In Vermont’s state legislature, a bill is under consideration that will help owners of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems put more green into their pockets.

It’s not a rebate or an incentive program to reduce installation costs, but a change to net-metering policies–a change that can reap substantial savings for Vermont residents.

What Is Net Metering?

When a grid-connected, residential solar system generates more electricity than the home is currently using, the home’s electrical meter literally spins backward, sending the surplus energy back into the electrical grid. In many states, the customer then gets a credit for that energy on the monthly electrical bill.

Net metering is one of the primary reasons that going solar has become so affordable. Even with a small home solar system, there are periods of the day when it will generate more energy than the home needs. When that excess electricity is credited to a home energy bill, it cuts down on the costs of the conventional energy that a homeowner may need to supplement the PV system.

Why is Vermont’s Net Metering Policy Changing?

Across the nation, public utilities are mandated to invest in renewable energy. Many utilities partially meet these mandates through net metering, but states are allowed to dictate the percentage of solar-generated electricity that utilities credit their customers. Last year, Vermont raised the cap on the amount that utilities can get from net-metered PV systems to 4 percent.

This, along with Vermont solar rebates, was good news for residents, but the new law restricted the size of eligible solar panel systems to only 5 kilowatts. In Vermont, the average home PV system is around 7 kilowatts, leaving most homeowners ineligible to take advantage of the extra savings without undergoing a taxing application process.

House Bill 475, which just passed in the state’s house of representatives, allows for a simple application process for PV systems sized up to 10 kilowatts. Best of all, the bill also credits customers with home solar systems more money per kilowatt hour for surplus electricity. The bill must still pass the state’s senate.

What About Other States?

Almost every state has programs in place that garner extra income for PV system owners. In many areas of California, for example, net metering savings can be augmented by taking advantage of tiered and time-of-use (TOU) rates. Tiered rates are those that rise as the customer uses more energy. TOU rates increase during peak-demand periods. Home PV systems typically generate enough electricity to keep customers in the lower, base rates.

Other states like New Jersey award home solar system owners a Solar Renewable Energy Credit (SREC) for each megawatt-hour of electricity that their systems produce. New Jersey SRECs are currently selling for $675 each.

Cutting installation costs through rebate and incentive programs is only the beginning of solar savings. Programs like net metering not only offer ongoing savings for homeowners, but decrease the payback period for their systems. Once that period is over, those savings become sheer profit.

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Don’t look now – there’s another reason not to stare directly into the sun. If you look closely, you can possibly see the invisible miles of red tape that all-too-often connect the solar system’s largest star with the photovoltaic permitting process back here on planet Earth.

One might think it should be rather simple and quick; have the property surveyed and adhere to the standards of the Solar America Board for Codes and Standards. Sounds too simple to be true? You know it is.

In the U.S., the PV permitting process is overpriced and inefficient – a project-killing combination for most individuals and corporations considering installation and usage of solar panels.

According to a study done by San Francisco-based PV installer SunRun, the lack of a systematized permitting process in the United States is part of what makes the process so inefficient. PV installation permit requirements are dictated by each state and city. The SunRun report found that disparities in the permitting processes in certain jurisdictions on average add $0.50 per watt. That adds up to $2,516 for every five kW installation. In the next five years, it is estimated that over $1 billion dollars will be wasted on divergent PV installation permitting practices.

Another factor that wastes both time and resources is many jurisdictions’ inexperience with the PV installation permitting process. Despite the fact that the industry has been around and talking about it for decades, clearly widespread adoption of solar panel installation is not yet upon us.

It’s understandable that inexperience with how the PV installation process works might have a negative impact on the permitting process. However, the time has come to set standards so that applications can be streamlined and properly vetted.

As with any other process that requires regulatory guidelines and approvals, inefficiency has had a huge financial impact on widespread adoption of PV systems.

It almost goes without saying that people and companies are put off of the entire “going green” process if it becomes too arduous, costly and time consuming.

It may not be greener to just keep paying the utility companies, but it’s certainly easier.

Going Forward
In most cases, as a commodity gets cheaper, more people considering buying. Unfortunately, that’s not the case when it comes to installing PV systems. It’s widely understood that while the cost of installing the systems is going down, so is interest – simply because the hassle of obtaining a permit put the project out of reach for most.

However, there are methods being devised that can help to streamline the PV installation permit process for small-scale systems (which have less than 15kW maximum power output). Since small systems have many similar characteristics, some U.S. cities are implementing streamlined permitting processes and more efficiently awarding permits. Portland, San Jose and Philadelphia have already enacted this streamlined permitting measure, with a high degree of success.

Perhaps it’s time that the U.S. government get in the game.

Article by Bari Faye Siegel, a technology writer and marketing consultant at Noveda Technologies, an innovative leader in real-time, web-based energy and water monitoring.

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Solar installation costs are projected to fall even further in 2010, study finds.

A complex mix of market forces and policy incentives contributed to a historic low for the average cost of installing solar panels in the U.S. in 2009, according to a new study. But perhaps the most important finding of the study is that decreases in the cost of solar module production, which traditionally lag behind a few years before they are passed on to the consumer, are contributing to a “significant decline in average installed costs” for 2010.

“This trend, along with the narrowing of cost distributions, suggests that PV deployment policies in the U.S. have achieved some success in fostering competition and spurring efficiencies in the delivery infrastructure,” the report’s authors at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory write.“Tracking the Sun III: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998-2009″ (pdf) examined cost data for approximately 78,000 residential and non-residential PV systems installed in the U.S. through 2009 (70 percent of U.S. grid-connected PV capacity) and found that the average cost for a residential PV installation after incentives was $4.10 per watt, a figure 24 percent below the 2008 average.

