As an Ohio solar developer, we keep a close eye on states and markets where solar has developed faster or sooner, like California. Here is a re-post from Bloomberg News, 9/13/2013:

Solar panels are the next granite countertops: an amenity for new homes that’s becoming a standard option for buyers in U.S. markets.

At least six of 10 largest U.S. home builders, led by KB Home, include the photovoltaic devices in new construction, according to supplier SunPower Corp. (SPWR) Two California towns are mandating installations, and demand for the systems that generate electricity at home will jump 56 percent nationwide this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

“In the next six months, home builders in California and the expensive-energy states will be going solar as a standard, and just incorporating it into the cost of the house like any other feature,” Jim Petersen, chief executive officer of the PetersenDean Inc., the largest privately held U.S. roofing and solar contractor, said in an interview.

Lashing panels to roofs during construction is about 20 percent cheaper than after a house is built. Homeowners who can afford the extra $10,000 to $20,000 cost in return for free power threaten the business of traditional utilities such as Edison International of California or Kansas’ Westar Energy Inc.

Power companies are losing business because they can’t cut their rates in line with the tumbling prices of residential solar systems. Those cost about $4.93 a watt in the first quarter, down 16 percent from a year earlier, according to the Washington-based solar association. That was sparked by the 18 percent slump in prices for solar panels and related hardware in the same period.

Mortgage Embed

A 3-kilowatt system, enough to power a typical mid-size home, costs less than $15,000 and can be rolled into a mortgage, said Tom Werner, CEO of San Jose, California-based SunPower.

“You embed it into your home mortgage, you’re cash-flow positive month one,” he said.

That’s similar to how some buyers decided to pay $5,000 or $10,000 for a kitchen counter top that would be from natural materials and would outlast a Formica-style top.

“You’re going to see a transition from novelty, to granite counter tops, to mainstream option,” Werner said in an interview. “We’re rapidly passing the equivalent of a ‘counter tops decision’ to a ‘no-brainer.’ You just do it.”

As more homes generate their own power, typically with the help of state or federal subsidies, they’re buying less electricity from traditional utilities.

Jeopardizing Grid

PG&E Corp., California’s biggest, has said this jeopardizes the power grid because there’s less revenue to maintain the infrastructure. In response, utilities are raising rates, a burden that’s a slightly heavier burden for people without solar power. In California they may eventually pass on as much as $1.3 billion in annual costs to customers who don’t have panels.

The price crunch has also clobbered many manufacturers, pushing some of the biggest in Germany and China to protect themselves from creditors and restructure debt over the past two years, including Solar Millennium AG and Q-Cells SE.

PetersenDean installed photovoltaic systems on about 7.5 percent of the 100,000 roofs it built last year. CEO Petersen said he expects that figure to double this year.

“We’ve picked up at least a dozen new subdivisions since mid-March, and all of them have incorporated it into the cost of construction,” he said.

KB Home (KBH) has built about 1,800 homes with rooftop solar since 2011, according to Steve Ruffner, president of the company’s Southern California unit. It’s currently developing 22 communities in the most populous state that include panels as a standard feature, he said.

Arizona Offers

“Our buyers told us that’s the way they wanted to go,” Ruffner said in an interview. “Selling solar to the consumer is the value in the process, because they can put that in their mortgage.” The company delivered almost 3,300 homes in total during in the six months through May and expects to surpass that in the second half of its fiscal year.

KB sells solar as an option on homes in Nevada, Texas and Colorado and plans to offer it in Arizona beginning next month.

Megan McGrath, a real estate analyst with Stamford, Connecticut-based MKM Partners LLC, said building new homes with panels is still mainly a California phenomenon.

“It’s not as big of a deal elsewhere,” she said. Builders in other states haven’t seen significant demand for energy-efficient homes, so “it’s not really an important part of your strategy.”

10,000 Homes

About 494 megawatts of panels were installed atop new and existing U.S. homes in 2012, according to the solar trade group. That figure is expected to swell to 770 megawatts this year as prices continue to slide and may reach 2,175 megawatts in 2016.

SunPower has supplied components for more than 10,000 U.S. homes, including 4,000 built last year in California, the biggest solar state. As many as one in five homes built in the state this year will have solar, Werner said.

R. Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, California, pushed through legislation in March requiring the equivalent of at least 1 kilowatt of solar power on all new homes starting next year. About 97 percent of city buildings are considered “net zero,” producing as much power as they consume, he said.

The entire city, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, may be net-zero within three years, he said. Sebastopol, California, a town about 55 miles north of San Francisco, passed a similar measure in May that applies to new residential and commercial buildings.

“Economically, there’s absolutely no reason not to do this,” Parris said. “Solar is the only way to go.”

