9 Weeks Solar Production

We had some rainy days this week, but again, we set a new daily production high of 11.32 KWH blowing past the previous high of 10.67 KWH - must be the longer days in addition to the clear blue skies after a rain. Our rolling 30-day average production is 248 KWH, which is higher than the target average of 228.6 KWH to achieve the CSI estimated annual production for our system.

Total After 9 Weeks:
Production: 482 KWH
CO2 Saved: 800 lbs
Estimated Savings: $96.40

System Size DC (STC): 2.28KW
System Size AC: 1.93KW
System Size AC (California CSI rating): 1.63KW
Panels: 10 Sunpower Serengeti 228 Watt
Inverter: 1 Sunpower 3000M (SMA Sunny Boy 3000 rebranded under Sunpower)
Estimated Annual Production: 2,781 KWH

Direction: East facing

Solar Incentives and Rebates

There are plenty of subsidies and incentives available for solar photovoltaics (PV) as well as other renewables. The big incentive is the U.S. Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of 30%. If you install a PV system at your home, you will get a 30% credit on your income taxes the following year (i.e., the tax credit is not a deduction; it is like a tax refund). The Federal ITC is available through 2016.

There are also incentives for solar and renewables offered in/by various states. But the general rule is "first come-first served", which means, the earlier you get in, the higher the incentive. So there is a big reason to buy solar now as opposed to waiting.

The DSIRE (Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency) website is a good source to find incentives (not just for solar) for your state.

California Incentives
In California, the state sponsored program is called the California Solar Initiative. California Solar Initiative (CSI) Trigger Tracker is a convenient tracker for the incentives for the big utilities (PG&E and Southern California Edison). The incentives are done based on "steps". The tracker shows the current incentive rate and where they are in the current step in terms of megawatts (MW) under review and MW remaining. The earlier steps in the program had significant incentives ($2.50 per Watt), but now they are down to Step 6 ($1.10 per Watt) for SCE and step 8 ($0.35 per Watt) for PG&E. These are still good incentives, but they are quickly being taken by others.

LADWP is still paying incentives for solar, but there are delays and the process and calculations are more cumbersome.

Pasadena Water & Power is still paying high incentives of $2.00 per Watt. They use the same basis to calculate the incentive as the CSI Calculator. You just apply it at $2.00 per Watt. So get it while the gettin is good.

Burbank Water and Power still has significant rebates available. They are on Step 4 which provides $2.36 (assuming BWP keeps the renewable energy credits).

Glendale Water and Power is currently on hold until July 1, 2011. If they keep with the same rebate schedule, 2011 incentives are still very high at $3.22 per Watt.

Japan Tsunami - Please Help

The Tsunami in Japan was terrible. They need our help with victims that lost their homes and loved ones and also to help contain the nuclear reactor problems. Here's a site that has a list of rescue/relief organizations - USAID.gov (President Obama mentioned the site when he was making his NCAA Basketball March Madness selections).

8 Weeks Solar Production

We keep setting new daily production highs. This week we had a day that hit 10.67 KWH, which helps to offset the low production on the big rainy days we had this weekend. Our rolling 30-day average production is 247 KWH, which is higher than the target average of 228.6 KWH to achieve the CSI estimated annual production for our system.

Total After 8 Weeks:
Production: 428 KWH
CO2 Saved: 710 lbs
Estimated Savings: $85.60

System Size DC (STC): 2.28KW
System Size AC: 1.93KW
System Size AC (California CSI rating): 1.63KW
Panels: 10 Sunpower Serengeti 228 Watt
Inverter: 1 Sunpower 3000M (SMA Sunny Boy 3000 rebranded under Sunpower)
Estimated Annual Production: 2,781 KWH

Direction: East facing

Solar Training Class at the Audubon Center at Debs Park

This weekend I attended a solar training course at the Audubon Center at Debs Parks in South Pasadena. The Audubon Center is completely off-grid (i.e., it is not connected to the utility) and gets all of it's power from a 26KW solar PV system and a 10-ton solar thermal cooling system. Click link to find out more about the Audubon Center's Green Building.

The class was put on by Wade Webb (Vice President of Residential Operations and Quality Manager at Martifer Solar), who has been installing solar PV systems since 1995. Wade installed the off-grid solar PV battery system for the Audubon Center in 2003 and continues to provide maintenance for the system. When parts need to be repaired or replaced, Wade uses that as his hands-on training for the class. So in the class on Saturday, we actually removed a blown out inverter, replaced the internal controllers and reinstalled the inverter back into the system. Pretty cool. He holds classes there on every third Saturday of the month. Wade says we're going up on the roof at the next class.

