Solar Energy 1
[ SBN-P, 3/21/2005 ]:
Sun the new energy star
Solar power gains momentum in county, thanks to rebates and rising oil prices
3/21/05
By MELINDA BURNS
Solar power gains momentum in county, thanks to rebates and rising oil prices
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
"Make hay while the sun shines," the saying goes, so Norman Teixeira, a large Santa Barbara County landowner, is harnessing the sun to water his crops.
Mr. Teixeira is installing solar panels to run three wells on 300 acres -- of vegetables, not hay -- northwest of Guadalupe. When the project is finished in June, it will be one of the largest solar-powered agricultural pumping systems in the United States.
Mr. Teixeira paid $900,000 for the system, which includes 750 panels. He got back $450,000 in state rebates and hopes the whole thing will pay for itself in three or four years. As for utility bills, he said, there won't be any.
When the fog creeps in, as it does on most mornings, Mr. Teixeira will be using Pacific Gas & Electric power. But when the sun is shining and the pumps are idle, as they are during picking times or between plantings, Mr. Teixeira's solar "factory" will feed power back to PG&E, making the meter run backward.
"I'm a farmer by trade," Mr. Teixeira said. "I've always believed in green power. Our energy bills just keep going up all the time, and this helps us stay alive longer. We're looking to stay in business as long as possible and take care of our people."
After a slow start in the late 1990s, solar power is gaining momentum here, helped by state rebates and the rising price of oil and natural gas. The City of Santa Barbara now leads the tricounties in residential solar projects, with 136 approved since 1998, when state rebates for solar power went into effect. In second place is Ojai, with 93 approvals.
"It's catching on as a nice thing to have for your home," said Tam Hunt, energy program director for the Community Environmental Council, a local nonprofit group. Mr. Hunt is directing the council's campaign to help make the South Coast "fossil-free by '33."
"Solar is becoming more and more economically feasible," Mr. Hunt said. "It's becoming a nonpartisan, sensible thing to do."
New solar projects in the county include Great White Dental in Santa Maria; Midland School in the Santa Ynez Valley; Harley-Davidson in Carpinteria; and Marborg Industries, Campanelli Construction and the Santa Barbara County Federal Credit Union in Santa Barbara.
Early next month, the Santa Barbara City Council will consider the pros and cons of installing hundreds of solar panels on the roof of the Central Library. Councilman Das Williams says it could be just the beginning.
"We should put solar panels on every single one of our parking garages in the next couple of years," he said.
California has been called the "Saudi Arabia of sunlight."
The state is the third largest consumer of solar equipment in the world, behind Germany and Japan. Yet California gets 40 percent more sunlight than Germany and 20 percent more than Japan.
To help create a U.S. boom in solar power, the federal government and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have launched campaigns for a "million solar roofs."
Two bills in the state Legislature would provide hundreds of millions of dollars in solar rebates for homeowners and businesses during the next 10 years. The program would be funded by a surcharge on consumers' utility bills.
This year's rebate program for large solar and wind projects has already run out of money, leaving more than 100 projects on the waiting list.
Even with subsidies, though, solar power is not cheap: It can take years for a system to pay for itself. The panels require a lot of space and they look industrial -- a stumbling block in places like Santa Barbara, where red-tiled roofs are part of the scenery. Getting a solar permit may take months and cost hundreds of dollars in fees.
"Solar power has reached a turning point," said John Perlin, a Santa Barbaran who wrote the book, "From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity."
"People are going to have to learn more about what's good, what's bad, what's the right way to do things, and what solar can do. It's not like finding a nugget of gold."
In Santa Maria, Great White Dental, a laboratory that makes dental appliances, hired Solar Power Systems to install more than 730 solar panels last year. Solar Power Systems was founded by Mr. Teixeira and his friend Daniel Ringstmeyer, a civil engineer. The panels provide 100 percent of the lab's electricity needs. Mounted on columns in the parking lot, they also shade the employees' cars.
On the South Coast, Joe Campanelli, a Santa Barbara contractor, recently laid solar panels on a rooftop trellis at his "green" office building off Milpas Street. He placed more panels on top of a rental unit next door and hooked them up to his building.
"I'm willing to pioneer this and see if it works," Mr. Campanelli said. "I'm pretty utility-free here now. We feed energy back to Edison. We act like a little power plant for them."
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership on Via Real in Carpinteria installed solar panels last year. Marborg Industries recently placed 400 panels on its offices and shop on Yanonali Street in Santa Barbara. The Marborg recycling plant, now under construction on Quarantina Street, will run largely on solar power.
