Xcel clams that their move is prompted by the decline in solar panel costs and increasing subsidization from Federal Government programs. It is true that solar panel costs have dropped 50% over the past 2-3 years but there have been no new Federal Government programs except the existing Federal Tax Credit that has been in place since 2008. So what is Xcel referring to with the additional subsidizations? Has Xcel considered that the price of fuel, copper, and raw materials are continuing to rise every day? Panel prices are only one piece to the puzzle and stating that as the main reason is extremely shortsighted.

Xcel’s move could not have come at a worse time. As spring approaches most companies were gearing up for the season by hiring new installers, sales consultants, and engineers. Unfortunately, those same companies will now be sending many of their existing staff to the unemployment line and Help Wanted ads to search for new employment. Since the inception of Xcel’s Solar Rewards program in March of 2006, the solar industry in Colorado grew from 400 professionals to over 5,300 in 2011. Estimates now show that as many as 3,000 industry professionals could lose their jobs from the Xcel decision. A similar move by Black Hills Energy last October destabilized the industry in south eastern Colorado when they halted their Solar Program. Installations in those areas have dropped by 90% since October and hundreds of jobs have already been lost.

The sudden move also shows that Xcel is flexing its corporate arm and is ignoring the requirements that Amendment 37 and HB 1001 have placed on investor owned utilities. They are using their Monopoly to take away the options that consumers have been granted by these legislative measures. It has also become clear that Black Hills and Xcel Energy are not responsible enough to administer their own Solar Programs and the call for an independent third party to handle the process is being demanded. This will give the Solar Industry a clear and transparent avenue for serving the needs of the utility customers in Colorado. It will also create a stable market place so solar businesses can make smart, long term decisions to best meet the needs of their customers as well as their employees.

What happens next is up to the Public Utility Commission (PUC). Xcel has submitted a request to reduce the state mandated rebate from $2.00 a watt to a new $0.25 a watt. In addition, they are asking to pay up to $1.00 a watt REC payment to give customers a total of $1.25 a watt rebate. As of now a decision by the PUC may not be made till early May. Until then, the solar industry will have to just tread water and continue to dream of the day when these rebates and subsidies are not needed. But as long as fossil fuels continue to receive extraordinary subsidies from the federal government, it will never be a level playing field. In the meantime, the sun will continue to shine 300 days a year in Colorado.

Keeping the Lights On While Transforming Electric Utilities

By Lena Hansen and Amory B. Lovins

Electric utilities operate now much as they did a century ago—but the environment in which they operate is changing dramatically. Now more than ever before, utilities whose regulators reward them in the traditional way for selling more electricity risk losing revenue as customers use their electricity more efficiently. Climate change and energy security concerns, coupled with advances in disruptive technologies, may make conventional power-generating assets uncompetitive to build or even to run. Potential competitors armed with new technologies, new business models, and greater cultural agility are emerging in many sectors.

A New Electricity Paradigm

Responding to these disruptive forces requires a shift to a fundamentally new paradigm of electricity generation and use—business-as-usual incrementalism is simply insufficient. The new paradigm will be based on a highly integrated network of advanced technologies including energy efficiency, demand response (which affects the timing rather than the efficiency of usage), renewables such as solar and wind, energy storage, and distributed generation.

Read more here

The GEO will be offering a $1.50 a watt rebate for Residential Grid-Tie PV systems with a $4,500 cap. Commercial Grid-Tie PV installations will be eligible for as much as a $15,000 rebate. If a program partner like a municipality of utility company sign up, the rebate can be as much as $3.00 a watt with a $9,000 cap on residential systems and $30,000 for commercial. Although, it appears that we will not have a program partner in Chaffee County this time around with Sangre De Cristo declining the opportunity with the GEO, and at this point Xcel costumers are not eligible for the GEO rebates due to the already existing Solar Rewards rebates.

On the Solar Domestic Hot Water side, the GEO will be offering a rebate which will cap out at $3,000 on residential systems and $15,000 on commercial systems. There may be an additional pilot Solar Domestic Hot Water program for Xcel customers which will have more details available soon.

There are a handful of requirements that will be necessary to for a homeowner to qualify for the program. I will give details on them once they are finalized by the GEO in the follow weeks. Stay tuned.

Xcel’s newly adopted program rules have some merit but, in my opinion, they are designed around the Front Range infrastructure which is a far stretch from life here in the mountains. One of the rules on their new Candidate Checklist that the customer must have a meter, whether temporary or permanent, installed on site. This seems logical unless you have been one of the numerous people in the valley who have waited 2 or even 3 months to have Xcel put in a service to your new home construction site. Unlike the Front Range where Xcel has thousands miles of service lines crisscrossing their territory and hundreds of employees to get you hooked up in a timely manner, our local Xcel distribution network here in the valley is much different. Many home sites, especially in the outlaying areas of Poncha Springs, contain lot sizes that are much larger and diverse than the typical Denver lots and the task of bring new electrical service to the property is not trivial. At times, hundreds if not thousands of feet of trenching must be done, all by a very small group of local Xcel employees who have the laborious task. This 2 to 3 month wait has made it extremely difficult for us when we are submitting Solar Rewards Applications for new construction. In the past, as long as a request for electrical service had been applied for at our local Xcel office, the criteria had been met for the Solar Rewards Application and waiting the few months for the service to be installed was not a deal killer. Nevertheless, today’s new meter requirements have many of my customers waiting in the wings for Xcel to come out and dig their trench and hook them up. Then, and only then, can we run their application with the Solar Rewards Program and lock in the most current rebate amount.

