Get Energy Smart! NOW!

This guest post from Think2004 provides one homeowner’s story about moving a home from energy glutton to net zero re electricity.

This discussion provides a clear window on the many things that can be done, rapidly, to reduce existing building infrastructure energy use.

And, it shows that existing homes can be made ‘net zero’.

And, while it is possible to make the tremendous achievements and homes of The Solar Decathlon a reality, this discussion shows that the vision of low carbon pollution homes is very possible to achieve even starting with existing, inefficient homes.

The legitimate policy question becomes: at what cost that last 10 percent? In other words, how high a share of solar electric capital cost is sensible to be funding via tax (and other) dollars? Early adopters merit additional support as a path to help build up demand and to build up capacity (installers, dealers, code inspectors, …). But, at what point is that imperative fulfilled … and at what cost?

Yet, remember, the journey starts with ‘negawatts’ before arriving at ‘clean watts’ production.

In any event, take a look at one homeowner’s journey from polluter to clean energy producer.

I bought my first house, in the heart of Dallas, Texas, back in 1994, when I was single and had just adopted a dog. It was a cute 1100 sq. ft. bungalow, with hardwood floors, original kitchen and bath, and plenty of space for me and the dog. I got lucky; I found the neighborhood before it became “hot,” so I paid less than the price of a new loaded Cadillac Escalade for my little piece of the American dream.

Fifteen year later, I’m still in that 1100 sq. ft. house, only now, I have been joined by a husband, a child, another dog, and assorted porch cats.

And 25 solar panels on the roof to power the whole thing.

When I bought the house, much of it was still original, including the single-pane rotting wood windows that were installed back in 1940. The whole house leaked like a sieve, and to top it off, we had a leak in the roof.

Our August 2007 electric bill was $262 for 1,954 kWh.

We had to do something, but as any homeowner knows, repairs and improvements are expensive. Even when you know you’ll save money in the long run, that doesn’t help when you don’t have the big bucks up front to make the improvements that will save you that money in the long run. Meanwhile, we paid close attention to our electricity usage. We had replaced every bulb with CFLs as they burned out. We raised the thermostat. In short, we paid attention, and we started saving up for new AC and windows.

Our August 2008 electric bill was $227 for 1,330 kWh.

Wait a minute. We cut our electric usage by about 33%, but our bill only dropped 14%?

We were pissed. Our big electric company had quietly raised our rates by 3.8 cents per kWh. What the heck? It sure looked like one thing: as people start saving energy, the electric companies raise their rates to make up for their lost profits.

We’d had enough. If we were going to pay through the nose for electricity, we wanted it to be cleaner. We switched to Green Mountain Energy. In 2008, we ponied up the big bucks and replaced all the windows in the house. We installed a new air conditioning unit to replace the refurbished one that was installed in 1994. When the AC guy came out, he laughed at our compressor unit and said that was what he’d trained on back in the ’80s.

Our August 2009 electric bill was $124 for 883 kWh.

We had cut our electricity usage (and our bill) by over 50% over two years, by paying attention, raising the thermostat, using CFLs, and upgrading our windows and AC. All the while, we had our eyes on a bigger prize.

We’d been watching solar power for a couple of years. My husband followed the technology news. We read everything we could find on solar. The prices were sky high, but we kept hoping they would fall and we could swing it.

Stars started to align. Mortgage rates were dropping because of the housing crisis, so a mortgage refinance became an option. Remember, I’d bought this house dirt cheap fifteen years ago in an up-and-coming neighborhood, so we had significant equity built up. We worked to fix our shabby credit.

Oncor, the electricity delivery company in Texas, began a solar PV rebate program that would cover roughly 30% of the cost of a solar install. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided a 30% federal tax credit for the cost of a residential photovoltaic system.

This was starting to look like it was within reach. We started getting bids. We were surprised to discover that that we would actually be able to put solar panels on the roof of our little house.

First things first. We had to replace our old, leaky roof. We choose an Energy Star metal roof. It’s energy efficient. If you didn’t know and are thinking about a new roof, there’s a federal tax credit of up to $1500 for Energy Star roofs right now. I believe it runs through 2010. After it was installed, I ran tests when it was over 100° outside, and my attic temperature never climbed higher than 15° over the interior temperature of the house. Worked as advertised.

Meanwhile, we went back and forth as to the design of the solar system. (We want Pluto back.) We had a very strict budget, based on the money we pulled out when we did a mortgage refi, and it was all going to the new roof and solar array.

When all was said and done, we settled on a 4.375 kWh system, designed to cover all of our electic usage in the non-summer months. To qualify for the very significant Oncor rebate, the system was designed to not feed excess monthly power back to the grid, but only power our use, and was based on previous utility bills. (Darn, that’s what we get for being energy efficient before the install.)

Our system uses micro inverters. This means that each panel has one inverter attached to it, and it all feeds ultimately into our home’s electric panel. The benefit of this system, as opposed to one large inverter that we were originally pricing, is that if one panel is shaded or has problems, its problems are isolated from the rest of the panels, and it does not drag the entire system’s generation down with it.

The city inspector left moments ago, and we got the green light to turn it all on.

As I sit here typing this, my online system status tells me I’m currently generating 3451 watts of electricity. My electric meter is running backwards.

You can view the flickr photo album of our installation.

About the cost: What I want everyone to know is that with planning, this is NOT out of reach

So you want some numbers? Okay, here’s some nice round numbers:

• System cost, everything including tax and permits: $27,000
• Oncor rebate: – $10,700 (see why meeting their specs mattered?)
• Net system cost: $16,300 (after Oncor rebate)
• Federal tax credit of 30%: either $8,100 or $4,900 (the solar industry is interpreting the tax credit to be off the system cost, but it’s possible it could only be off the amount of the check the customer cuts.)
• Final cost, after rebates and credits: $8,200 or $11,400 (depending on what our tax advisor says)

A lot? It’s not peanuts. But, it’s a lot less daunting that the prices we’d heard that were being thrown around in the media while we were looking at the possibility. That’s important. People think these things cost $25,000+, but with the tax credits and rebates floating around, they don’t. To put it in perspective, the average price of a new car is $28,400! If all those folks who planned to drop that kind of change had south-facing, shade-free roofs, they could buy a less expensive car and get a bonus solar array.

The other thing I should note while talking about the cost is that we didn’t do it solely based on whether it would take us eight years or twelve years for the system to pay for itself. We’re committed to clean, renewable energy. We drive a (used) Prius for lots of obvious reason, not the least of which is that we don’t want to buy oil from certain foreign governments. We want clean air, and less pollution coming from our power plants. We believe in a small footprint, and that’s why we hope to be in our little solar-powered cottage for many more years.