Note on the Ads

I recently added ads from Google and links to Amazon and other sites into my blog for a couple reasons. First, I think I can use the panels along the side not as advertising, but as a convenient "index" or "resource guide" tool which are links to source materials I used in researching solar and that I refer to in my blog posts - most of these are links to Amazon and other sites that will bring you away from my Blog. Second, this is my first Blog, so I'm curious as to how these ad links work and how helpful they are (i.e., I want to learn). I will be putting the true ads from Google below the "About Me" section and at the bottom of my Blog. That way they are out of the way.

I hope these ads do not an inconvenience to you. If so, please post a comment and let me know how to make it better.

7 Weeks Solar Production

We set another new daily production high of 10.53 KWH. Our rolling 30-day average production is 242 KWH, which is higher than the target average of 228.6 KWH to achieve the CSI estimated annual production for our system.

Total After 7 Weeks:
Production: 378 KWH
CO2 Saved: 627 lbs
Estimated Savings: $75.60

System Size DC (STC): 2.28KW
System Size AC: 1.93KW
System Size AC (California CSI rating): 1.63KW
Panels: 10 Sunpower Serengeti 228 Watt
Inverter: 1 Sunpower 3000M (SMA Sunny Boy 3000 rebranded under Sunpower)
Estimated Annual Production: 2,781 KWH

Direction: East facing

Rants and Rays - Carbon Leverage

I believe that saving the planet is a worthwhile effort, but the challenge is rationalizing the costs. I believe that the costs can be justified, but we need to think smarter and look at things in unconventional ways.

Let's take the concept of "leverage", for instance. The conventional way to look at leverage is using debt to finance a purchase. In my Buyer's Guide Part 3 post, I showed how financial leverage (mortgage refinancing) can be used to eliminate your upfront costs and maximize your returns from solar. Now, what if we apply the same concept of leverage to CO2 emissions (carbon footprint)? Here's the leverage my solar PV has on my carbon footprint.

Annual Electricity Usage:
Dirty energy provided by Utility: 4,732 KWH
Clean energy provided by solar: 2,781 KWH
Total usage: 7,513 KWH

Annual Cost of Electricity (Year 1):
Without solar: $1,200 ($0.1597 per KWH)
Increase in cost to have solar: $48 ($0.0064 per KWH)
Total with solar: $1,248 ($0.1661 per KWH)
Increase in total cost: 4%

Carbon Footprint (CO2 emissions):
Without solar: 12,772 lbs.
Reduction from solar: (4,728) lbs.
With solar: 8,044 lbs.
CO2 reduction: 37%

Conclusion:
It costs me only 4% more to have solar, but I have reduced my carbon footprint by a whopping 37%. So, for every 1% increase in cost, I save 9.25% in CO2 emissions. In other words, I have a 9.25 to 1 leverage on CO2 emissions - this is what I term "Carbon Leverage". That is huge leverage and, ultimately, enormous value. On a higher level, the point I'm trying to make is that costs and carbon metrics should not be viewed independently of one another. On the contrary, they are mutually dependent and should be viewed holistically to truly evaluate the cost-benefit analysis. Looking at it this way, I think it would be difficult to find another value proposition (environmental or not) where you could spend $1 and get $9.25 of value in return. If you think of solar from that perspective, it's very difficult to justify NOT going solar.

A Utility really doesn't have the advantage of leverage. According to a U.S. Department of Energy study on levelized costs, Advanced Gas Turbine technology costs $0.1035 per KWH to produce whereas Solar PV costs $0.2107 per KWH. It would cost a Utility 2x as much to source their energy from solar rather than natural gas. Using the same methodology as above, it would cost a utility 100% more to achieve a 100% reduction in CO2. The result is a Carbon Leverage of 1:1, which means there is no leverage (i.e., they need to spend $1 to get $1). No wonder utilities are resistant to going solar.

The Carbon Leverage that individuals can obtain far exceeds the leverage that utilities can achieve. That's just one of the reasons why I believe that solar PV really is more of an "individual-scale" technology than a "utility-scale" technology. But that's another topic...I'll post about it in a future installment of Rants and Rays.