Any thoughts on solar panel obsolescence, solar panel upgrades, etc. – i.e. 25-30 year lifetime is great, but do you anticipate material or other advances to provide a justifiable upgrade projection in 7, 10 or 15 years?

The solar industry is still evolving. Solar modules of the format we are currently using (crystalline cells sandwiched between glass sheets and framed by aluminum) are here to stay for at least the next decade if not the next three decades. The performance of the cells has pretty much been maxed out. The real advances now are simply bringing the cost of manufacturing down. So yes, in 7 or 10 years there will be lower cost solar panels, but I strongly doubt they would have sufficiently improved performance to justify a change-out or upgrade.

Our industry does not yet have sufficient standards in place to make solar panels mix and matchable or plug and play commodity items. Each project is still a custom project and the specific panels are matched to the specific inverters. There are about 600 different makes and models of solar panels and they are all different electrically and in their physical dimensions. So swapping one out for a “better” one in the future will likely not be possible.

The most likely upgrade you could expect would be improved inverter controls which would allow your system to keep running during grid troubles. Given the large number of inverters already deployed, I foresee such improvements being made available as retrofits to existing inverters.

Yes, there could be some step changes in performance improvement in the next ten years. But from what I’ve seen repeatedly since 2006 is that the overall economics of the package don’t improve. If the project makes sense to do now, you should just do it. Those customers I know who waited for something better to come along now generally regret that decision. They could have been saving money all along.

 

Inverter warranties are 10-15 years, depending on the make and model. Inverter replacement costs are hard to forecast 15 years out. The inverter manufacturers are just now starting a price war similar to what the solar panel manufacturers went through over the past three years. So costs for equivalent models will likely fall considerably over the next 15 years. However, more and more value-added features are getting built into inverters, so those additional features will likely offset the price reductions going forward.

We had this question from a customer: Given that there isn’t too much rain to help with the cleaning, what is the typical solar panel maintenance attention that you would anticipate – is solar panel cleaning just typically wetting them down with hoses, or hand scrubbing? Dust obviously and a lot of birds out there. Every other day, once a week, once a month? What is the accessibility (between panels, etc.).

And here is our answer: For most of our customers there is little to no maintenance whatsoever, other than a weekly or monthly check of the production numbers to make sure the system is still operating. They make no noise either on or off, so unless someone pays attention to the monitoring alerts you won’t notice if the system goes offline. We can have the system set up to send automatic email alerts to us and you so such events won’t get missed.

Washing: In the Midwest, with lots of rain, it is typically not cost effective to wash modules. In CA, however, it is generally considered cost effective to wash modules one to two times per year. First wash is best done in late May, early June. Second wash is optional, depending on rain. A good spray from a hose is usually sufficient.

Random birds are not much problem. But if birds make a habit of visiting one spot, then that spot will need some scrubbing.

Solar panel accessibility depends on your goals and priorities. The CA fire code requires walking space all around the edges and a few pathways between arrays. But this still leaves large portions in which individual solar panels would be hard to reach. The panels are usually butted tightly up against each other. Our trained installers can walk on them, but I would not want an untrained or inexperienced person walking on them. So, you should stand in the walkways and spray with a strong hose.

Alternatively, it is possible to purchase automated washing systems, but whether or not they’re cost effective depends a lot on the design detail. Suffice it to say, this is something easily solved and not too costly.

We all use electricity. For too long we have ignored issues about where electricity comes from, and believed that electricity is best made by others, by experts, by “the powers that be.” Now we are entering a new era in which we can take control of our future, including the important choice of how our electricity is generated.

I am proud to be part of the growing solar power industry. Every day, companies like Third Sun Solar are busy building new clean solar power plants, including solar for homes, businesses, universities, government buildings, military facilities, hospitals, and libraries.

Solar technology is simple, reliable and efficient. There are no moving parts. The panels are solid state, modular, and scalable. More panels make more power. To make a certain amount of electricity, you might need 10 solar panels in the desert southwest and 12 in Ohio, or 15 in upstate New York. The state with the most solar is California; second is New Jersey. Germany is a shining example of a modern industrial nation that is well on its way to a clean renewable power grid. The point is, solar can work anywhere the sun shines. There is NO TECHNICAL BARRIER to a solar powered U.S.A.

Solar panels also make sense financially. Costs of solar panels have dropped by 80% since 2007. With long term financing, a solar system can cost less than conventional retail power, with free fuel. There is NO ECONOMIC BARRIER to a solar powered U.S.A.

My company and many of my friends in the solar industry are hard at work turning on system after system for folks that are choosing clean energy. But there are many entrenched interests that benefit from perpetuating the status quo—generating our electricity by burning coal, oil, and natural gas, and pouring pollution up into our delicate atmosphere. Aging, inefficient and highly-polluting power plants are being kept online simply to maximize profit, and for no other good reason. This has to stop. There is a very REAL POLITICAL BARRIER to a solar powered U.S.A.