In February, the Santa Barbara County Federal Credit Union on De la Vina Street became the first credit union in California to install a solar system. The credit union board was disappointed in the low interest rates on certificates of deposit (CDs) and decided to put some funds into solar panels instead, said Pat McPherson, a board member. Over time, he said, the system will likely offer a 7 percent return, based on the money it will save.
"We said, 'My goodness, this is a smart investment,'Ê" Mr. McPherson said.
The credit union also is offering a fast-track loan program for homeowner solar systems. No appraisals are necessary, and a loan can be approved in a week.
At the Midland School on Figueroa Mountain Road, the sophomore class recently helped wire a small solar system that is mounted on the ground. It will supply 15 percent of the electricity for the school kitchen. The $16,000 cost was paid for with state rebates and a grant from British Petroleum.
California presently gets only 0.3 percent of its electricity from the sun. Gov. Schwarzenegger's goal is to boost solar power by 2018 to at least 5 percent -- about as much electricity as 40 natural gas plants could supply.
If the legislation is approved this summer, California would begin offering rebates of up to 40 percent or $5,000 to homeowners and business owners who install solar systems. Presently, the rebates cover about 30 percent of the total cost. A 7.5 percent tax credit also would be available for every dollar spent on a solar system.
Still, it typically takes eight to 12 years to break even on a residential solar system. The payback time for a commercial system is between five and nine years.
Mike Grimes, Santa Barbara public works manager, estimates that it would take 20 years to break even on a solar project on the library roof. The panels would supply only 20 or 30 percent of the library's electricity, he said, adding that final estimates will be made public next month.
"It's expensive," Mr. Grimes said. "You'd need acres of panels to run the entire library. Doing a significant solar panel system could not be justified on economic grounds alone."
Advocates of solar power like Michael Lind, a consultant for Renewable Energy Concepts in Ojai, don't like to talk about "payback" times. What else pays for itself, they ask? Natural gas? No. Oil? Certainly not. Mr. Lind notes that with solar power, the costs are frozen over time and not subject to rate increases. Once the panels are paid off, the cost goes to zero, and the system runs for another three decades.
"It's a hedge against future energy costs," Mr. Lind said. "More people are becoming aware that we may be having some energy problems in the near future. Drilling and burning isn't going to work forever. There's plenty of sunshine."
In addition to the cost of a solar power installation, the bureaucratic hurdles can be frustrating. It took five months, one appearance before San Luis Obispo County planners and $3,500 in fees for Mr. Teixeira to get a permit for his project. Mr. Campanelli spent four months, made two appearances before the Santa Barbara Architectural Board of Review and paid more than $800 in fees to get his solar permits.
In the City of Goleta, Michael Ableman, the founder of Fairview Gardens Farms, said he lost his state solar power rebate in 2003 because he could not get a permit in time. The city was requiring him first to update his entire conditional use permit for the farm, a long process, Mr. Ableman said. Like Mr. Teixeira and Great White Dental, he was proposing to mount the solar panels on columns and use the system as a carport.
"It wouldn't have been visible to anyone," Mr. Ableman said. "It would have been a huge benefit. It's a point of great frustration."
The Community Environmental Council recently won a $50,000 federal grant to help educate the public about solar power, remove the barriers to solar projects and provide low- and no-interest loans. A new state law prohibits cities and counties from imposing unreasonable restrictions on solar installations.
"It's sometimes been hard to get projects through the planning process," Mr. Hunt said.
"It's important to respect a community's values, but I don't think that solar panels on large flat roofs throughout the county would ruin the views."
At sunset on a recent weekday off Oso Flaco Lake Road, near Guadalupe, Mr. Teixeira walked among the rows of columns that will hold up hundreds of solar panels for his irrigation pumps. He said he expects gas prices to rise to $5 per gallon in a few years, driven up by increasing demand from China and India.
Mr. Teixeira said that he and his four brothers sell a lot of vegetables to Japan, a country so particular about food that Japanese inspectors come over to choose the specific fields of broccoli they want to import. They will snap photos of broccoli, too, to make sure they get what they paid for. Teixeira Farms grows good vegetables, Mr. Teixeira said, but in recent years, the company has lost a third of its market share in Japan to China, where labor costs are much lower.
The competition is one reason why Mr. Teixeira plans to replicate his first solar project on all of his family's farms in the Santa Maria Valley. Teixeira Farms presently pays up to $100,000 per month in electricity bills, a cost that Mr. Teixeira hopes to erase with solar power.
"When other farmers see what we're doing, they won't be as skeptical," he said.
"We'll show the agricultural community in the state that it is possible."
