When Washington lawmakers approved a set of incentives in 2005 for producing electricity from the solar power, they hoped to encourage residents to install solar panels and recruit businesses to build them in the Evergreen State.
Four years later, we are seeing slow, but steady and growing progress.
Under the state's incentive program, anyone who installs a solar panel and a meter that records its production gets a double payoff. First, the electricity it produces lowers the amount you need to buy from your utility. Then, you also earn at least 12 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy the panel generates.
It’s a generous incentive.
The minimum production incentive alone is nearly double what my employer, Seattle City Light, charges its residential customers. Combined with the savings from not needing to buy that electricity, the minimum payback is about 18 cents per kilowatt-hour.
But wait, it gets even better and THIS SPACE is here to tell you why.
To encourage businesses to build solar equipment in Washington, legislators made the incentives, which won’t expire until 2020, even bigger for people who buy equipment that’s made here.
Until recently, few locally built components were available. Now, solar panels and inverters are available from Arlington-based Silicon Energy, which is ramping up production of solar panels and inverters.
A person who installs a system with those components would qualify for a state incentive of 54 cents per kilowatt hour on top of the savings from what they don’t have to buy for their own use.
Depending on the output, installing solar panels made in Washington can not only wipe out your electricity bill, it can actually generate a positive cash flow.
A robust, Washington-made residential system that generates an average of 3,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year would cut the amount of energy purchased for the average Seattle home to 6,250 kilowatt-hours. At City Light’s lowest-in-the-nation rates, that home’s annual electricity cost would drop to $400. Then, the state would pay the homeowner $1,620 in incentive payments. The net operating profit: $1,220.
Seattle area residents are taking advantage of the incentives.
In 2006, there were 23 people in City Light’s service territory who qualified for about $6,400 in incentives. That’s grown to about 150 people with an estimated incentive payment of about $45,000 this year.
Their solar panels are producing about 300,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. That’s enough clean, renewable energy to power about 32 average Seattle homes for one year.
Solar works in Seattle, so the ONE THING you can do this week to potentially increase the production of renewable energy and put a few dollars into your bank account along the way is to investigate whether a solar panel might work for your home. City Light has some helpful information for anyone interested in solar energy.