Finally Time for Solar Energy?

On Saturday, I went to "Solar Day" sponsored by Lightwave Solar in Nashville. Already a believer in the virtues of solar, I came away even more positive about using sunlight to help meet our energy needs. To sum up the major advantages: there are NO pollutants and, after installation, it is essentially a FREE energy source. Of course, the ultimate question is, is it cost effective and does it make sense for the average consumer?

To answer that question: Yes, it does make sense, provided you have the money to invest on the front end. For example, I inquired about putting ten panels on the back side of my roof and was told the cost would be about $14,000, including installation. The federal government has a 30% tax credit going, so that reduces my costs to about $10,000. (TVA was offering a $1,000 installation credit; however, that is pending). Ten panels would generate an average of 2 1/2 kilowatts per hour and there are about five prime "sun hours" a day in this area, giving me a total of about 12 kilowatts a day. That would knock about $60.00 off my electrical bill a month, making my payback on the investment to be about 13 years.

Of course, the more panels you have, the more energy you can offset. To completely power a house, it might hypothetically cost about $35,000, including turnkey installation. In 15 years, you would break even; in 30 years, you would have made $43,000 (in electrical savings) on your original investment. Of course, that is if energy prices remain stagnant. If they rise, which many expect, then your savings could be even more significant. In a way, by purchasing a solar system, you are locking in electrical rates for decades.

Steve Johnson, Lightwave President, invited us over to his house where he has twenty to thirty panels on his roof. It actually looked pretty cool and was more than enough to run his entire home. In fact, Mr. Johnson passed around his energy bills, which showed where he was credited with almost $200 in May. As a real estate agent, I haven't seen many houses with solar panels; however, it really should be marketed as a huge upgrade. I can't think of another investment a homeowner makes that is guaranteed to pay them (or the next homeowner) back every month for twenty or thirty years.

As Mr. Johnson demonstrated, it is now commonplace to have online and wireless monitoring for your energy system. Information is gathered from data off the inverter (converts to the kilowatt) so the homeowner can literally see what their system is doing from their computer or I-phone. If excess energy is being produced, it will be added back to the grid and credited to the individuals account. If the grid goes down, then the solar user's lights will still go out, unless they have a battery system for storing their own energy. This is another expense, but may be well worth it if you want to produce and keep your own energy in case of a blackout.

Unlike coal (the biggest air polluter), solar does not have to be shipped by barge and then travel along power lines to the end user. In fact, long distance transmissions (through switches and substations) can lose up to 75% of their power along the way. Solar energy comes directly from your own house so there is no loss of power. In addition, solar produces no carbon emissions, no particulates, no mercury, no toxic sludge. It also doesn't use valuable water resources for cooling the turbines and engines used in coal and nuclear energy plants.

With just under five average hours of sunlight (including all cloudy days, etc.), Tennessee certainly has enough sun to make solar viable. For the last few years, Germany has been the biggest investor in solar energy and they have about as much sun as rainy Portland or Seattle. (China now leads the world in solar investment). Tennessee is getting a boost from the solar sector with the announcements that Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie are opening major plants here (Clarksville and Chattenooga, respectively). This is a great opportunity for the state to embrace the new technology and the potential business it brings.

In the 70s, Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House and challenged the US to produce 20% of its energy from the sun by the year 2000. It was a realistic goal that would have been a significant step toward energy independence and allowed us to lead the world in this industry. Unfortunately, the solar panels were quickly torn down and we went right back to taking the easy way out by relying on oil, gas and coal. Within the last five years, solar has experienced a resurgence and now there is another opportunity to take advantage of a virtually untapped, omnipresent resource.

Another interesting factoid I learned: if you take a picture of the sun over the course of a year, every day at the same time from the same position, it will make a figure eight or more accurately, a helix or an infinity pattern in the sky. Maybe it's just a weird coincidence, or maybe it is some sort of cosmic clue that the sun has an infinite amount of energy to offer, if only we have the will to grasp it.