At Third Sun Solar, our company mission is to accelerate the shift to clean energy. We need to move forward, installing clean solar and wind power as quickly as we can, while also retiring the dirtiest, oldest power plants as quickly as we can.

We salute and support Environment Ohio in calling on Senator Sherrod Brown to support the EPA’s new Carbon Rule.

“What about solar during a utility failure?”

For safety, grid interactive solar systems are designed to immediately disconnect and shut off if a utility grid failure is sensed. The system will automatically restart a few minutes after grid power is restored. As a result, no power will be available from the solar panels during utility outages. This protects utility workers who may be out working on power lines.

With new SMA transformerless inverters, a solar system can provide limited daytime power during a blackout. These inverters can be connected to household loads — like a fridge, lights, computers — and make up to 1,500 watts available while the sun shines.

Solar energy systems can provide around-the-clock, independent backup power during utility outages if they are connected to an appropriately-sized battery bank to absorb and store the energy they produce. Natural gas and propane generators are another option for backup power. We have installed solar panels and a generator on numerous jobs, when secure power is an absolute must-have.

Solar maintenance requirements are minimal.

Solar electric systems require no regular maintenance. The system operates silently and reliably for years, the same as the electricity we expect from the utility company.

Dirt and dust accumulation on the panels will reduce energy generation slightly. Customers who wash their solar panels typically notice about a 1% increase in power immediately following the wash, but washing is not necessary. Normal rain and wind are sufficient to remove most dust and debris.

Periodic monitoring of system performance is usually all that is required to ensure that the system is operating properly. Solar performance monitoring can be done manually, but for large public systems, automatic Internet-based solar monitoring is recommended. This allows remote solar monitoring by maintenance personnel, the solar installer and any other interested parties. Internet-based monitoring can also provide interactive solar performance displays for the public, and a cool way to show off your solar.

 

Solar electric provides intermittent power production — meaning, it produces electricity when the sun shines, but not at night. Solar energy systems must work in conjunction with some other power source (or incorporate energy storage, like batteries) to provide a round-the-clock energy solution.

That’s why most of the systems we design and install are grid-connected. The utility grid becomes your energy storage device — when the sun isn’t shining, the grid powers you. When the sunshine is strong, you add power to the grid.

People often ask, “Why not just add batteries?” And off course we can do that, and have built many solar energy systems with battery backup. But many solar users who started off-grid with batteries have migrated to grid-connected systems, for reasons of economy, ease of use, convenience, and long-term energy planning. Grid-connected solar currently offers the shortest and best return on investment (ROI), in most cases.

We are happy to provide strong reliable battery-backup solutions for our customers who need them. But adding battery storage to a solar system adds substantial a cost and maintenance burden to an otherwise low cost, maintenance free system.

There is widespread agreement that solar electric systems improve the capacity and reliability of your regional electric grid.

Solar electric systems generate the most power when the sun is strongest, during midday and afternoon hours. That is also the time when demand on the electric grid is highest. Solar energy systems can help the utility meet this peak demand. Distributed PV installations at multiple sites can produce power where needed, lowering transmission losses and further reducing the strain on the grid.

A study by Richard Perez (1) posits that the Northeast U.S. Power Blackout of August 14 2003 may have been avoided if local solar power systems amounting to just a few percent of regional peak loads had been available.

(1) Richard Perez et. al. “Availability of Dispersed Photovoltaic Resource During the August 14th 2003 Northeast Power Outage”

 

A solar electric system generates the most power when the sun is strongest, during midday and afternoon hours. That is also the time when demand for electricity is highest.

To meet this afternoon peak demand, utilities fire up smaller “dispatchable” power plants that are often more expensive to run and more polluting than the larger, base load generating plants.

Powering a home or business with solar energy can reduce the utility’s peak load and reduce the peak generation by the utility. This results in lower overall energy costs and cleaner air. Having many small grid-connected solar arrays also increases the capacity and stability of the grid.

For every 1 kW of solar power installed, utility power plant emissions are reduced approximately 1500 pounds per year. Over a thirty-year life, each 1kW of solar power prevents 21 tons of CO2 emissions from being released by conventional energy sources.

How noisy are solar panels? When operating, solar panels make no noise. They have no moving parts. Solar energy systems generate electricity in complete silence.

 

People often ask, “Is solar reliable?” Solar energy systems are highly reliable and have low maintenance costs. Solar electric systems installed by well-qualified solar installers typically have reliability rates above 98%.

 

Solar offers a fixed-cost hedge against future energy cost increases. It makes your future energy costs more predictable, and lower.

