our solar water system was about $11,000; after rebates the cost to us was only $6600. We figure that this system saves us over $1000 a year in fuel oil, so we’ll be ahead of the game in less than seven years. In twenty years, the solar hot water system will have saved us $31,000! We are also happy that saving on the amount of fuel oil burned cuts down our contribution to air pollution and dependence on foreign oil. If you are thinking of getting into solar, think first about a solar hot water system. It is simpler technology (plumbing!) and I believe it gives the biggest “bang for the buck”!
To control our electric costs, we installed a two kilowatt solar photovoltaic array, consisting of twelve solar panels. This array is located behind the house, where it is in full sun all day. The total cost was $18,700 (excluding site work), but $11,200 of this amount was paid through a 30% federal rebate, plus a 30% New Hampshire state incentive program. The system has several electric meters to report on its performance. One meter records how much solar power has been generated – a bit more than 9000 kWh in 30 months of operation. The other meter is the standard electric meter just like the one on your house, but ours turns backwards some of the time! This meter shows that to date, we have donated 870 kWh more electricity to the grid than we have consumed in our home. So aside from paying a flat $25 monthly service fee, we haven’t bought a cent of electricity since throwing the switch. We estimate that in twenty years, this system will generate $14,000 of electricity!
Many people are familiar with “off grid” systems that are completely separate from the electric utilities and use batteries to store energy for nighttime use, but ours is a “grid tied” system that uses no storage batteries. Instead, our system spins our electric meter backwards when the sun is shining, and runs in the usual direction at night. The only downside of the grid-tie system is that during a power outage, our system shuts down too (so line workers are not endangered).
By putting power on the grid, we are effective partners with our electric utility, generating electricity during the workday when commercial demand is high, and protecting everyone in our vicinity against brownouts. This is why NE Electric Co-op offered us a generous $3,500 contract after we installed our solar electricity array, because they turn around and sell our “green” electricity to their commercial customers. If this sounds like a double-dip, I might agree with you, but it works out to everyone’s advantage!
So here’s the bottom line. Before we installed the solar systems, we were spending roughly $1,200 a year to heat water and another $1,200 a year for electricity. The solar hot water heater cost us $6,600, and will have paid for itself in its sixth year. The solar electric system cost about $7,500, and will have paid for itself in the eighth year. This is a long time to wait to get out of the red, but the long term benefits seem worth it to us. The cost of fuel and electricity will almost certainly continue to rise in the future, so solar energy systems promise to insulate us from those increases in our golden years. When talking about solar energy, “free” has more than one meaning!