[ SBN-P online edition ]:
Sun the new energy star
Sun the new energy star
Solar power gains momentum in county, thanks to rebates and rising oil prices
3/21/05
By MELINDA BURNS
Solar power gains momentum in county, thanks to rebates and rising oil prices
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
"Make hay while the sun shines," the saying goes, so Norman Teixeira, a large Santa Barbara County landowner, is harnessing the sun to water his crops.
Mr. Teixeira is installing solar panels to run three wells on 300 acres -- of vegetables, not hay -- northwest of Guadalupe. When the project is finished in June, it will be one of the largest solar-powered agricultural pumping systems in the United States.
Mr. Teixeira paid $900,000 for the system, which includes 750 panels. He got back $450,000 in state rebates and hopes the whole thing will pay for itself in three or four years. As for utility bills, he said, there won't be any.
When the fog creeps in, as it does on most mornings, Mr. Teixeira will be using Pacific Gas & Electric power. But when the sun is shining and the pumps are idle, as they are during picking times or between plantings, Mr. Teixeira's solar "factory" will feed power back to PG&E, making the meter run backward.
"I'm a farmer by trade," Mr. Teixeira said. "I've always believed in green power. Our energy bills just keep going up all the time, and this helps us stay alive longer. We're looking to stay in business as long as possible and take care of our people."
After a slow start in the late 1990s, solar power is gaining momentum here, helped by state rebates and the rising price of oil and natural gas. The City of Santa Barbara now leads the tricounties in residential solar projects, with 136 approved since 1998, when state rebates for solar power went into effect. In second place is Ojai, with 93 approvals.
"It's catching on as a nice thing to have for your home," said Tam Hunt, energy program director for the Community Environmental Council, a local nonprofit group. Mr. Hunt is directing the council's campaign to help make the South Coast "fossil-free by '33."
"Solar is becoming more and more economically feasible," Mr. Hunt said. "It's becoming a nonpartisan, sensible thing to do."
New solar projects in the county include Great White Dental in Santa Maria; Midland School in the Santa Ynez Valley; Harley-Davidson in Carpinteria; and Marborg Industries, Campanelli Construction and the Santa Barbara County Federal Credit Union in Santa Barbara.
Early next month, the Santa Barbara City Council will consider the pros and cons of installing hundreds of solar panels on the roof of the Central Library. Councilman Das Williams says it could be just the beginning.
"We should put solar panels on every single one of our parking garages in the next couple of years," he said.
California has been called the "Saudi Arabia of sunlight."
The state is the third largest consumer of solar equipment in the world, behind Germany and Japan. Yet California gets 40 percent more sunlight than Germany and 20 percent more than Japan.
To help create a U.S. boom in solar power, the federal government and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have launched campaigns for a "million solar roofs."
Two bills in the state Legislature would provide hundreds of millions of dollars in solar rebates for homeowners and businesses during the next 10 years. The program would be funded by a surcharge on consumers' utility bills.
This year's rebate program for large solar and wind projects has already run out of money, leaving more than 100 projects on the waiting list.
Even with subsidies, though, solar power is not cheap: It can take years for a system to pay for itself. The panels require a lot of space and they look industrial -- a stumbling block in places like Santa Barbara, where red-tiled roofs are part of the scenery. Getting a solar permit may take months and cost hundreds of dollars in fees.
"Solar power has reached a turning point," said John Perlin, a Santa Barbaran who wrote the book, "From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity."
"People are going to have to learn more about what's good, what's bad, what's the right way to do things, and what solar can do. It's not like finding a nugget of gold."
In Santa Maria, Great White Dental, a laboratory that makes dental appliances, hired Solar Power Systems to install more than 730 solar panels last year. Solar Power Systems was founded by Mr. Teixeira and his friend Daniel Ringstmeyer, a civil engineer. The panels provide 100 percent of the lab's electricity needs. Mounted on columns in the parking lot, they also shade the employees' cars.
On the South Coast, Joe Campanelli, a Santa Barbara contractor, recently laid solar panels on a rooftop trellis at his "green" office building off Milpas Street. He placed more panels on top of a rental unit next door and hooked them up to his building.
"I'm willing to pioneer this and see if it works," Mr. Campanelli said. "I'm pretty utility-free here now. We feed energy back to Edison. We act like a little power plant for them."
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership on Via Real in Carpinteria installed solar panels last year. Marborg Industries recently placed 400 panels on its offices and shop on Yanonali Street in Santa Barbara. The Marborg recycling plant, now under construction on Quarantina Street, will run largely on solar power.
In February, the Santa Barbara County Federal Credit Union on De la Vina Street became the first credit union in California to install a solar system. The credit union board was disappointed in the low interest rates on certificates of deposit (CDs) and decided to put some funds into solar panels instead, said Pat McPherson, a board member. Over time, he said, the system will likely offer a 7 percent return, based on the money it will save.
