{"id":7987,"date":"2014-03-03T12:10:35","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T17:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7987"},"modified":"2014-03-03T12:12:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T17:12:31","slug":"solar-panels-in-stow-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/solar-panels-in-stow-massachusetts.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar panels in Stow, Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn snowy Massachusetts\r\nyou can finance a solar system with little money down\r\nand complete payoff in 11 years.\r\nGet the Georgia legislature to pass\r\n\r\nHB 874<\/a> and we’ll be able to do this in sunny Georgia, too.\r\n

\r\nUsed with permission from howeowner Carl Howe. -jsq\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPeople seem interested so I’ll share details of our solar\r\ninstallation in Stow, MA.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nFull disclosure: I know the president of our solar installation firm\r\nsocially (he’s a friend of a friend of ours), and like many solar\r\ninstallers, they do pay referral fees if others sign up based on a\r\nrecommendation from an existing customer. Should anyone decide to\r\ndo business with our installer, New England Clean Energy, please\r\nmention my name.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWe used New England Clean Energy from Hudson MA. I believe that they\r\nare one of, if not the, highest quality installer in our area. They\r\nhave more than 300+ installations in MA and NH. Of course,\r\nSolarCity and others are also in the region, so they compete with\r\nthem regularly, and anyone interested in solar has many\r\nalternatives you can choose from (including big chains). We\r\npreferred working with a local company we knew and we have had\r\nexcellent experiences working with local contractors (let me know\r\nif you want an air conditioning installer too).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAs noted in my prior email, we own our system. We financed it using\r\ntwo loans: a zero percent loan for the federal rebate, which pays\r\n1\/3 of the total cost of the system; that loan will be repaid by our\r\nincome tax refund in the next few weeks. The rest of it is financed\r\nover 11 years at 3% APR. The money we saved on the capital cost of\r\nthe solar installation we paid instead to replace and upgrade our\r\nroof and 18 skylights (see photos below) so that we wouldn’t need to\r\ntouch any of those things for the lifetime of the solar panels or\r\nlonger.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOur site is unusually good for solar production. Our house faces due\r\nsouth and the roof pitch is almost exactly our latitude. As such,\r\nthe average Solmetric reading is 97% of ideal and during many parts\r\nof the year, it is 99% of ideal. We considered ground mounting, but\r\nour roof is so good, it would have been a shame not to use it and\r\nmy wife hated the look of ground mounted panels.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOur installation has 27 SunPower SPR-X21-335-WHT panels mounted on\r\ntwo roofs. That produces 9.045 nominal kW at full power. Actual\r\npeak results in the first month have been >9.2 kW at noon, which I\r\nunderstand is because the panels are more efficient when cool (and\r\nour winter has definitely been cool). Their efficiency is actually\r\nlower in summer months, but you get more hours of sunshine th at\r\nmore than makes up for it.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe panels are split into two arrays: one with 19 panels and one\r\nwith 8. The “big” array (19 panels) feeds a Solectria PVI-6500-240V\r\n6500W inverter, while t he smaller one feeds a Solectria\r\nPVI-3000-240V 3000W inverter. The two inverters feed a\r\nutility-grade meter for SREC purposes and a web server which\r\nmonitors the performance of the installation. We have another\r\ntwo-way utility meter moun ted on the outside of the house.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe inside meter measures how much power the array produces. The\r\noutside meter measures both the power flowing to the grid and the\r\npower flowing from the grid throughout the month. If those two\r\nfigures—kWhs flowing to us and kWhs supp lied from\r\nus—are the same, our utility bill is $0 for that month. Our\r\nsystem is sized such that we expect to use more power than we\r\nproduce most months for economic reasons. In our net metering\r\nworld, we buy power at retail prices (roug hly $0.15 \/ kWh), but we\r\nsell at wholesale prices ($0.04 \/ kWh). Given the capital costs of\r\na solar system, cottage solar power farming isn’t really\r\na money-making business unless you have a lot of cheap cash laying around\r\nthat you don’t know what to do with.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nEveryone asks about snow, so I’ll answer that question: Yup, the\r\npanels get covered with snow during snowstorms and they produce very\r\nlittle power when that happens (if it is less than 6 inches or so,\r\nthey do still produce power from the light that shines through the\r\nwhite stuff). However, they are mounted at a 45 degree angle, and if\r\nwe get more than about 2 hours of strong sunshine after the storm,\r\nthe snow slides right off.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nTo give you a sense of timeline, we signed our documents on October\r\n9, 2013. Our roof was replaced during October\/November, and our\r\nsolar system was installed in December during very challenging\r\nconditions including snow and 12 degree weather and high winds (see\r\nour review of New England Clean Energy on the SunPower site under\r\nthe NECE installer page). The installation was completed on December\r\n20. Our inspections and utility certification took place over the\r\nnext 30 days or so, and we got PTO (permission to turn on) on\r\nJanuary 29, 2014.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nYou can see pictures of the installation including the inverters and\r\nmonitoring web server here (the photos should have captions, but I\r\nhaven’t figured out how to make them show).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.icloud.com\/photostream\/#A2GY8gBYG4WjgP<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYou can see how much power we are currently generating and its\r\nhistory in real time here:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/www.solrenview.com\/SolrenView\/mainFr.php?siteId=2550<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFeel free to ask more questions. If anyone from Stow is around,\r\nwe’re hosting an open house for Stow Solar on March 15 from 10-2 pm\r\nfor folks to ask questions and get involved in the town solar\r\ninitiative (you get big discounts if you participate). We’ll also\r\nprobably host a solar party on the deck for people not from Stow\r\nduring warmer weather in April or May to help others make the jump\r\nto solar.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCarl\r\n
\r\nBBN ’78-96\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In snowy Massachusetts you can finance a solar system with little money down and complete payoff in 11 years. Get the Georgia legislature to pass HB 874 and we’ll be able to do this in sunny Georgia, too. Used with permission from howeowner Carl Howe. -jsq People seem interested so I’ll share details of our […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,2,23,24,1019],"tags":[8704,713,8701,8699,7415,8702,12,661,7485,8713,6818,8714,8812,7484],"class_list":["post-7987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-government","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-solarcity","tag-economy","tag-financing","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-hb-874","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-massachusetts","tag-new-england-clean-energy","tag-renewable-energy","tag-snow","tag-solar","tag-solarcity","tag-stowe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-24P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7989,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987\/revisions\/7989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}