Living Like Ed (23 page)

And then
I’d
be freaking out, because I thought if I didn’t do it right, I was going to blow the house up. He’d finally walk me through it and we’d both heave a huge sigh of relief. “Phew. We’re safe another day.”

Now if I need to switch us over to the grid, it’s not such a big deal, but it did take a little getting used to. Come to think of it, maybe it was just the drama of Ed freaking out on me on the phone.

Net Metering

The type of solar electric system I have now
doesn’t have to be
connected to the grid, but because I live in an area where it’s easy to be connected—and because my house was already connected when I bought it—I have the option of switching over to the grid as needed.
As needed
for me always means after 8
P.M.
and before 10
A.M.
, when power is cheapest due to low demand.

There’s another way to go that makes a lot of sense, too. Today, instead of having all those batteries at your house, you can choose
net metering.
Many states require utility companies to accept renewable energy from their residential customers. Rather than store any excess solar electricity you produce in big batteries, you can feed that electricity directly into the grid. Then, whenever you need more power than your solar electric system is generating, you simply draw that power back from the grid. In essence, you let the grid itself act like a big battery system for your solar electric setup.

Even if your utility company does not allow for net metering, you can still feed any excess power you produce into the grid. However, instead of receiving the full retail price for that power, the utility pays you a wholesale rate for the electricity, which is considerably less.

Can Anyone Go Solar?

As much as I love solar, let me be clear: Solar panels will not work on just any roof.

A good candidate would be a house with a pitched roof that gets a full day—or close to a full day—of sun. A bad candidate would be a roof that gets a lot of shading from another home or from trees. The western part of your exposure is very important. I have to keep a tree that is west of my solar panels very well trimmed. It’s a deciduous tree, so during the winter months, there’s very little shading. There are also hedges that I have to keep after quite regularly because they would eventually shade the panels.

Other bad candidates include roofs that are more challenging—a tile roof, for example, or a flat roof. You can certainly put solar panels on flat roofs, people do it all the time, but you want to be very careful that it’s done by top-notch installers to prevent leaking. Flat roofs are prone to leaking anyway. When you start putting stuff up there, you have to be very, very careful, both with leakage problems and with the exposure problem. Make sure you get a really good day of sun.

Even before you install a solar system, an energy audit is surely in order to determine how much power you use—and whether you can produce enough power to make the installation worthwhile. You can learn your energy history quickly by reviewing your utility bill. You may also want to implement some of the energy-saving techniques we covered in Chapter 1 so you can get away with a somewhat smaller solar electric system.

Solar for the Midwest?

Now, you might be surprised to hear that my system was not installed by a Los Angeles company. It was put in by Michigan Energy Works.

People say, “Solar’s fine for you in California, Arizona, Nevada. These places have a lot of sun. What about the poor people in the Midwest?” I’ve seen this regularly in newspaper op-ed pieces and stories about solar.

Well, guess what, there’s a thriving solar business in the Midwest. Wisconsin. Michigan. Yes, it gets cold there, but it’s not cloudy so much of the time as it is in a place like Seattle, where solar wouldn’t be as viable. It’s often sunny and cold in the Midwest, which is good for generating solar energy. In fact, solar panels lose 15 percent of their efficiency when they get hot, and they don’t have that problem in a cold, bright state. On a sunny winter day in Wisconsin or Michigan, those panels are cranking out full current.

Solar is really practical in most parts of the country. If you’re not sure about your area, get out the
Farmer’s Almanac
and see how many sunny days per year are typical in your area.

Solar Water Heaters

Solar isn’t used only to create electricity—you can also install a solar hot water heater. Even if you don’t have a complete solar electric setup, there are standalone solar water-heating systems.

I’ve got a water heater tank that’s hooked up to the solar panels. The sun heats the water, and the hot water gets stored in the tank. Many days when it’s sunny out, the water reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, I don’t rely on the solar tank exclusively, because you still want to be able to take a shower if it’s cloudy for a week—unless you live in a cabin and don’t mind being dirty, or you have a wife who’s more tolerant of such things. Since I do not, I have a secondary hot water heater that is a standard natural gas unit.