Solar energy systems have high up-front cost, but once installed, the fuel (the sun) is free forever. Due to the thirty-year system life and very low maintenance costs, once the system is purchased, the cost of energy is fixed at a known quantity. This compares with conventional electric energy costs, which have been rising at around 5% per year and may be expected to rise even faster in the future. Conventional energy prices, with their dependence on fossil fuels (coal, gas, and oil) are subject to the volatility of those markets, as well as any future costs of environmental remediation or carbon emissions penalties.

Several states have tiered energy prices in which the price per kWh of electrical energy consumption is lowest at night (when demand is lowest) and highest during the afternoon (when demand is highest). Because solar systems produce maximum energy during midday and afternoon hours, solar electric systems offset the highest-priced energy in a tiered pricing market. In Ohio, a solar electric system is a great bet on future adoption of tiered pricing in the Ohio markets. Install solar now, and if tiered pricing comes in, you’re equipped to offset the highest-cost energy and thereby save the most money on your electric bill.

 

Growing public awareness of climate change and energy sustainability issues means installing renewable energy systems can be a good public relations move, and can help improve corporate image in the public eye. So it is not unusual to see solar news coverage of a large installation in your area, whether at a university or on a corporate campus, or even on a local bakery.

For homeowners, the “PR-pop” usually comes in the way of attention and interest from local media and from friends and neighbors. People with solar on their homes tend to be looked upon as leading-edge, tech-savvy people. And they questions from others who are starting to have an interest in solar. Our customers are our best ambassadors.

The most common type are not. Crystalline solar panels are mainly silicon and aluminum. The chips are very similar ways to computer chips. They are sandwiched between glass sheets and surrounded by an aluminum frame. No toxic chemicals used.

Some thin-film solar modules use toxic materials such as Cadmium and Telluride, and we don’t usually use those. But even with Cd/Te modules, the only risk of exposure to these elements is during manufacturing. Once the panels are made, the elements are firmly sealed inside of the panel. Tests have shown that no toxins are released, even in a fire.

Cadmium and Telluride are by-products of aluminum mining, so it can be argued that manufacturing solar panels represent a great way to dispose of toxic waste that is being generated to make all kinds of aluminum products, from aircraft parts to beverage cans.

Solar panels are manufactured using similar methods as the manufacture of computer chips and glass panels.

How much greenhouse gas does solar panel manufacture emit? The answer depends on the type of solar panel, says Vasilis Fthenakis, head of the Photovoltaic Environmental Research Center at Brookhaven National Lab. Fthenakis and has conducted extensive research on the environmental impacts of solar and compared it with other technologies like fossil fuel to get a better idea of the big picture. “There’s nothing that’s completely risk-free,” says Fthenakis. “But photovoltaic compares very favorably with all other technologies.”

With today’s technology, the energy required to manufacture a solar panel is roughly equal to the energy that panel will produce in less than 2 years of operation. Given a 30-year panel life, a solar panel produces clean energy for over 28 years after its “energy debt” has been repaid.

Solar panels last 30 years or more. The industry standard panel warranty is this:

• 10 year workmanship warranty
• 25 year power warranty

Some modules, such as Trina, have a linear power warranty. Most however, have a two-tier step warranty that guarantees this:

• 90% power at year 10
• 80% power at year 25

Solar panels degrade gradually over time with exposure to sunlight, wind and weather. Panels are typically warranted 25 – 30 years and have a design lifespan of over 30 years. Energy production is expected to degrade by about one-half of one percent per year.

Inverters are warranted for 10 – 15 years and have an expected lifespan of 15 – 20 years. Future inverters will likely have longer lives. You may need to replace an inverter once in the system’s lifetime and we figure that cost into our financial predictions.

All other system components have service lives over 30 years.

Grid-tied solar electric systems automatically feed power into your house. Any excess electricity produced by the solar system and not used by your home is put onto the electric grid and spins your electric meter backward. Your utility credits you on your bill at the retail rate for the kWh produced.

Solar panels operate in this manner: When sunlight is on them, solar panels produce DC electric current. The DC electric current is passed through an inverter and converted to AC current synchronized with the local utility lines. The utility company provides power as normal. The solar panel system serves as an additional power source, fully integrated with the home or building’s existing power sources and the utility grid.

Most of the potential issues facing modules are covered by manufacturer’s warranties. Apart from those issues, we have replaced panels for the following reasons, not covered by warranties:

• Tree branch fell on array
• UPS truck backed into array
• Bullets fell from sky and pierced panels

This is what insurance is for.

However, the bulk of potential solar panel damage can be mitigated by choosing an experienced solar installer and using top-quality equipment.

We know of other installers who have replaced modules for these reasons:

• Baseball cracked modules mounted in the outfield of a ballpark
• System caught fire due to combination of poor design and poor installation
• Wind blew apart a poorly designed or poorly installed solar array