New West Series
Has Renewable Energy in the West Become the Power of the Elite?
Spending $10,000, even after state kickbacks, or $100,000 for a geothermal heat pump is not exactly in everyone's means, whatever the benefits to the environment.By Lynn Campbell, Guest Writer, 7-10-11
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| With tax credits from the federal and many state governments, those who can afford solar panels are seeing their energy bills plummet. Photo courtesy of Andrew Bravo. | |
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ABOUT THIS SERIES: Students from The University of Montana School of Journalism, with the help of American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, reported and wrote stories for New West on the energy economy of the Rocky Mountain region. The project originated as part of the Green Thread initiative at UM.
The green energy revolution continues to spread across the country with more people choosing to install their own wind or solar power operations. But even with tax credit programs, the cost is often out of reach to many.
Installing these systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars and, in order for them to be effective, wind and solar power require just that—wind and sun.
However, for retired couple Bill and Katharine McLaughry, converting their home was a no-brainer.
“As proponents of conservation for many years, we knew we had to consider energy conservation above all else,” Katharine said.
The couple moved from the second cloudiest area of the country in western Pennsylvania in August 2006 to their current home in Centennial, Colo.
“We came out here and couldn’t understand why not every house in Colorado had solar panels on it,” Bill said. “All of these sun-drenched roofs not producing didn’t seem rational at all.”
Their electric company, Xcel Energy, paid around $18,000 for the installation. The McLaughrys paid the remaining $10,000.
“There are a lot of people whose financial situations are not like ours, but we have never had a lot of money,” Katharine said. “We have always saved and lived within our means, so we were able to put out the initial amount.”
Video producer Rocky Thompson also chose to install photovoltaic solar panels on his home in Boulder, Colo., 12 years ago. Along with the panels, he decided to install solar thermal to heat his water after researching it in the early 80s.
“It’s a good system,” Thompson said. “It has been in place for over 30 years and is still working.”
Thompson admits retrofitting a home to include solar delayed the point at which the system paid for the initial cost of installation.
“If you’re incorporating it when you build the house, it’s so much cheaper than if you put it on afterward,” he said.
Thompson paid over $20,000 for solar panels 12 years ago, but also received a few rebates from the state. “Now you can get the same system for a whole lot less,” he said.
He also said that more and more companies are starting to lease the equipment, meaning that the buyer does not have to put up any money to begin with but pays a regular fee for using the equipment.
In addition to the savings, Thompson added the system has given him some independence, allowing him to have power when his neighbors lost theirs in rolling blackouts.
Covering the Costs
Despite benefits, it is a sizable investment for homeowners struggling with mortgage payments during the recession.
“There is still the cost,” he said. “It does take a while to get that back. And you probably should know what you’re doing for a lot of the systems if you’re really going to save money quickly.”
According to Solar Panel Info, solar panels have a productive lifespan of about 20 to 25 years, with their efficiency decreasing over time. They also require a significant amount of energy to make them.
Another type of alternative energy is geothermal. The owner of Energetechs in Missoula, Mont., Russ Hellem, installs different forms of alternative energy in homes and offices, including geothermal or ground source heat pumps. According to Hellem, the pump uses the constant temperature of the earth as a medium to transfer heat from the building to the ground and vice versa.
The costs of geothermal can range from $15,000 to $100,000, according to Hellem.
“The cost depends on how energy efficient the house is,” he said. “The more efficient the house, the smaller the system you need.”
However, the pumps require maintenance and can break down.
Although there is much being made of installing personal renewable energy operations, Hellem said one of the most efficient home conversions is simply sealing and insulating your home.
“The insulation is not as sexy as geothermal, but when I look at my heating bill at $200 a year, because I insulated so well, that’s sexy to me,” he said.
Although these investments may appear out of reach to many, Hellem said that alternative energy is becoming increasingly important.
“The most renewable energy we have is the energy we don’t use,” he said.
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Comments
"Anderson:
When you look at the big picture, where should we be focusing besides nuclear? On massive solar plants in the desert? On middle-size stuff for office roofs? Or is there a reinvention that could be done right in the home?
Gates:
If you’re going for cuteness, the stuff in the home is the place to go. It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof. But if you’re really interested in the energy problem, it’s those big things in the desert.
Rich countries can afford to overpay for things. We can afford to overpay for medicine, we can overpay for energy, we can rig our food prices and overpay for cotton. But in the world where 80 percent of Earth’s population lives, energy is going to be bought where it’s economical. People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.
You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price to get anywhere. It’s great to have the rich world, because we’re there to think about long-term problems and fund the R&D;. But we get sloppy, because we’re rich. For example, despite often-heard claims to the contrary, ethanol has nothing to do with reducing CO2; it’s just a form of farm subsidy. If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture. For rich people, this is OK. For poor people, this is a real problem, because their food budget is an extremely high percentage of their income. As we’re pushing these things, poor people are driven from having adequate food to not having adequate food.
From the Audience:
What about on the usage side? What do you think of the technologies that are increasing efficiency, cutting down on the amount of energy consumed?
Gates:
There’s certainly lots of room for increasing efficiency. But can we, by increasing efficiency, deal with our climate problem? The answer is basically no. The climate problem requires more than a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is going to address that. As we’re improving our efficiency, poor people are increasing their energy intensity. You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.
Anderson:
Imagine a world where we have made a transition to electric cars, and we have a smart grid, and storage is distributed on some level. Can you imagine that microgeneration would make more sense in a world where we have the ability to use, say, electric car batteries as local storage and have a microgrid model?
Gates: No. We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should. But scale has some significant advantages in terms of reliability, and electricity is something you want to be reliable. Also, this is dangerous stuff: For solar to work well, you have to generate very high temperatures. Do we want everybody to have that on their roof? No. It’s just not going to happen.
Anderson:
So suffice to say we will find no solar cells on the roof of the Gates residence?
Gates:
Oh, we like to be cute like everyone. For rich people, this is OK. Rich people can do whatever they want"
We purchased solar panels for our home last year, and we are producing more electricity than we consume. Our cost after tax credits was under $10,000. We have enough excess production to power an electric car (or plug-in hybrid), and when you factor in the cost of gasoline for a conventional car, the "payback" period is going to be shortened considerably. However, for us, the greatest "savings" is the reduced air pollution and toxic coal ash that comes with making clean electricity from the sun. If naysayers factored in the public health costs of conventional power production, solar electricity would be seen as the clear winner.
Ms Campbell, I'd like to clarify one point made by Mr. Thompson and dispel a common misconception around solar electric systems (also known as PV, or photovoltaic). When talking about solar, the distinction needs to be made between electric and thermal solar systems. Your interviewee has both, which makes the article confusing.
The majority of solar electric systems DO NOT SAVE YOU FROM ROLLING BLACKOUTS. The most common solar electric systems are tied to the grid. For the safety of linemen working on a downed system, they must turn off when the grid is down. The case would be the same for a utility imposed blackout. If Mr. Thompson's system saves him from such blackouts, he must be completely off the grid, have a highly unusual system or have a system that is legally suspect and unsafe.
If he is "off-grid," he made the choice as much from necessity as from any other motives. This decision would make his system a poor example on "pay-back" because these types of systems are far more expensive, having to include battery back-up and other features which store and distribute the electricity as needed.
If he was referring to his solar thermal system (hot water as opposed to electricity) it only saves him from rolling blackouts in so far as hot water is concerned, not electricity. In this case, he would be assuming that his neighbors all have electric hot water, which is the minority. I've never heard of rolling supply losses of natural gas.