"We said, 'My goodness, this is a smart investment,'Ê" Mr. McPherson said.
The credit union also is offering a fast-track loan program for homeowner solar systems. No appraisals are necessary, and a loan can be approved in a week.
At the Midland School on Figueroa Mountain Road, the sophomore class recently helped wire a small solar system that is mounted on the ground. It will supply 15 percent of the electricity for the school kitchen. The $16,000 cost was paid for with state rebates and a grant from British Petroleum.
California presently gets only 0.3 percent of its electricity from the sun. Gov. Schwarzenegger's goal is to boost solar power by 2018 to at least 5 percent -- about as much electricity as 40 natural gas plants could supply.
If the legislation is approved this summer, California would begin offering rebates of up to 40 percent or $5,000 to homeowners and business owners who install solar systems. Presently, the rebates cover about 30 percent of the total cost. A 7.5 percent tax credit also would be available for every dollar spent on a solar system.
Still, it typically takes eight to 12 years to break even on a residential solar system. The payback time for a commercial system is between five and nine years.
Mike Grimes, Santa Barbara public works manager, estimates that it would take 20 years to break even on a solar project on the library roof. The panels would supply only 20 or 30 percent of the library's electricity, he said, adding that final estimates will be made public next month.
"It's expensive," Mr. Grimes said. "You'd need acres of panels to run the entire library. Doing a significant solar panel system could not be justified on economic grounds alone."
Advocates of solar power like Michael Lind, a consultant for Renewable Energy Concepts in Ojai, don't like to talk about "payback" times. What else pays for itself, they ask? Natural gas? No. Oil? Certainly not. Mr. Lind notes that with solar power, the costs are frozen over time and not subject to rate increases. Once the panels are paid off, the cost goes to zero, and the system runs for another three decades.
"It's a hedge against future energy costs," Mr. Lind said. "More people are becoming aware that we may be having some energy problems in the near future. Drilling and burning isn't going to work forever. There's plenty of sunshine."
In addition to the cost of a solar power installation, the bureaucratic hurdles can be frustrating. It took five months, one appearance before San Luis Obispo County planners and $3,500 in fees for Mr. Teixeira to get a permit for his project. Mr. Campanelli spent four months, made two appearances before the Santa Barbara Architectural Board of Review and paid more than $800 in fees to get his solar permits.
In the City of Goleta, Michael Ableman, the founder of Fairview Gardens Farms, said he lost his state solar power rebate in 2003 because he could not get a permit in time. The city was requiring him first to update his entire conditional use permit for the farm, a long process, Mr. Ableman said. Like Mr. Teixeira and Great White Dental, he was proposing to mount the solar panels on columns and use the system as a carport.
"It wouldn't have been visible to anyone," Mr. Ableman said. "It would have been a huge benefit. It's a point of great frustration."
The Community Environmental Council recently won a $50,000 federal grant to help educate the public about solar power, remove the barriers to solar projects and provide low- and no-interest loans. A new state law prohibits cities and counties from imposing unreasonable restrictions on solar installations.
"It's sometimes been hard to get projects through the planning process," Mr. Hunt said.
"It's important to respect a community's values, but I don't think that solar panels on large flat roofs throughout the county would ruin the views."
At sunset on a recent weekday off Oso Flaco Lake Road, near Guadalupe, Mr. Teixeira walked among the rows of columns that will hold up hundreds of solar panels for his irrigation pumps. He said he expects gas prices to rise to $5 per gallon in a few years, driven up by increasing demand from China and India.
Mr. Teixeira said that he and his four brothers sell a lot of vegetables to Japan, a country so particular about food that Japanese inspectors come over to choose the specific fields of broccoli they want to import. They will snap photos of broccoli, too, to make sure they get what they paid for. Teixeira Farms grows good vegetables, Mr. Teixeira said, but in recent years, the company has lost a third of its market share in Japan to China, where labor costs are much lower.
The competition is one reason why Mr. Teixeira plans to replicate his first solar project on all of his family's farms in the Santa Maria Valley. Teixeira Farms presently pays up to $100,000 per month in electricity bills, a cost that Mr. Teixeira hopes to erase with solar power.
"When other farmers see what we're doing, they won't be as skeptical," he said.
"We'll show the agricultural community in the state that it is possible."
[ SBN-P online edition ]:
Sun the new energy star
Posted by Malcolm on
3/21/2005
Subscribe to RSS Feed
0 Comments
Post a Comment
Links
Create a Link
<< Home