CV Solar Primer - Part II - YOUR Commitment!

A DISCUSSION WITH A PHD ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR WHO HAS A LARGE SOLAR VOLTAIC ARRAY ON HIS HOME IN AZ...WHAT CAN WE LEARN  FOR CAPE VINCENT?

Now let’s discuss what YOU can do as an individual in CV to support the environment.  This is where some  people get off  ”green train” because it actually takes personal commitment and $$$, and not a big polluting energy giant to solve our energy / climate problems.  My neighbor and his wife down the street have  a large solar photo voltaic (pv) system on their home .  For this discussion we will call him “Joe”, (obviously not his real name.)  Below are  pictures of his house, but it was a rainy day and very little solar was being produced when I visited. 

                                                            "Joe's"  house

                      BTW Joe and his wife are "solar ambassadors" and they lead by example. 

Joe is a PhD professor of electrical engineering at  Northern Arizona University here in Flagstaff so he is very knowledgeable in the subject or solar electricity, and also up on the realities of wind power.  He lives it and teaches it so he is a good source of info.   He put the panels on his house about 4 years ago.  Notice there is a separate array to the side of his house as well.  He said the were no zoning problems with this separate array although the city inspected it and required more bracing against wind damage. These panels also survived a big nasty hail storm last summer.  There wasn’t even a scratch on the panels by he did have to remove them to replace hail damage on his roof.  Insurance paid for all of that include taking down the panels and remounting.

Joe says his electric bill averaged out over the year is about $8 a month. In the depth of winter it may rise to as much as $25 for a couple months.  He has a Smart Meter from our electric utility Arizona Public Service (APS) for net metering which automatically records when he is selling back to the grid, or when he is using power from the grid. Inside is a small control box  that shows the panel’s performance.  The system has a 5.1 kilowatt capacity. (kw) When I was there it was a rainy day with on and off brief sunny periods.  A kilowatt is a 1000 watts. For reference 1kw would light about ten 100 watt light bulbs.  The controller showed the panels were putting out about 3.6kw during sunny breaks and 1kw when cloudy. If you use 1kw for one hour that is  1 kw hour.  That is how your electric bill is figured. In AZ according to the Energy Information Admin an average home uses about 1050 kilowatt hours p/m and the average bill is about $115 p/m

That falls in line with my bill.     That probably includes the summer in much of Arizona when the air conditioners are cranking up. A 7000 ft above sea level in Flagstaff we have a winter similar to Cape Vincent, but much sunnier, and our summers are like CV as well except much drier. We really don’t need air conditioning. We can have lots of snow but we don’t get long cloud gray periods. Joe says on a sunny day the panels will produce just about all the power the house needs, and depending on the day and time of year he will sell back to the grid.  Obviously in the winter he said was when the panels were least effective because of weather and low sun angle.  The same is true for my passive solar house although on a good winter day we can still heat the solar rooms to over 90 degrees and maintain the house at about 70 until about 2 or 3 hours after sunset.    I would say Joe’s house is about 2000 sq ft. as well as mine too. Since Flagstaff is so high in altitude (nearly 2000 ft higher than the highest point in the Adirondack Mts.)  we can have freezing nights into June, but the days warm up.  So about April when the sun gets higher we can kick butt with solar heat since the house heats up well and we won’t need any conventional  nat. gas heat for days at a time, even though the night might still be in the 20’s and 30’s.  Each day because of thermal mass the house builds more heat.

Here are some financial figures for Joe’s pv solar array, made by Sanyo Corp.  He figures with all the subsidies and rebates it will take about 13 to 14 years for it to pay back. Since many Americans move about every 5 or 10 years I asked if he planned to stay in his house long enough to see the pay back and beyond and he said he did. This could also be an issue to consider if you commit to personal solar.  I didn’t ask but he looked to be in his 50’s  The panels are warranted to put out 80% of max capacity for 25 years. It breaks down as follows

Panel cost about      $42,000

APS utility rebate    -15,000

Fed rebate                -  3000

Cost to Joe     About  $24,000 

We average  300 days of sun a year in Flagstaff, and some of that is in long stretches. We occasionally will get dry periods where we might go 2 or 3 months without any significant precip.

