Archive for the ‘General Interest’ Category

A groSolar installation on Burlington, Vermont’s City Market is featured on the US Department of Energy’s Energy Empowers website. Read the article, “Milk, eggs and solar: grocery co-op puts photovoltaics to work.”

We saw this great article by Tom Rooney of SPG Solar on AltEnergyMag.com. It’s called “Why Conservatives Are Bad on Energy: It’s All About the Costs” and it does a great job of laying out the practical and economic reasons for investing in solar energy.

groSolar was named #780 on the 2010 Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the US. This is our third year making the list. Check out our profile on the Inc. website.

One of our customers, Bruce Pollard of Sicklerville, NJ, sent us a great email which laid out his costs and savings when installing a 4.5 kW solar electric system with groSolar. Here are the numbers:

It was just a little over a year ago that groSolar finished the installation of the 4.5kw Solar Project on our house. I thought it would be a good time to do some evaluations and see what my true saving was.

Let me lay some background. I had electric hot water heater, clothes dryer, stove, microwave, light and other normal stuff. We were using oil hot air heat but after the energy audit decided to switch to a Heat Pump with and electric back up system. Our oil cost was $3400 a year and our electric was $3168 a year. This totaled $6568.

During this past year our electric bill was $1975. Considering this was one of the coldest winters and this summer was on of the hottest we were still able to save $4593.

The cost of the heat pump was about $10,000 with the state of New Jersey giving us 50% back within 90 days of install. The savings basically paid for the cost of the heat pump in one year.

On the Solar side we spent about $39,000 with the stage grant paying $7,980. We have received over $6,000 in Federal tax credits this year and expect to get the remaining $6000 next year. We have also received the first 2 payments totaling $2,000 from selling our SREC. So we are down to $17,020. With $2,500 a year from SREC sales a for the next 4 years we are down to $7,020. With energy savings over those same 4 years of about $4,000 a year we should be ahead of the game by about $8,980.

Thank you for your assistance in getting all the details worked out. It was a pleasure working with you and groSolar.

Thanks for letting us share your numbers Bruce!

I’m a huge fan of Google Earth and we at groSolar use it frequently to see if there are potential shading or other issues for a solar site.

I was doing a little searching around on Google Earth and wondered if you would be able to see any of our larger commercial installations using satellite imagery. Lo’ and behold you can clearly see the 1.1 MW solar electric installation we did at Mariani Packing Company in Vacaville, CA. See the solar image from space here.

Some other projects you can see from Google Earth:

Fenway Park commercial solar hot water. Google Earth Image here.

Farm-Way in Bradford, VT. Google Earth Image here.

Worcester State College in Worcester, MA. Google Earth image here (showing construction last year).

Check out this website from one of our customers, Al Blakey. He just installed a 3.4 kW solar electric system on his home in Barre, Vermont and created a great website to show the process, how much he is saving, and how much he is producing with his sytem. Check it out!

groSolar’s CEO, Jeff Wolfe, attended Intersolar in Germany this past spring and was interviewed by SolarPV.TV.  Part One covers Jeff’s role in SEIA and development of the solar market in the US. Part Two covers growth of the US market and manufacturing.

Jeff Wolfe Intersolar Interview Part 1

Jeff Wolfe Intersolar Interview Part 2