When is the Right Time to Invest in Solar?
Image Credit: The Lazy Environmentalist
Have you ever looked at your energy bills and dreamed about an array of solar panels on your roof soaking up free energy from the sun? You certainly aren’t alone in your dreaming, especially given the generous income tax credit the federal government is offering for renewable installations through (30% of the costs with no upper limit). Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that deal?
Of course, to turn this dream into reality you need a conducive building and site (orientation, roof plane, natural shading, etc.) make your home a good candidate for solar. But let’s assume that an experienced solar professional has determined that your home is a good candidate for solar. You still need to ask yourself whether the investment makes sense. Just because your home can produce a solar power, doesn’t mean it should–at least not at first.
Before I explain what I mean and why I say this, I’d like to return to a post I wrote last year about the energy savings I have been able to achieve at my home. If you read this post, you know that my family has cut our energy use by close to 50% over the last three years. It wasn’t be installing solar. Rather, we employed a combination of efficiency and conservation measures designed to reduce both our seasonal and our base energy loads.
Yes, I can “hear” your questions: Seasonal load? Base load? What are these? And what do these have to do with solar?
Seasonal energy load refers to the amount of energy used to heat and/or cool a home, depending on climate. New England is a heating climate but air conditioning has become increasingly common over the last couple of decades, meaning that many homes experience seasonal increases in their energy use in both winter and summer. At my home, we cut our seasonal load by (among other things)
Buderus Condensing Boiler
- air sealing and insulating our house,
- installing a new super efficient natural gas boiler, and
- leaving our central air conditioner turned off for most of the summer (we have found that fans work well for all but the hottest days of the summer).
Base energy load refers to those energy uses that aren’t dependent on temperature changes and that stay pretty constant throughout the year. While there can be minor seasonal fluctuations in the energy we use to run our appliances, electronics, and lighting, and to provide hot water, these fluctuations are much more modest compared to those in the energy we use to heat and cool our homes. At my home, we cut our base energy load by (among other things)
LED Lights Over My Kitchen Island
- switching over 95%+ of our lights to energy efficient bulbs and fixtures,
- turning lights & appliances off (completely off) when they aren’t in use, and
- running our clothes washer on cold.
In short, we cut our energy bills in two ways. First we changed our behavior, a lot. Second, we invested in our home’s energy systems, knowing that these would provide yearly, long-term savings on our energy bills (and improve our comfort at the same time).
Now… let’s pretend that we hadn’t done all these things and instead installed solar panels (it turns out our home isn’t a good candidate for solar, but let’s just pretend it is). Our electricity usage would have been higher–50% higher!–so we would have needed a lot more solar panels.
Even with the 30% federal income tax credit, wouldn’t you rather install $10,000 than $20,000 worth of solar? As Martin Holladay, one of my favorite green building gurus, puts it: “Spending thousands of dollars on solar hardware for a house that hasn’t been carefully air-sealed and superinsulated is putting the cart before the horse.”
My advice: put the horse before the cart. Make your home as efficient as possible. Cut what you can (you’d be surprised how comfortable you may be without air conditioning). And then look into solar.
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Trackback by dressagenews.com — March 26, 2011 @ 10:10 am
I rather agree with Lawn Mower Repair but not just because of the improved efficiency of today’s PV panels. I think different people are going to be in different situations with respect to what they can do in any given year, and that will likely weigh heavily in what measures they are inclined to take. For example, if a home can only be insulated from the inside, as is true of my house, it may make sense to insulate at times when the dust and bother are least disruptive, like when rooms are being painted or when one’s tenants have moved out (as we did). In such a situation, if you can do so, don’t wait years to put solar up, if your house is appropriately situated for it!
On the other hand putting solar up on the roof can also be a matter of right timing: should be done on a newer roof, so the system can stay up for 20 years or more and not interfere with roof replacement.
Meanwhile tax season comes around every year, and for that reason and the “timing” sorts of reasons just described, it may make financial and logistical and yes emotional sense (maybe someone just thinks solar is really cool!) to put the cart before the horse and invest in solar as soon as you get the urge.
Its absolutely true that solar is no panacea and should be only one of the measures a person takes, and Rachel I think this is your larger point, and its a good one. But different people are different, homes differ, inclinations differ, and we should celebrate all efforts to invest in a more sustainable energy future.
Cheers,
Eric
Comment by Eric Olson — April 20, 2011 @ 10:32 am