A note about the APS rebate.  AZ like many states requires APS to have a certain % of their electric generation from renewables. Since the state considers Joe’s house as distributed electric generation, which by the way is mostly used right at the source and on the existing transmission system, this in effect is considered as part of APS’s renewable generation portfolio and  I am guessing that this rebate is probably actually a subsidy from the state of AZ.  Joe did have to sign a short term contract with APS, but he didn’t say how long it was, and he could take down the panels now if he wanted, or he could sell his house as well. 

BTW distributed generation is power produced spread out in small quantities.  Like solar panels on lots of homes spread over say the state of AZ or NY instead of one centralized big power plant.  The idea is this is more secure since if one solar array goes down on one house it has minimal impact vs if a large power plant goes down. But it would take a lot of these solar arrays to produce what a big nuclear of coal plant or big hydro dam would produce.  For an idea, one big coal plant in AZ produces around 2000MW which would be 2000, million watts!!!!  The Palo Verde Nuke station in southern AZ which I believe id the biggest in the nation has a capacity of 3800MW. By the way it is the only nuke station that is not on a big body of water.  They use recycles water from near by communities.  We don’t have a lot of water in AZ.  You are going to need massive amounts of land and habitat for solar to produce that kind of power, and it still won’t be reliable enough to replace these base load plants.

Joe said he looks at this solar array sort of like an annuity, but the more important part for me (and he verified this) was that he stood up and decided to do something for the environment on his own at considerable expense. It wasn’t all just economics.  I agreed I had done the same when I built my home.

Now here is another unique idea from our AZ utility APS. Like I said we have a lot of sun. You will see some  businesses in Flagstaff using PV solar. The APS offices here have a large array that powers their large building…well at least during the day on a sunny day!

Flagstaff sits in one of the largest Ponderosa pine forests in the world.  We have a lot of trees but we also have large open meadows where houses have been built.  They get a lot of sun. APS is doing an experiment in Flagstaff.  They are offering home owners in certain sunny neighborhoods a deal. You sign a lease with them to lease your roof space.  They put up PV solar panels and infrastructure at NO COST to you.  In the lease they have access to repair and maintain the panels at any time since they own them and they are now essentially part of the grid.  Not sure but I think the lease goes for something like 20 years. What you get is a fixed rate electric bill for leasing you roof space.You don’t sell back to the grid directly like Joe’s system.  This buffers you against a rise in electric rates for the term of the lease. Sounds interesting, but I am not in an area that qualifies yet.

So if the rumor is BP is going solar, or even solar and wind…why not hit them up for this type of deal.  You get to have PV solar on your house, you get a fixed bill, for leasing your roof, and hopefully you DON’T GET a massive industrial complex in CV.  It is more energy secure too.  Now what if BP and these various wind companies scrapped invasive  industrial wind and got with Nat Grid and did this all over the 1000 Islands Golden Crescent region, or NNY or ALL of NY. It would sure be a lot more palatable than these massive invasive wind and solar projects.  Or maybe a combination of smaller industrial PV solar  where it might actually be appropriate in the environment and could be well mitigated AND a roof PV solar roof leasing arrangement.  This way many people who say they want to do something about our energy/climate problems actually could participate at a more personal level…and you could have people like Joe and myself  too who just wanted to make a personal commitment on our own, that might be able to be part of the distributed grid.

Now what are the downsides?  Well, like wind solar is variable.  In the last two days at my house it’s been cloudy and I can’t use solar, and Joe is getting very little although his panels do work marginally in cloudy conditions.  I have to use the  nat, gas fossil fuel for heat even though it is cleaner than many  fuels.  Since solar is variable like wind, the big base load power plants like nuke and coal run anyhow in the background, because they are base load, and they will need to be there for cloudy days and night time. The difference for my house to Joe’s on this account is that when I use solar heat, I actually shut off the fossil fuel nat. gas, and it is saved by the whole system and is not polluting.  That is unlike solar PV that will still need a running power plant at the ready in the background.

