New Hampshire is becoming a renewable energy leader in the Northeast thanks to increasingly progressive energy policies and generous incentives for solar installations.

Homeowners have been able to enjoy a $3/watt system rebate up to $6,000, which takes a big bite out of the cost of a solar electric system and brings the ‘simple’ return on the system to under 7 years in many cases (see more on solar electric ROI).

However, in a recent order of notice (DE10-194 – full details here (PDF)), New Hampshire’s Public Utilities Commission has proposed reducing the rebate from $3/watt, $6,000 max to $1.5/watt, $3,000 max.

Here’s an explanation:

The incentive payments are funded through the Renewable Energy Fund (REF), which is supported by alternative compliance payments (ACPs) made by electric service providers who cannot meet their Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) obligations through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) …

the REF [has] an uncommitted balance of approximately $1.5 million. Given that the small residential renewable incentive program experiences an average of 20 incentive applications per month, totaling an average of $12,800 per month in incentive payments, or, $1.5 million annually, and assuming this rate of participation will continue at that level, the fund could be exhausted by this program before the end of fiscal year 2011 and would likely exceed the portion of funding that should go to residential programs …

Based on these factors, the Commission proposes to halve the incentive payment to $1.50 per watt and the per-system maximum to $3,000 for small residential electrical renewable energy facilities. Lowering the incentive payment and per-facility maximum amount will allow for the same number of systems that are currently processed for rebates to be eligible for incentives, thus providing continued business for installers of small residential renewable generation systems.

While it’s encouraging to see the PUC concerned about the long-term longevity of the program, we’re dismayed to see such a severe cut in the cash rebate proposed.

Luckily, there’s still time to chime in publicly about the proposed changes. A public hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday, September 1, 10AM at the Public Utilities Commission, 21 South Fruit Street, Suite 10 Concord, N.H. 03301-2429 (Map and Directions).

Want to go solar now?  Contact us for a free site evaluation and we’ll help get your paperwork into the State before the incentive is decreased.

Commercial Rebates on the Way

In another bit of encouraging news, there is motion to create commercial, nonprofit and municipal solar incentives for both solar electricity and solar hot water.

We attended a technical session on August 19 to review the PUC’s renewable energy rebate design considerations. There is an additional opportunity for public comment on August 30 at 10AM and opportunity for written comment until Sept 3.

There may still be changes yet, but the suggestions under consideration:

• the… incentive payment for PV systems will begin at $1.25 per Watt for the first 20 kW and would decline to $1.00 per Watt for the next 35 kW and to $0.75/Watt from 55 kW up to 100 kW. In addition, the C&I rebate for a PV system would be capped at 25% of the cost of the facility, or $50,000, whichever is less. The $50,000 cap would be reached at a system size of45 kW under these incentive levels.

• The [solar hot water] base rebate would be $0.07 per rated or modeled kBtu/year, capped at 25% of the cost of the facility or $50,000, whichever is less, as a one-time incentive payment.

Details in the full order of notice (PDF).

We’ll be attending this session and will write up the results and likely changes as soon as we have more details!

This NREL map shows the states in the United States where feed in tariff legislation has been passed – only 14 states so far

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released the largest report on feed in tariffs ever produced by a US Government Agency.

The 144 page document, called A Policymaker’s Guide to Feed-in Tariff Policy Design (PDF Download), analyzes the results of Feed in Tariff legislation in over 75 countries, including the efforts so far in the United States.

What is a Feed in Tariff and Why Should I Care?

A Feed in Tariff (FiT) is an alternative to taxpayer-subsidized incentives for renewable energy programs. With a FiT, the government mandates electric utilities to pay a certain above-market rate for electricity generated by net-producers. Meaning, an individual with a good solar location can install solar panels and turn a profit.

There are a number of reasons that a FiT is more effective than cash and tax incentives towards spurring renewable growth:

• The FiT is a performance based incentive – Quality of system design and performance is determined based on a need for return on investment.
• The FiT does not depend on taxes – Since incentives rely on tax money, at some point those coffers will empty and the incentives run out.  A FiT can be financed many ways, usually in the electric market. This takes a burden off of strapped state and federal budgets, and permits renewable growth to scale.
• The FiT offers a predictable return on investment – Solar energy systems offer a predictable rate of production whose value increases as the cost of electricity increases. Given the state of the economy, a renewable investment can be more secure than the stock market!