The majority of the time, the solar panels are heating my water, but I’ve got this superefficient natural gas hot water heater as a backup. It’s like I’ve created a hybrid water-heating system to go along with our hybrid car.

If solar hot water isn’t an option, you can get a superefficient Vertex natural gas hot water heater from a company called A. O. Smith. Most standard gas water heaters run at 70 to 75 percent efficiency, and this one runs at 90 percent. It’s the most efficient gas water heater on the market.

The Economics of Solar

Let me be clear: I went solar electric in 1990 because at the time I had a TV series and I could afford it. I wanted to do it as a research project, knowing that I was not going to get any payback anytime soon—or at all. I think I just got to the break-even point in 2007—seventeen years later.

Today, you can take advantage of subsidies available in many parts of the country that enable folks to reduce the high cost of installing solar. But back in 1990, there were no federal, state, or local subsidies. I knew I wouldn’t amortize the investment until
way
down the line because of how much these systems cost. Don’t misunderstand me: My electric bill reduction was
substantial
over those many years, because I got 6½ kilowatts of solar. I reduced my electric bill a great deal every year—and I nearly eliminated it for many years while I was single. That’s money saved. But because of the initial upfront costs, it’s taken me a long time to break even on this system.

If you want to find out what kind of subsidies are available in your area, look on the Internet or ask a local solar installer. They know these codes inside and out. If you call one to come out and give you a bid, he’ll tell you right away, “Here’s what you’ll get from the state. Here’s what’s happening now.”

It turns out that right now, as we’re writing this book, the coffers for solar subsidies in California are empty (we hope to have them filled again soon with the help of the state legislature). But subsidies still exist in other areas.

Even with the subsidies, though, the economics of putting up a solar system like mine have gotten such that you have to be a quarter- to a half-mile away from the grid for it to make economic sense today. If you live that far from real utility power—if you’re moving to a cabin somewhere or you’re building a house out in the country—you’d have to pay a substantial sum just to get connected to the grid. When you call the local electric company to ask about running power lines out to your home, they’ll say, “If you want power out there, we have to trench. We can get a crew out there.”

So then you ask, “How much will that cost me?”

“About $35,000 to run a quarter-mile of lines.” Or whatever it is.

You go, “Thank you, I appreciate the bid. I’m going to have Fred the solar installer come out, and I’m going to spend $35,000 to $40,000, too. Maybe I’ll have a little propane backup generator so I’ll never run out of power during a cloudy period. But I’m going to put my money into solar.”

I know many people who have cabins who have done that.

Solar Energy for the Masses

Now, $35,000 or $40,000 for a solar electric system clearly is beyond many people’s budget. Fortunately, there are some new opportunities that allow even folks on the most modest budget to get into solar.

With the solar electric setup like those I’ve discussed so far, you buy the whole thing, you have someone install it, and you own it—forever. But now there’s another way to go solar that makes more economic sense.

There are companies like Citizenrē that are doing solar panels with a totally different business model. Just like a satellite dish or a cable TV box, you won’t
own
the panels. You just want the service and the reliable electricity that comes with them—in this case, a twenty-five-year contract for a fixed rate for your power, a fixed kilowatt-hour rate. You get the bragging rights of having solar. You get the reliability if there’s a power outage that your refrigerator is going to work and that your alarm system is going to work and that your electric gate will open, but you don’t
own
the panels.

Why would they ever do this? Because solar panels are so reliable in the long run that after your twenty-five-year contract is up and you decide you don’t want to use them anymore, they can install them for somebody else and they’re still going to work.

There are companies that are trying different solar business models, and I think they’ll be very successful with this. I hope they will be, because why should rich guys who had a TV series in 1990 be the only ones who are able to afford them? There are certainly doctors, dentists, other wealthy professional people who want to do the right thing, and I think it’s great and I applaud them, but why should solar be restricted to those demographics? Why can’t everybody have it?

I’ll let my friend Rob Styler, the president of Citizenrē, tell you more about the benefits of solar energy and how his company works.