                                   Not much solar yesterday at my house. (picture below)

Today at 1 pm AZ time (3 hrs difference from NY) is  mostly sunny, and 62.  Solar rooms near 100.  We will dump heat today and still have enough for tonight which will be near freezing.  We probably won't need fossil fuel heat the next 7 sunny days even though nights are in the 30's.  Note the large ponderosa pine  trees around the house.  They block the sun part of the day.  I get sun about 10 am and loose it about 2 or 3 pm.  I still get a lot of heat.  Imagine if we could get sun all day.  The trade off was I had to take down 4 beautiful trees last year because they had grown to the point that they were blocking too much sun. But trees are renewable and it helped me save even more on fossil  fuel nat. gas.  There is NO energy free lunch. It's all trade offs and decisions, so let's make sure we have those rational conversations about renewable realities.  My advice is if you build or retrofit passive solar that you should over kill on the solar...then have a way to block it when it gets too hot.  This house is designed this way.  I know people here that have solar rooms with overhangs that start blocking sun this time of year, and they wish they had not designed it that way. Note that my house has glass roof panels so we get tons of sun.  Some homes have only glass windows or doors facing south, that can limit you solar input. My house sits about 5 degrees off due south.  Another solar problem...finding the near perfect lot (trees orientation etc )  This location was compromise of beauty in the forest and sun exposure. Next time I would build more in the open.  Better protection from forest fire too!  We like rainy days this time of year in Flagstaff because it backs off the fire danger for a bit longer.

Industrial and personal solar still takes large subsidies for meager returns, at least for now, or unless you are so committed to it you suck up the $40,000 cost on your own.

People might say they want solar to do something about the environment and then say they don’t like the subsidy scheme, but I doubt they are going to shell out $40 or $50K or more all by themselves to claim to be an environmentalist .

My advice is if you are going to build a new house, roll the cost right into the house and mortgage and subsidies at that point and it could save you money…design it from the get go as solar like I did   I don’t think my passive solar house cost much more to build solar than compared to similar non solar houses in my neighborhood.  

The other downside is if BP is in the mix…we know what their unethical and environmental record is already. It is a disaster.  They could be putting up playgrounds and I wouldn’t trust them!

So there are some solar alternatives where YOU can get involved…which after all is exactly the point if you are serious where you don’t always have to wait for a total industrial solution that would screw up our beautiful town   That is where the line is drawn.  Who stands up and who doesn’t for actual commitment to the environment.

These houses pictured below in my neighborhood had the more complicated solar hot water heating systems for heat and water heat.  They have been removed. I have heard they are too complicated and don't work real well. I have removed mine as well.   Each house still has the passive solar windows, and in the second picture you can see some active solar device in the center window...probably hot water.

The pictures below show other typical new Flagstaff neighborhoods in a

place where we get 300 days of sun a year on average.

 Not much solar here.  And there in is the problem... a lot of

 talk about the environment, but not much real action.

Why aren't contractors building entire solar neighborhoods? Especially here!

Because as of yet it is NOT cost effective. 

Oh yes ...even if we went to as much solar as possible it will still

not take us off foreign oil, or bring that kind of energy security or independence.

 I will wait for the detailed proposals as shown here from the other CV blogs and their commenters, and wait to see the personal solar panels going up on their houses.

 Unfortunately blowing hot air or attacks on ANY blog is not energy production, it’s just a waste of energy!   I don’t think you get a rebate or subsidy for that.  If you did some people in CV would be very  rich and the JLL and PBR blogs would be gold mines!!!  I doubt seriously they will refer you to this discussion, but WE  had it anyway...pass the word!