Key Findings of the Report

The NREL report does a good job of debunking feed in tariff myths, while also critically examining policy challenges faced abroad. Some of their more interesting findings:

• “FITs are responsible for approximately 75% of global PV and 45% of global wind deployment” (5)
• “The arguments in favor of a FIT policy are primarily economic in nature. These include the ability to … stimulate significant and quantifiable growth of local industry and job creation … [and] only cost money if projects actually operate” (27)
• “RE developers benefit from the long-term stability of the revenue streams generated from electricity sales, which helps foster a high level of investment security.” (121)
• “Another benefit is the direct competition for market share that is occurring under FIT policies in countries such as Germany, France, and Spain. This can drive greater private R&D investment, while helping spur further innovation and technological cost reduction” (121)

The report cites a number of primary, secondary, and tertiary benefits (pg. 18-20) for growing the renewable energy with FiT policies, such as:

• Increasing local jobs and developing the economy
• Reducing greenhouse gases
• Displacing load (to phase out coal fired power plants)
• Peak shaving (i.e. reducing the peak load conditions which CMP cites as the reason for the $1.4 billion grid upgrade)

The report then goes on to discuss in great detail the pros and cons of different models of feed in tariffs and the variety of ways they can be made into policy. Variations include payouts based on fixed rate prices vs. premium rates which fluctuate based on the market, to sliding scale rates based on economic conditions and those that vary based on resource quality and location.

You can read this in-depth report for free. (PDF Download)

Will a Feed In Tariff Make it to Maine (and New Hampshire)?

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you’ve seen our coverage of Maine’s own attempt to establish feed in tariff, which was voted unanimously “Ought Not To Pass” in May, 2009.

A watered down version of the bill, providing for pilot community-owned electricity generation with caps on tariff payouts, was later passed in June 2009. The Midcoast Green Collaborative has a great write-up of the legislation as well as a history of Maine’s slow road towards a feed-in tariff.

For the moment, no concrete, meaningful feed in tariff legislation for Maine homeowners is on the horizon.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire has just passed legislation that will require utilities to pay customers that are net-generators of electricity for their surplus.

The rates to be paid for this electricity are yet to be determined – whether they are truly market rates or a lesser “avoided costs” rate, but should the legislation be successful in spurring renewable energy growth it is possible that true feed in tariff legislation will follow.

We’ll keep you posted as feed in tariff legislation continues to develop in Northeast!

Special thanks to Clean Technica and Renewable Energy World for information about this new NREL report.

More Reading

Learn more about feed-in-tariffs and how other states and countries are using them to move solar energy forward:

• Hawaii feed-in tariff decision to open clean energy market
• Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover (NY Times)
• Tripling of Solar Jobs in the UK this Year due to FIT?
• Feed-in tariff for alternative energy

Peace Fleece is a unique yarn company committed to helping historic enemies cooperate and prosper through trade. Peace Fleece offers knitting yarn made from a blend of Russian, Romanian, American, Israeli and Palestinian wools as well as felting supplies, batts for quilters. Also Russian handpainted knitting needles and wooden buttons, patterns, knitting, crochet and felting kits and batting and raw fleeces for hand spinners as well as Waldorf puzzles and toys made in Russia. The company’s energy efficient offices are located in a barn on a sheep and horse farm in the idyllic town of Porter, nestled in the foothills of southwestern Maine

Peter Hagerty and his wife, Martha Tracy, started buying wool from the Soviet Union back in 1985 with a goal of using mutually beneficial trade to help diffuse the threat of nuclear war. Since then they have journeyed through eastern Europe, central Asia and the Middle East in search of farmers and shepherds who are willing to set aside historic enmities in exchange for opportunities leading to mutual understanding and economic interdependence.

