Good for Your Wallet, Good for Your Soul!

Michael Jay is a longtime science educator who is active in the Bellingham Schools and President of the Whatcom County-based company, Educational Systemics, which he leads with his wife, providing breadth and depth of experience in education, technology, and business planning for the K-12 market. Contact Michael at: nrgarticle@gmail.com.
Gary Fuller has been a custom homebuilder for 30 years and is currently starting a Bed and Breakfast with his wife in the Geneva neighborhood where you can see the results of his skill and hard labor.

Imagine you’re taking a psychological test in which I say a word and you say the first word that comes into your mind. I say snowboarding; you say Bellingham. I say island hopping and you say Bellingham. I say solar power; you hesitate and say San Diego. OK, San Diego may get more total hours of sun; however, many residents don’t realize just how viable generating power from the sun is right here in Whatcom County.

At a meeting of the Bellingham Chapter of Solar Washington on April 9, Dana Brandt of Ecotech Energy Systems, made a compelling argument that even this longtime science educator couldn’t refute. It makes perfect sense that every place on earth gets the same number of hours of sun, but the hours of sunlight are just distributed differently during the year.

If you’re at the poles you get your dose of sunlight in six-month-long segments whereas at the equator you get your dose of sunlight fairly evenly distributed everyday, all year long. Bellingham is located just about halfway between the equator and the North Pole so, as you would expect, we split the difference. During the winter we get 8 hours a day of sun whereas during the summer we get 16 hours of sun per day.

We know what you are thinking…. “But it’s cloudy and rains a lot here in Bellingham!” You bet it does but that is mostly during the shorter days of winter when not only are there fewer hours of sunlight but it is also when the sun is lower on the horizon and is, therefore, less intense. Now that we’ve dispensed with the key science barrier, here is where the economics of green energy come into play.

While it is tempting to go off the electric power grid just so your neighbors can see your lights still on during a power outage, it turns out that this mostly makes sense for homes that have no neighbors to see those lights, homes where it is far too expensive to run an electrical hook-up. Being off the grid nearly always means having a bank of batteries that can store the extra power you produce during the day for use when the sun doesn’t shine. And we’re not talking AA or D cell batteries. This requires a bank of deep cycle (translation: expensive) batteries that need maintenance and have a life span of 8 to 10 years depending on their use.

Good news! As far as you are concerned, the power grid is just one big, very efficient battery and the more you use it as your battery, the less you pay for its maintenance. You get back what you put into it with no additional expense and no loss of efficiency, a much better investment than most teenagers! How is this possible?

In Washington State we have net metering. Net metering is sort of like those rollover minutes some cellular phone companies advertise except in reverse. Any additional energy you produce in a month is credited to your account to defray energy you use in months that your electricity production is less than your use.

Although you never get paid for the electricity you produce, you do get back an amount equivalent to what you contributed. From a purely economic perspective this rewards you for producing, on average over the year, exactly the amount of energy you use. In my planned system, I would only produce 34 percent of the electricity I use in December; however, in July I would produce nearly 200 percent of the amount I would use that month.

But, as they say in late night TV ads, that’s not all! There are many other incentives provided to Washington State and Whatcom County residents who have a grid-tied solar installation. You get a 30 percent tax credit up to $2000 for your initial investment, not a deduction, but a real $2000 off your taxes. The cost of the equipment and installation is tax free. You can receive an annual check for 15¢ for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity you generate, not net production, but total production. You can earn an additional 2¢ per kWh by selling Green Tags.

These incentives mean that you should be able to recoup your investment in 8-12 years depending on the size of your system. While most panels come with a 20-25 year warranty, most systems have a life expectancy of 40 to 50 years so your investment will continue to generate value long after it has paid for itself. To put this in perspective, if you took out a 60-month car loan you would have to keep that car for 25 years to match your investment in a solar system AND the car would have to produce rather than use gasoline the whole time. Note: Please contact the U.S. Department of Energy if you have such a vehicle!

One excuse for not making the leap is the potential for buyer’s remorse due to the promise of newer, more efficient photovoltaic technology. Since I have been following solar panels for nearly 20 years, the price has come down a bit and the efficiency has increased 10 to 15 percent but all the while I’ve continued to suck power from the grid.

A number of nerdly publications I read have alluded to new technologies that will double efficiency and halve the cost of solar electric panels; however, none of these is yet commercially viable. The most recent is from NanoPV, a company which has a promising approach employing thin-film silicon technology that could be less expensive and allow placement of power-producing panels in places that are somewhat more difficult with today’s technologies.

While I’m excited about what the future might bring in this area, present photovoltaic technologies represent steady improvements of a proven technology over the past 50+ years. Making this large an investment in a household’s infrastructure should be based on solid technology that has seen the light of day or, should I say, many years of days.

If you are not yet ready to make the leap to invest in generating your own power, you can almost certainly do a lot to reduce your existing power use. The number one place you should start is with those little heaters called incandescent light bulbs. Just Say No. There are many alternatives on the market including the twisted compact fluorescent light bulb or CFL.

After nearly 15 years of CFL use in my household, it is a wonder that I’m still married! In the early days, the light produced by CFLs was harsh and they took seemingly forever to start, neither of which pleased my wife. This is no longer the case. You can get CFLs with warm light (3500 K) and they start up right away.

What many people don’t realize is that you can get dimming CFLs and 3-way CFLs and the more prevalent indoor and outdoor reflector styles. You can even get them in the shape of a globe or traditional incandescent bulb. When we made this change, we reduced our electrical use by over 15 percent and the bulbs last much longer than incandescent bulbs so there is less maintenance in the long run.

Now we’ve started to move to LED lights and they are great. They use half as much power as the CFLs, have a pleasant warm light, and last up to 18 years. For those of you with can lighting, I can personally vouch for the PermLight product which is easy to install in an existing fixture.

Replacing your existing refrigerator is another place to realize significant savings. April 2008 brought even more stringent EnergyStar requirements for fridges representing another 20 percent increase in efficiency.

I could go on but these are a few simple changes you can make without the use of tools or contractors and they will move you light years ahead. If you are a Puget Power customer, I recommend that you create a personalized login at the Puget Power website and investigate the Home Energy Tools section (www.pse.com). This turns the hypothetical discussion about energy savings into actionable items. If you are not a homeowner, there are still plenty of good ideas there about ways you can live more efficiently and reduce your carbon footprint.

If you are ready to jump into solar power, you can certainly start small and build from there, although planning can really pay off. You need a reasonably unobstructed southern exposure. This can be on your roof but the panels can also be mounted on a pole. At our latitude, angling the panels at 34° due south is ideal; however, this is not absolutely necessary. There are two companies based in Whatcom County that specialize in photovoltaic installation and either of them can do a site analysis for you to determine the viability of your location for a solar installation. Whatever you do, do something. I could tell you to do it for the environment, for the future of your children, or even for the good of humanity but, heck, be selfish and just do it for yourself!

For more information about the Bellingham Chapter of Solar Washington go to: http://www.iinet.com/~solarwashington/groups/bellingham.htm. §