Solar: Long-term gains outweigh upfront costs

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There's a way to take a big bite out of your energy bill. It's a technology that's very good to the planet, too.

The catch is that it takes a serious upfront investment of around $24,000. However, as energy prices go up and up, you get this back faster and faster.

Photo-voltaic panels go on your roof and convert sunshine into solar energy. They're a major whack in the wallet, but the good news is that a slew of tax breaks pay for 58 percent of the cost, so you get a 3-kilowatt system for about $10,000. It pays for several months of power per year and the energy it feeds into the grid gets subtracted from your electricity bill.

Another plus is that the array lasts 25 to 40 years and probably adds its original purchase price, $24,000, to the value of your home. Also nice is the fact that this improvement, by Oregon law, cannot be added to the tax assessment of your home.

The main obstacles to rooftop PV are, of course, the cost and the shade cast by trees, houses and hills to the south. Solar installers do an analysis of your site and the more "solar resource" you have, the more tax credits and rebates you get. The highest is 100 percent solar resource.

"If it goes below 75 percent, it's not worth the cost," says Bruce Fiero of Willpower Electric in Phoenix. "North facing and shade won't work."

You need 100 square feet of roof per kilowatt, so for the 3-kilowatt system, think 300 square feet — or 10 by 30 feet. That's a lot of panel and you may not like the look of it hanging over your house but these days, it can be pretty trendy.

Solar PV power pencils out like this: systems from the eight to 10 makers cost $8 to $9 a watt to buy, so a 3-kilowatt (3,000-watt) system costs $24,000, installation included, says Fiero. The Energy Trust of Oregon offers a grant of up $2 a watt up to $10,000, making the system now $18,000. (The city-owned power department in Ashland has its own comparable program.) The state Department of Energy offers a tax credit of $3 a watt up to $6,000, over four years, so now the system is $12,000. Then the federal government offers a $2,000 tax credit and now you're at $10,000 for the system.

It doesn't stop there. Your system is on every day of the year and collects photons from the sun even on cloudy days. What power you use is obviously not going to end up on your bill. What you generate but don't use gets fed back into the grid and is deducted from your bill.

"If it's a 3,000-watt system, it will produce 4,080 kilowatts a year. Electricity now is around 7.5 cents a kilowatt hour. You will produce $306 of electricity a year," says Fiero. "It's not a lot, but it's a couple months worth. However, as electricity prices go up — and they will — it will pay for more and more of your bill."

He adds that another consequence of getting rooftop solar is that once you've opened your wallet for it, you become much more conscious of energy use around your house — you get compact fluorescent light bulbs, more insulation and start turning your thermostat down in winter and up in the summer.

If it rained here like it does in Portland, maybe we wouldn't be thinking about this. However, the Rogue Valley is rated excellent on the solar power index, he notes, about the same as Jacksonville, Florida. After all, the sun is the source of all energy and is a trillion times more powerful than any nuclear explosion.

Photo-voltaic or solar cells might seem a bit magical, after all, they just sit there. But they're all over the place. They are the panels you see in your calculator, watch or that sign that tells you how fast your car is going.

In practice, photons from the sun hit silicon wafers, freeing electrons as DC current. An inverter changes it to AC current for household use. This is transformed into money by your power company and flows into your wallet.

In response, the Earth thanks you for creating less greenhouse gases with power from oil, natural gas, coal and other polluting, nonrenewable sources, of which we use plenty in this valley.

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.

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