Mulling solar? Think of long-term payback
YOUNGSTOWN
Anyone contemplating installing solar panels should view them as an investment in many decades of energy cost savings, according to a local solar-panel installer and a local user of this technology that offers free fuel from the sun.
“It’s a long-term investment. You have to have a lot of foresight,” said Dan Quinlan, co-owner of Valley Energy Solar, which is based near Salem in Mahoning County’s Green Township.
“These systems will last 30 to 40 years, so they are a very long-term asset,” Quinlan added.
“You’re almost insulated from utility-rate increases over those next 30 years,” he said.
“We wanted to cut our [electric] bills in the long term and enhance our sustainability well into the future because utilities are a significant cost for us,” said Liberty Merrill, land reuse director at the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., which has two solar-panel installations.
The organization’s location provides a highly visible opportunity to showcase this environmentally friendly, nearly maintenance-free technology along heavily traveled Canfield Road, she added.
Quinlan’s company installed at YNDC’s Iron Roots Urban Farm a 2.4-kilowatt solar-panel array, which he said cost less than $10,000, on a produce cooler roof in late 2012, followed a year later by a 9.4-kilowatt pole-mounted solar array that cost about $40,000.
The two south-facing arrays combined supply 30 to 40 percent of the electricity needs of the farm and YNDC headquarters, which are located at 820 Canfield Road, Merrill said.
That amounts to an estimated savings of $1,100 a year in electric costs for the urban revitalization organization, she said, adding that Ohio Edison supplies all of the remainder of the electric needs of the farm and headquarters at a cost of about $1,800 a year.
Although it obtained a grant from the Columbus-based Finance Fund for its larger installation, YNDC, as a nonprofit organization, did not benefit from the 30 percent tax credit for homeowners and businesses that install solar panels, Merrill said.
Therefore, she estimated it will take three decades at current electric rates to achieve energy savings equaling the cost of YNDC’s installation.
If electric rates rise substantially, that time could be significantly shortened, she said.
An 8-kilowatt home solar-panel installation will save an Ohio homeowner about $966 a year on the electric bill, said Quinlan’s wife, Erin, co-owner of the six-employee company the couple founded in 2006.
A roof-mounted system of that size would cost $24,000 to $26,000 to acquire and install, Dan Quinlan said.
The cost would likely be $6,000 to $7,000 greater if the panels need to be pole mounted, he said.
A battery installation that would store energy produced by the homeowner’s solar panels would start at $10,000 additional, he noted.
The homeowner’s 30 percent tax credit for the basic rooftop installation would be about $8,000, effectively reducing that cost to about $16,000 and yielding a 16- to 17-year payback on the investment at current electric rates, he added.
This month, Congress extended that tax credit for five years.
“Most of our customers, when they experience their meter literally spinning backwards, it’s hard to describe that feeling. ... We’re helping to supply power to our neighbors in that instance,” Dan Quinlan said, adding that Ohio Edison credits the electric bill when that happens.
“Commercially, there’s a little extra tax incentive by being able to depreciate the system,” Dan Quinlan said, adding that, under the right circumstances, commercial systems can pay for themselves in as little as five years.
A notable large industrial solar-energy array is the 2.2-megawatt system installed at the General Motors’ Lordstown plant in 2014, whose more than 8,500 glistening panels are visible to Ohio Turnpike motorists.
GM said that system supplies 1.5 percent of the plant’s electric needs.
“They know that this system’s going to produce for 30 to 40 years. They can add to that system as they feel necessary,” Dan Quinlan said of GM officials.
Solar power offers “a level of energy independence that gives the country some freedom” to “not be held hostage by oil pricing,” he said.
Despite the current slump in oil and natural-gas prices, demand for solar-panel installation is rising as the cost of solar-panel installations plummets, he added.
“Coal-fired and fossil-fuel energy has a continual increase in cost over time; and solar energy, with technology innovation, has had a steady 10 percent [annual] decrease in cost over the last 10 years,” he said.