My Quest to Go Solar
Now or Never producer, Sarah Bacon, set out to investigate solar to reduce electric bills at her mom’s house on Block Island, Rhode Island, which has rates 3-4 times the national average. Because of these astronomical rates, over 10 percent of residences on the island have switched to renewable energy, most of which is solar.
We talked with Jamie Paquette of SolarOne on how solar works, which steps one needs to take to switch to solar and the tax rebates involved. Then Entech Engineering, a Block Island-based renewable energy consulting and installation company run by brothers John and Chris Warfel, paid a visit to the house and walked Sarah around the property and through the process.
Finally, we ran the numbers.
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Photo: Energy Education Foundation
Music: Jefferson Airplane, Lennon and McCartney
Tags: distributive generation, electric bill, energy efficiency, grid, hot water heater, net metering, solar panel, white roofs
Solar Power: The Story after the Panels
Genevieve Joy
You have solar panels on your roof and it’s raining outside. Will you still have electricity? How will you dry your clothes?
If your home is “off the grid”, it generates its own power and has its own water source independent of public utilities. If you don’t have batteries to store the electricity you produce, you’ll be in the dark without Netflix. Most likely, though, if you are self-reliant you have batteries for storage; so while you are still completely dependent on your own energy production, you can also use it when none is being generated.
If, like most of us, you are in fact on the grid, you will have electricity whether your solar panels are being radiated or not. When it’s night and no electricity is produced, you simply draw power from the grid. During the day the panels will produce energy and feed into the grid, offsetting your usage through something called Net Metering.
Net metering measures the difference between the electricity you buy from the utility and the amount you produce. If you produce more than you use, the meter spins back to reflect the electricity you’ve put into the grid and in some states the utility purchases surplus at retail price.
Not all of us have access or the capacity to generate our own renewable energies. A Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) is a way to draw on renewable power from any location. One REC is created for each megawatt-hour of electricity that is put into the grid by a renewable generator.
Once the energy enters the grid it is impossible to know its source. As a result, purchasing a REC offsets emissions within the entire system since the actual electricity powering your home is probably a mixture of oil, coal and nuclear. If you’re on the east coast the REC will support wind and hydropower; although growing, solar plays a larger role on the west coast.
The main way to get RECs is through green energy service companies, called ESCOs, that allow you to choose your energy supplier. For a little more money, you can choose to use renewable sources. Sometimes your provider will deliver the electricity for you from the supplier, as is the case with Con Edison, and sometimes you must go straight to the source. The US Department of Energy has a list of REC marketers on its website.
Whether you produce your own renewable energy or purchase RECs that provide it, there are possibilities for everyone to access clean electricity.
Photos: California Solar Installation, Precision Power Inc.
Tags: coal, con edison, electricity, energy production, grid, hydropower, net metering, nuclear, oil, renewable energy credit, utilities
