COURT HOUSE — Solar panels scare some folks because the energy saving looks too good to be true, according to David Sugrue, general manager of Mercury Solar Systems.
His company installed a 47-kilowatt solar array on the roof of Osborne’s Furniture on Stone Harbor Boulevard in October.
Osborne’s Furniture didn’t think solar panels were too good to be true.
Steve Sides, an owner of Osborne’s Furniture, said it was a leap of faith to purchase a solar system but current incentives make installing solar panels an attractive proposition.
Sides said the state had a solar rebate program that provided a dollar for dollar rebate for systems up to 50kw, which turned out to actually be 80 cents of each dollar.
Those rebates have ended, said Sugrue.
He said, however, the federal government has a solar energy incentive as part of the American Recovery Reinvestment Act, which provides 30 percent of the cost of a solar panel system as a federal grant to a business.
He said everyone pays a small tax on their monthly electric bill called the Societal Benefits Charge, which electric utilities place into an account. State regulations require that a certain percentage of a utility’s energy portfolio must come from renewable sources, said Sugrue.
The current state mandate is one third of one percent of a utility’s energy must come from solar power. A utility can either build their own solar farm or buy the right to claim solar generation from people who actually have solar panels on their roof, said Sugrue.
He estimated the solar panels at Osborne’s Furniture could generate about 60,000 kilowatt-hours per year. In this state, for every 1,000 of kilowatt-hours generated, the owner of a solar system earns a Solar Renewal Energy Certificates (SREC).
The SREC is a commodity that can be bought and sold on the open market. Sugrue said the current market price for an SREC is about $620.
He said the Osborne’s Furniture solar system would generate about 60 SRECs per year or about $36,000. That is above and beyond their savings on electric costs, said Sugrue.
“It allows businesses, generally, to recoup the entire cost of the system within three to six years,” he said.
It also allows a business to insulate itself from future increases in the cost of electricity, said Sugrue.
The state limits the size of solar installations, so a user doesn’t become a little power utility, selling back large amounts of power to the grid, he said. System size is limited to being no larger than what the business or homeowner has consumed in power the past 12 months.
In winter, a solar system owner may be purchasing more power from the electric utility but in spring and summer, it may produce more than it consumes and sell that power back to the grid at the same price they purchased electricity from the utility, said Sugrue.
At the end of the year, the utility and the customer have what’s called a “True Up.” If you had a credit with the utility of 200-kilowatt hours, the utility will credit you that amount at wholesale rates, he said.
When you sell power back to the grid, it is consumed by your neighbor.
“It’s designed to further offset investment in wires and extra generation capacity as people add homes in an area,” said Sugrue.
He said the electrical grid was not designed as a “two-way street,” with much of the infrastructure 40 to 50 years old.
Mercury Solar Systems, which has locations in May’s Landing and Port Chester, N.Y., has reached $100 million in sales and is the largest solar installer on the east coast, said Sugrue.
Osborne’s Furniture measures about 20,000 square feet. The entire process from design to installation took about eight months, said Sides.
He said the bulk of the store’s energy expense is summer air conditioning. Their solar systems electric meter goes in two directions indicating when the store is using power or selling solar-generated power back to the electrical grid.
“It’s kind of neat when you go out there and watch it spinning backwards,” said Sides.
He said he hopes the solar panels will supply two-thirds of the store’s energy needs. Sides said he is very environmentally conscious but the system also has to make financial sense.
