Increased Solar Power & You

Going along with my post on Cohen's visit to Sharp, there are three possibilities for what increased solar power options would look like for our customers:

1. New Federal incentives would dovetail with existing TVA Generation Partner incentives and existing 30% Federal Tax credits (through 2016), to greatly reduce the capital investment of solar generation.

2. New Federal incentives would dovetail with existing TVA Generation Partners incentives, but would replace or reduce the existing 30% Federal Tax credits.

3. TVA would modify their Generation Partners program (which is still a pilot and gets updated about every 6 months), either increasing or reducing their paid incentive (a premium of $0.12 per kWh atop the residential electric rate, or the basic commercial rate).

In all cases, there is the potential for more MLGW customers to install solar generation. Right now, there are four businesses and two homes participating in Generation Partners in Shelby County. Collectively, they represent ~ 110 kW of generation. We have 149 kW of projects in the review stage now.

From a jobs perspective, there would be more solar installers, more workers at manufacturing facilities, etc. We don't see it increasing MLGW jobs, just more MLGW employees involved in review and qualification.

In developing the EECBG (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant) Strategy, we estimated 600 kW of solar generation by 2015--which is ambitious for current incentives. In most locations, there would be no infrastructure changes to accommodate grid tie-in. In cases where infrastructure changes would been needed, the customer would pay.

Some solar investment info:

FindSolar.com is a useful calculator for residential installations.

$7,000-$10,000 per kW installed (seems to be averaging close to $8,000 for recent projects)

1 kW=1,450 kWh generated annually (average, National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates 1,300 to 1,600 for our region)

Tax credit of 30%

TVA incentive

Payback scenarios based on a 2009 mid-size installation for a business located in Shelby County:

If only the TVA incentive, payback is ~20-25 year payback

If TVA and 30% Federal tax credit, payback is ~15-17 year payback

If TVA, 30% Federal and 40% TN Clean Energy Technology Grant (businesses only), payback is ~7-8 years

To learn more about MLGW's Green Power options, click here.