groSolar CEO, Jeff Wolfe, will be one of the featured presenters for the online presentation by AltaTerra Research Network titled “On-Site Solar Power Policies and Incentives: Where’s the Money?” The presentation will be held on Thursday, March 17th from 11a-12:30p PDT/ 2p-3:30p EDT.

Overview

For most companies and organizations considering rooftop or other on-site solar in the U.S. today, government economic incentives strongly influence when, how, and whether or not to “go solar” at a particular facility. For solar product and service providers, the state and federal policy environment is crucial to determining which markets will be the most active.

In California and New Jersey, advantageous policies have stimulated the creation of the two largest solar markets in the United States. Now other states are beginning to follow suit–including Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina.

In this online briefing, Eric Paul, analyst at AltaTerra Research, opens the session with an overview and outlook for federal and state support for distributed renewable energy systems. Jeff Wolfe, chair of the Photovoltaics (PV) division of the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and CEO of groSolar, provides a perspective on how commercial, institutional, and industrial customers evaluate solar project opportunities. As head of one of North America’s oldest and most geographically diversified solar energy distributors and installers, Mr. Wolfe has unique insight into how customers are actually deploying solar energy systems and which policies have been the most effective at stimulating the market. Mr. Wolfe will be joined by a speaker from SEIA’s Government Affairs division discussing the current state of play and legislative agenda in Washington.

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!

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