For commercial PV systems, the cost remained relatively flat as compared to the year before, coming in a bit lower at $4.00 per watt.

Because of sharp differences in state-level incentives, net installation costs varied widely. In Texas, thanks to relatively generous incentives, lower installation and other non-module costs, average solar installations cost $2.40 per watt, the nation’s lowest. On the other end of the spectrum was Minnesota where solar panels cost $5.50 per watt to install after incentives.

It should also be noted that while net installation figures include state and federal tax incentives, they do not include additional incentives available to some customers like state and utility cash rebates or the sale of renewable energy credits (RECs), both of which can lower final costs even more.

Most of the 2009 decreases in cost were a direct result of the lifting of the dollar cap on the federal investment tax credit for residential PV installations.

From 2008 to 2009, average pre-incentive installed costs remained flat at $7.50 per watt. And while comparing pre-incentive costs from year-to-year may be a better way to gauge the health of the industry and the effectiveness of policies aimed at lowering the cost of solar, important implications can be obscured by doing so. For example, the report suggests drops in wholesale solar module costs lag two to three years before they reach the consumer. The authors explain:

Starting in 2008 and continuing into 2010, wholesale module prices began a steep downward trajectory, in response to expanded manufacturing capacity and the global financial crisis. These reductions in module prices, however, did not translate into a noticeable reduction in average installed costs for PV systems in 2009, perhaps reflecting a natural lag between the time that PV system installation contracts are signed and when systems are installed.”

Overall, the report suggests the cost of installing solar PV in the U.S. has hardly bottomed out, especially if the solar industry can continue to scale up as it did in Germany and Japan, where installed costs are much lower. In Germany the average solar PV installation cost is $4.70 per watt and in Japan it is $5.90 per watt. But the major factor contributing to the scaling up of the German solar industry was a policy called a feed-in tariff which guarantees a premium rate for anyone putting renewable energy on the grid — a policy that hasn’t really been embraced in the U.S. and possibly never will be.

Article by Timothy B. Hurst, appearing courtesy Earth & Industry.

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GE just invested in them. Now, Guy Sella, founder and CEO of Israeli company SolarEdge, is planning a revolution. Don’t be alarmed though, this one isn’t dangerous. His goal is to transform the way photovoltaic systems are now operated, in terms of efficiency, safety and cost.

“People haven’t been looking at photovoltaic systems from a holistic point of view,” Sella tells ISRAEL21c. “Panel manufacturers care only about the panels and panel conversion efficiency. The people that develop classical inverters only care about the efficiency of the inverter. I asked: can we create a system that is better than we currently have?”

The answer, according to SolarEdge, is yes. The Herzliya-based has created “intelligent panels” that work together with a central Power Box, which would replace the passive panels that are the current norm. These new panels provide 25 percent more energy as well as solutions to some of the serious problems that plague current systems.

No feedback, no function

Today’s photovoltaic systems have a number of major disadvantages, according to Sella. For instance, there is no feedback from individual panels. If a panel is broken or not functioning properly, there is no monitoring system to detect the problem.

“In fields today you have hundreds of thousands of panels,” says Sella. “Even if some of them are not working, they don’t have any monitoring level, so you as the field owner can’t know if they are working. After a big hailstorm, people habitually walk through the field with a notebook, visually checking each panel and writing down its condition.”

Another problem with having no monitoring system is that people can easily steal the panels, which are worth between $600 to $800 each. These antediluvian conditions would be abolished by SolarEdge’s technology.

Turning passive panels into intelligent devices

In current systems, all the panels in a photovoltaic system are connected to an inverter box, which in turn connects the system to the power grid. SolarEdge, however, has taken all the technology in the inverter box and put it into an electronic chip, or ASIC.

Each photovoltaic panel contains its own ASIC chip, turning each panel into an electronic device that can alert the owner both to its functionality and possible theft. The system will also be connected to the internet, so the owner can go online to check the status of each panel.

These intelligent panels also provide more energy than current photovoltaic panels. “The panel can now optimize its energy output, and can verify that it is converting the maximum energy that it has,” explains Sella.

An additional advantage is that the very different voltage system created by this technology is much safer, says Sella. Current systems use thousands of volts in their DC lines, and are impossible to turn off, a serious hazard in cases of fire. The inability to shut off powerful voltages also makes these systems potentially dangerous to install.

With the SolarEdge system, the panel-embedded electronics can be shut down individually, either through the central power box or via the panel itself.

An excellent rate of growth

Confidence in SolarEdge is high. Founded in 2006, by Sella and co-founders Yoav Galin, Lior Handelsman, Meir Adest and Amir Fishelov, who met in an elite technology unit of the Israel Defense Forces, the 70-member company has raised $23 million in the past year, despite the poor economic climate.

It plans to start shipping products from mass production lines in Israel late this month.

“SolarEdge has partners all over the globe – in the US, Germany, Spain, France, and Japan,” explains Sella. “Through our partners we have access to 40-50 percent of the world market, which is basically wherever there is solar energy.”

This market is in the range of $30-40 billion; and Sella estimates that the worth of his own product is somewhere in the region of $3 billion.

Not surprisingly then, Sella is optimistic about the solar energy market even in the current recession. “The growth rate of the solar energy market makes it interesting. I’m not aware of any market since bubble days that has had this level of growth rate,” he says.

Eventually, Sella predicts, “Solar energy will be cheaper than fuel cells, and energy harvested from photovoltaics will either be cheaper or the same as fossil fuels.”

Article by Ilana Teitelbaum appearing courtesy of Green Prophet; first published on ISRAEL21c

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