Post-publishing note: I recently found that the term "Carbon Leverage" already exists, so I can't take credit for coming up with it. In a study on Clean Investment Budgets, the term carbon leverage is used in the context of incenting poorer countries by giving them higher emissions budgets. By giving them higher budgets, poorer countries are able to sell the excess emissions (like renewable energy credits) to richer nations in exchange for money/capital. This capital can then be leveraged to invest in cleaner and more efficient technology by poorer nations. Carbon leverage in this context is a financing mechanism for richer nations to transfer to poorer nations to effect global climate change. In another study by the Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, carbon leverage is used more similarly to how I defined it above. It's kind of cryptic, but on page 15 they talk about creating a market for renewable energy credits that would be worth less than the equivalent reduction in CO2. This would then create carbon leverage similar to my example above (i.e., since the renewable energy credits are sold at a discount, there are greater than 1:1 reductions in CO2 emissions).

6 Weeks Solar Production

We set another new daily production high of 10.33 KWH. Our rolling 30-day average production is 230 KWH, which is higher than the target average of 228.6 KWH to achieve the CSI estimated annual production for our system.

Total After 6 Weeks:
Production: 311 KWH
CO2 Saved: 521 lbs
Estimated Savings: $62.20

System Size DC (STC): 2.28KW
System Size AC: 1.93KW
System Size AC (California CSI rating): 1.63KW
Panels: 10 Sunpower Serengeti 228 Watt
Inverter: 1 Sunpower 3000M (SMA Sunny Boy 3000 rebranded under Sunpower)
Estimated Annual Production: 2,781 KWH

Direction: East facing

Rants and Rays - CO2 Savings and Emissions

When my brother looked at one of my solar production posts, he exclaimed, "Wow! I didn't know that much CO2 was created by our utilities. Are you sure you are saving 339 pounds of CO2 for only 199 kilowatts hours of electricity? Seems like an awful lot." When he said that, I was even a little incredulous. How can you create 1.7 pounds of CO2 pollution by producing only 1 KWH of electricity? So, I had to look it up.

Here are some pollution rates (per KWH) based on the major fuel types (1999 rates from a U.S. Department of Energy Study):
Coal: 2.095 lbs
Oil: 1.969 lbs
Gas: 1.321 lbs
US Average: 1.341

While my solar monitoring system uses a higher than average carbon assumption, either way, 1.34 or 1.7 pounds of CO2 per KWH is still a lot. And it really adds up. U.S. electricity generation plants emitted 2.27 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution in 2009 according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Electric Power Annual 2009 study. Way too much!

To put this into more everyday terms, a typical refrigerator, for example, uses 188 watts per hour. For the year, it will use 1,647 KWH and have a carbon footprint of 2,175-3,450 pounds of CO2 per year, depending on your utility's fuel source mix. Here's a site on how much electricity common household appliances use. Conserving electricity and being more aware of what and how we use electricity are some things we can all do to help save the planet.

5 Weeks Solar Production

We set another new daily production high of 10.2 KWH on Sunday, blowing past the previous high of 9.6 KWH. And I just realized why. After a day of rain in SoCal, the skies are blue and absolutely clear of clouds and smog. See Current Production Chart thru 5 Weeks.

Total After 5 Weeks:
Production: 250 KWH
CO2 Saved: 415 lbs
Estimated Savings: $50.00

System Size DC (STC): 2.28KW
System Size AC: 1.93KW
System Size AC (California CSI rating): 1.63KW
Panels: 10 Sunpower Serengeti 228 Watt
Inverter: 1 Sunpower 3000M (SMA Sunny Boy 3000 rebranded under Sunpower)
Estimated Annual Production: 2,781 KWH

Direction: East facing

Rants and Rays - The 4 C's of Solar

"Rants and Rays" is my posting of various thoughts about the solar industry. I hope to make this a regular "column" in my blog. Here is my first installment.

There is a catch phrase that all good marketers know - the 4 P's (product, place, price, and promotion). There is also a lesser known model called the 3 C's (customer, company, and competition), but I digress. I was thinking about the challenges and opportunities of solar and came up with a similar catch phrase that I term the "4 C's of Solar" (depicted in a triangle):

• Conscience: Conscience is the desire to go solar. It is the desire to do the right thing and help the environment.
• Cost: Cost represents the obstacles to going solar. Cost is the real and perceived price of solar. Cost is also the time and effort to initiating a solar plan.
• Change: Change is the action of going solar. It is actually doing something to be part of the solution.
• C-nowledge: Knowledge is the tool to make the Change and bridges the gap between the Cost (obstacles) and the Conscience (desire). Personally, I believe there are more perceived obstacles than real ones. Knowledge can help dispel the misconceptions and can allow one to make truly informed decisions.

This is probably a truism for many things, but I think it works well with solar. This is also the purpose of my blog - to share knowledge about solar. Hopefully, people will find it useful and go solar too.