Another one of the requirements on the new Solar Rewards Program is the addition of a $250.00 deposit required for all applications. This deposit is meant to keep the workload down for the Xcel administrators who, in the past, had to deal the hundreds of applicants who just wanted to kick the tires around. This deposit keeps only the serious applicants from entering the queue and helps streamline the approval process. The deposit is fully refundable if the system is installed within 6 months which also keeps the projects moving forward.

Do the reduction of Xcel rebates mean the local Solar Industry is dying? Just the opposite actually. Speaking with the Xcel administrators last week, they said they are still busier than ever. So far, the reduction of rebates is being matched dollar for dollar by most Solar Panel Manufacturers. When Xcel’s Solar Rewards Program was launched in 2006 the rebates were $4.50 a watt with a typical installation running around $8.50 a watt. Now, with the current Xcel rebate being $2.85 a watt, a typical solar installation is reaching levels as low as $5.60 a watt. Pair that with the current Federal Tax Credit and it is still a win for the consumers.

Where does this leave the homeowners who do not reside in the Xcel energy territory? Be patient, new rebates are on the way, this time administered by the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) with the funds from the AARA program. This new program will be slightly different than the extremely successful GEO rebate program that ran this spring and was matched dollar for dollar by utility coops like Sangre de Cristo Electric Association (SDCEA). The over-prescribed GEO/SDCEA program sold out in one month and left a lasting impression with the GEO regarding the general mindset of the citizens of Chaffee County. Nevertheless, SDCEA has opted out of the matching funds option this coming term which may change the rebates available to the Valley. As we all wait for the GEO to announce the new details though, dozens of Chaffee County residents are ready to jump on board and take advantage of the solar potential in the Valley.

Stay tuned for the next submission with information of how to finance a RE system for your home, our business. Rebates, tax credits, and financing make it simpler every day.

Having attended conferences and expos in the RE industry since 2004, I was amazed to see the changes that have transpired in such a relatively short period of time. The standard dress code even 4 years ago was a flannel shirt and your cleanest Carhartt pants. This year it was a full suit and tie event. The RE industry finally has a solid presence and investors and business people alike are becoming intrigued. Many of the attendees represented the large commercial and industrial scale projects that are a far stretch from where the industry was 5 years ago. These projects range in the 10 to over 50 million dollar range and overshadow anything we see here in Chaffee County. Nevertheless, there is no silver bullet for the future of energy in the world and every watt counts, even on the smallest roofs. Local distributed energy is still the best approach for energy independence and the best way for homeowners to take advantage of the emerging technology. Calculating just the RE systems here in Chaffee County we save over 40,000 kwh of consumed energy every month! Hats off to everyone who has joined the movement.

The foremost question I have been asked since I returned from Anaheim is, “What is the next biggest thing coming?” I am sorry to say that I did not see any Solar Paints or groundbreaking Nano Technology but there are still great advances made everyday. Module manufacture, SunPower is still making the most efficient modules on the market which is a great accomplishment for a US based company in an industry dominated by the Europe and Asia markets. SMA, the German powerhouse of inverter companies, is still making exceptional inverters with even more options coming in 2010. Even more exciting is their recent announcement that they will be building their first manufacturing facility in the U.S. just up the road in Denver. Enphase Energy who hit the ground running nearly two years ago with their micro inverters sold over 100,000 in 2009 and has become a topic of conversation for dealers and installers at all levels of the industry. And as expected, Chinese module manufacturing has exploded with hundreds of companies proudly displaying their +/- 200 watt modules which, for the life of me, I could not tell one from the other.

One thing that stood out in my mind most of all was how many options are available now to the installers and end user. The industry as a whole has become “smarter” and there are so many smaller innovations that decrease the installation time, improve aesthetics of the system, and increase overall performance while still maintaining the downward trend of overall cost. In particular, PV system monitoring has become a very popular and affordable option which allows the end-user to insure they are getting the best return on their investment. Even Apple has made an “app” to monitor your system on your iphone from anywhere in the world. Check out one of our local monitoring systems on the Sangre De Cristo Electric PV system in Buena Vista.

Overall, Solar Power International 2009 was an exciting event and I am excited to get back on the roof and continue the RE movement here in Chaffee County. Although some financial incentives will shrink it is exciting to see panel prices decrease as well and the industry become more resilient and stable. We all look forward to the day when RE becomes self sufficient and is commonplace in every household. With over 80 local systems operating here in Chaffee County, it is proof that the movement has begun.

Working with nearly 60 families in the valley has given me a unique outlook into the grassroots movement of renewable energy. What was once an off-the-beaten-path form of energy, solar is quickly evolving into a standard and mainstream form of energy in the more urban settings. The creation of rebates and incentives, as well as the decreasing cost of modules, is bringing us closer to “grid parity” everyday.

My goal is to keep the the community informed on the RE (renewable energy) movement. I will be submitting articles on rebates, case studies, PPA’s, financing, efficiency, trends, and costs vs. production. I will also have guest writers who will help give an even deeper perspective into some of the issues on hand. My next post will be my account of attending the daunting Solar Power International 2009 in Anaheim, California this week. It is the largest solar event in the US and with some of the brightest minds and ideas on the planet. Stay tuned.