Their journey to solar energy began with an interest in another renewable resource – wood. For over ten years the farm’s major source of heat has been a Tarm gasifying wood boiler which our sister company ReVision Heat sells and services. On a visit to Peace Fleece in April, ReVision Energy co-founder Phil Coupe helped Peter and Martha assess solar electric options for their farm.

Thanks to a suite of strong rebates and more affordable solar electric prices, Peace Fleece decided to put a 4.2kw grid-tied solar electric array on their barn roof, which is oriented to ideal solar south. The system features Enphase micro-inverters, which provide real-time internet data monitoring that Peace Fleece has made available to the public:

Peter writes of his experience with ReVision:

The great thing about living in the State of Maine is that everyone is connected one way or another. When the Revision crew arrived for the installation, the crew leader Josh and I quickly realized that we not only had several friends in common but also shared a committment to bio-fuels.

On that day I was having trouble with a bio-diesel engine that is pulled by our draft horses and powers our haying equipment. Josh described to me how a friend had run parallel fuel lines so when one filter clogged he could switch over to the other line and stay in business. I went back to my haying and Josh climbed back up on the roof to finish the installation.

The system is expected to produce roughly 4,400 killowatts of clean, renewable energy each year. This energy will offset 5,722 lbs. of CO2 emissions that otherwise would have been produced by fossil-fuel burning energy plants.

The Granite State has already been a solar leader in New England with their generous $6,000 cash rebate for residential solar electric systems up to 5kw as well as an average $1,500 rebate for solar hot water.

Now New Hampshire has taken the next step – mandating utilities to pay the customer for excess electric generation!

Yes, New Hampshire now requires utilities to pay customers when their solar electric system generates more electricity than they use.

The legislation, House Bill (HB) 1353 states that:

the customer-generator may elect to be paid or credited by the electric distribution utility for its excess generation at rates that are equal to the utility’s avoided costs for energy and capacity to provide default service as determined by the commission consistent with the requirements of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA)

Emphasis Added

Wow!

How Much Will I Be Reimbursed?

In Germany, getting paid for solar electric generation is well-known, the special rate that you receive for excess solar electric generation is called a feed-in tariff.

New Hampshire’s program is a bit different, in that customers will get reimbursed closer to market rates for electricity, rather than a special “feed in” rate (which, in Germany, generates a roughly 8% return on investment for owners of solar systems).

The legislation puts it this way:

Each net energy metering tariff shall be identical, with respect to rates, rate structure, and charges, to the tariff under which a customer-generator would otherwise take default generation supply service from the distribution utility.

While the legislation is still in the process, should the full distribution cost of electricity be included in the reimbursement, that would result in a rate of close to .15c/kwh. We will post a follow-up once we better understand the details of the program!

When Can I Get Started?

The legislation is marked to be effective August 13, 2010.

In the meantime, solar electricity continues to spin your meter backwards and reduce your electric bill to zero so there’s no reason to wait!

Contact us to keep updated as we discover more details about this exciting new program (which hopefully shall inspire neighboring states to follow suit).

ReVision has commissioned our latest educational solar project – a 15.4kw grid-tied solar electric array installed on Winthrop High School, a system that will offset roughly 28,149lbs. of CO2 emissions annually.

The project, which was funded in large part thanks to an Efficiency Maine Block Grant, will save the school more than $3,000 a year for several decades.

Carl Swanson, a retired electrician and Winthrop Green Committee member who helped oversee the project, said this of the work:

[ReVision has] very knowledgeable, clever, capable workers who seem to know their stuff. Even though they are electricians they have had to learn the intricacies of solar power, which I can see is quite a field all its own. I have developed a great admiration for their work, having watched them work for the past 2 weeks. [This is] a first-rate job that will last many years that we can be proud of.

The system was also featured in the Kennebec Journal and on the Winthrop town website.

As with all educational installations, the system has been outfitted with a data monitoring system so that students can learn how the system works and monitor usage historically and in real-time.

From our Schools and Nonprofits Solar Photo Gallery:

See more installations in our Solar Projects Map

Today in the US Edition of the Wall Street Journal, an article about how appliances can be both energy efficient and good-looking.

