Fighting the Good Fight – With Your Help

In a former chapter of his life, the Solar Nation Executive Campaigner helped found and run a grass-roots group supporting a proposed utility-scale offshore wind installation.  The group’s efforts succeeded because it consistently presented factual data to counter wildly exaggerated claims by opponents and despite the fact that its shoestring budget was a couple of decimal points inferior to that of those opponents, whose coffers were kept well-filled by industry and political donors.

There’s an obvious parallel between that experience and that of advocacy groups operating at the national level, trying to draw the attention of federal legislators away from those whose contribution to the debate is expressed in dollar signs.

It’s a tough and sometimes dispiriting race.  But for those of us pleading the case of renewable energy, it’s not a race we can afford to give up – not if we want truly clean energy and a stabilized climate to characterize our age and future ages.

So we still find ourselves fighting entrenched interests for whom energy and climate considerations come a very distant second to quarterly profits and re-election.  Solar Nation monitors activities and developments both in Congress and at state level to find suitable openings for advocacy actions on energy and climate bills.  It’s at the state level where many renewable portfolio standards and emissions limits first become law, and also where some of the fiercest fights to advance clean energy occur.

We know that timely, focused action at this level can reap great rewards.  In the last six months:

• We fought to have Congress extend the Treasury Grant Program, which provides cash grants in lieu of tax credits for commercial solar installations;  the program was extended for a full year in December;
• We focused attention on those U.S. House members co-sponsoring a series of bills to strip funding from the Environmental Protection Agency;  that fight is still ongoing;
• We protested the decision of Department of the Interior to relocate the Solar Decathlon from the National Mall;  it was subsequently restored to the National Mall (albeit a somewhat remote section of it, but certainly less remote than an inaccessible marina in Maryland);
• We supported Kentucky’s Clean Energy Opportunity Act;  the bill moved quickly to the energy committee;
• We fought against the cutting from the federal budget of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program, which underwrites many large-scale renewable projects, opening up the purses of private investors;  the program survived the Congressional budget process in a straitened form;
• We protested the actions of Colorado’s Xcel Energy, which had peremptorily shut down its solar rebate program;  the Utility responded with a program whose incentives rewarded performance rather than investment;
• We objected to a proposed bill in Florida that would have arrogated all solar development to the state’s largest utilities, disenfranchising independent solar developers;  this bill was rejected by the state senate.

But the good guys still need some help to keep going and keep the bad guys off-balance. Can you make a donation to help us help America to become a solar nation? It’s tax-deductible, and easy to do. When you click on the DONATE button, you’ll be directed to our secure giving site, and your donation will keep us working for America’s future.

With thanks, from Solar Nation.

Permitting PV: Keep It Simple, Fast and Cheap

As photovoltaic installations become more commonplace across the country, the solar industry pays increasing attention to ways of reducing operational costs.  Much of this effort is focused on system and installation costs, e.g., more efficient modules, standardized mounting systems, alternative materials, etc., but the effort can be brought to naught by balance-of-system costs, i.e., those costs not related to the actual hardware or the act of fixing it in place and making it work.

Devil in the Details

One of the most egregiously additive balance-of-system line items in a typical installation bill covers permitting costs.  These are the direct and indirect charges related to the local jurisdiction signing off on a solar installation, and include fees levied by the city, county or state for the all-important piece of paper headed ‘permit’, not to mention the costs passed on by your installer for time spent pacing the corridors of power while waiting for that permit.

Permitting fees have become a significant component of total solar installations costs (up to 5% – 10%, depending on location) for several reasons.  Typically, local jurisdictions are responsible for setting permitting requirements, which means that the officials charged with doing so are often unfamiliar with the technology and its requirements.  The result can be permitting procedures that are not only unnecessarily complex but also inconsistent with those of neighboring jurisdictions, adding to the administrative burden borne by the solar installer operating in multiple areas.  Within a local government operation, moreover, multiple departments may be required to review an application, stretching out that timeline and adding to total costs.  And yet, a typical PV system in Albany is not so dissimilar from one in Wichita that a national standard for permitting practices could not be employed in both places. (more…)

How Much Energy Can Your Roof Generate?

A West Virginia entrepreneur is busy mapping and cataloging the solar power potential of every roof in the world.

You can read about his company, and how it might affect you, in this Forbes Magazine article.