Gwendolyn Bounds writes:

Say goodbye to the scary room, that dank, dark spot where boilers and water heaters work among the spiders, with human visits taking place only when something—”Honey, there’s no hot water!”—goes wrong. As a vanguard of homeowners invests in renewable energy and other high-efficiency equipment, they’re spiffing up the mechanical room and, in some cases, trying to make the air conditioner a showpiece.

… “The mechanical room is now like the wine room or the library,” says Stephen Bohner, owner of Alchemy Construction Inc. in Bayside’s Northern California neighbor, Arcata. He installed some of the Starrs’ equipment. Mr. Bohner says all of his new construction projects include renewable-energy equipment, such as solar. “If you are spending money on that stuff, you want to show it off.”

Gwendolyn goes on to confess that’s she a boiler junkie – as evidenced in this video:

Well, Bounds is in good company here at ReVision! Here are some examples of the mechanical work we do that marries form and function:

There’s a common misconception that solar electric is unaffordable and expensive compared to traditional, fossil-fuel based electricity. That’s not true!

To fully appreciate the real affordability of grid-tied solar, we need to throw out the notion that solar should be evaluated like other household appliances, and not for the worry-free 40 year investments that they are.

PV prices have dropped by 40% or more in the last few years and are warranteed for 25 years (there is ample evidence that they perform for 40+ years). So as a reasonable comparison, the cost of a PV installation should be compared to the cost of pre-buying electricity over a minimum 25 year period.

Let’s look at an example of 5kw array for a homeowner:

Even taking the conservative estimate of 25 years of system performance, for someone who can take advantage of the existing incentives, the average price per delivered kw/hr from a solar system is roughly half of what a kw/hr costs from the grid today!

In an uncertain economy, clean energy may just be the most reliable investment available – contact us to learn how you can lock in your energy rate for decades and reduce your carbon footprint in the process.

CMP, a subsidiary of Spanish-owned Iberdrola USA, raised electric rates by 2.5% this month to pay for a $1.4 billion grid upgrade project

Three things in life are now certain: death, taxes, and increased costs for energy.

In mid-May, the Maine Public Utilities Commission approved CMP’s proposal for a $1.4 billion improvement project on the electric grid.

Called the Maine Power Reliability Program (MPRP), the project will “build a new 345,000-volt transmission line from Orrington to Eliot, doubling the capacity of the grid’s backbone. CMP contends the improvements, the first major upgrade since 1971, are needed to keep the power grid stable beyond 2012.” (Source: Bangor Daily News).

Just about a month later, on June 24, CMP announced their first rate hike, a 2.5% increase that raises the average rate of electricity from 6.39 cents per kilowatt hour to 6.54 cents per kilowatt hour.

According to PUC Chair Sharon Reishus, “Transmission rates will likely increase as we upgrade and build new transmission infrastructure to meet the region’s demand for reliable electricity.” (Source: PUC Statement)

How Far will Maine’s Rates Go Up?

Maine is part of a group called ISO New England, which means that Mainers are responsible for 8% of the price tag of the massive project (and consequently, we are also responsible for 8% of the cost of projects developed in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut). That leaves $120,000,000 to be picked up by Maine residents, or roughly $100 per person, for a project which smart-grid advocates had argued was unnecessary.

Indeed, even during this year’s hot, traveler-packed Fourth of July weekend, Maine’s peak energy use was no higher than it was four years ago.

An Alternative Vision

GridSolar envisions a Maine that looks more like Germany – where solar panels are a common sight on homes, businesses, and open fields.

On the – ahem – sunny side, the MPRP includes several stipulations, one of which is to build two pilot utility-scale solar projects – one in Portland and another in Midcoast Maine. This effort will be lead by GridSolar.

GridSolar is a strong advocate of the smart grid and plans to demonstrate how small-scale solar generating plants can offset the need for massive transmission lines.

These pilot plants will be performing at their peak when extra electricity is most needed – during the hot, sunny days of the summer.

And since the power will be produced locally, it can be transmitted to energy consumers without the massive transmission lines needed by out of state, fossil-fuel burning facilities.

If you are irritated about rising energy costs but think that solar is still too expensive, read our follow-up post that demonstrates that solar is cheaper than grid electric, even at today’s prices!