Own a Bit of the Sun: Solar Power, Part 2
Peter Heck & Jane Jewell • May 25, 2021
Homeowners considering solar power have a number of options available. As our article
in the April 27 edition of Common Sense
outlined, there are four main ways to go solar: owning, leasing, sharing, or going solar “virtually.”
Do you want to own your own solar panels, or to lease your roof space to a company that sells the power the panels generate to a utility company and passes on some of the savings to you? Or do you want to join other homeowners in a consortium where each member owns a share in a solar array somewhere? Or are you happy just asking your utility company to supply you with power generated exclusively by solar or wind?
Owning your own system requires the largest financial investment, with typical installation costs at $40,000 to $60,000. But don’t panic; homeowners can often reduce their investment by a third or more by taking advantage of federal, state, and even local tax credits, grants, and other incentives. Federal tax credits were due to expire at the end of 2020, but have been extended through the end of 2021 in response to the covid-19 pandemic, and anyone seeking to install a system is advised to research them. See the link at the end of this article for a list of possibilities.
In addition to the startup cost, owning your solar power system commits you to more than a decade of running your home on solar energy before the savings begin to exceed the installation costs. But the tradeoffs in energy independence, and in knowing you’re doing your part to help the planet, are hard to beat.
Kent County resident Johnson Fortenbaugh, in a recent phone interview, gave Common Sense an overview of the process. His solar array has been in service since January 2019. Before installation, he said, his electric bills were in the vicinity of $100 a month. Since then, he has received about $1,500 a year in payments from the utility company for the power he has generated.
He receives annual payments, though the rate at which the system generates power varies from month to month depending on the season, as well as his home power usage. But it’s likely his system will pay for itself in less than 20 years, roughly the effective lifetime of the panels. “That’s a good incentive to take good care of your health, so you’ll live to see the benefits,” he said.
Fortenbaugh didn’t get into solar power on a whim. “We had been looking at solar for several years,” he said. At one point, he joined a solar cooperative sponsored by the Town of Chestertown that brought together a group of homeowners interested in going solar to find out the details of the process and to interview several companies to find the best deal they could get as a group.
Fortenbaugh said that the co-op members could often get a price break by giving the company a group of customers in the same area so they could consolidate costs. Fortenbaugh, who installed his system a couple of years after the co-op, ended up going with a company called CMI, based in Newark, Del. He said CMI was not the cheapest company he interviewed, “but I really liked their experience. They’ve been at it a long time and I called a couple of their references and the people were very happy with the work they had done.”
To determine how economical an installation would be, Fortenbaugh provided the contractor with a year’s worth of utility bills. After looking at the bills, the contractor sent a proposal showing how much the initial costs and ongoing savings would be. Looking back, Fortenbaugh said, “It seems to be pretty accurate.” He and his wife also took advantage of tax credits and other incentives that he said reduced the final price to about $20,000, making the conversion an even more attractive proposition.
Because of the configuration of his property, Fortenbaugh had his solar array installed on the ground instead of on the roof. “We looked at a roof mount, but couldn't do it because our neighbor has tall trees to the south of us, which would shade it,” he said. For obvious reason, the installation has to be located so it receives the maximum possible sunlight. The installation took about two weeks, which included burying the wires coming to the house. After the panels were set up, the county building inspector looked over the job and noticed that there were exposed wires between the panels and the ground. He told them to have the wires shielded to avoid squirrel damage. “Nature’s a tough place,” Fortenbaugh said, chuckling.
Fortenbaugh is satisfied with the contractor’s service. When one of their inverters — a device that switches direct-current power from the panels to alternating current, the standard home electrical current in the U.S. — went out, a software system included in the solar package detected the flaw. The contractor immediately replaced the defective unit. “It was all covered under warranty,” Fortenbaugh said; the warranty on the inverters was a generous 10 years.
Fortenbaugh researched, but decided against, adding a battery backup system or a home generator to cover when there isn’t sufficient sunlight or when the grid goes down locally. Although he is tied to the local Delmarva Power grid, he generally puts more into the grid than he takes out, essentially selling his power to the utility company. “The meter runs backwards,” he said. On cloudy days or during winter days with fewer hours of sunlight, he pays for what he uses — but as noted, his annual balance has so far come out in his favor.
The experience has made Fortenbaugh a strong advocate for solar power. “It’s the best energy source in the world,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, it's inexhaustible. And it's free, all you’ve got to do is pay for the stuff to catch it. And so we felt like we were leaving money on the table. And we wanted a cleaner environment, quite aware that every gallon of fuel you burn ends up affecting climate change. And I want to be as little a part of that as possible.” He has a bumper sticker on his car — an all-electric Chevy Bolt that he charges off his home array – that reads, “Solar Powered.”
He offered to share the fruit of his experience with anyone interested in researching solar power for their home. Anyone who wants to take him up on his offer can send an email to info@commonsenseeasternshore.org and we’ll forward your contact information to him.
Links:
University of North Carolina Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency: https://www.dsireusa.org/
Homeowner’s Guide to the Federal Tax Credit for Solar Photovoltaics: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2020/01/f70/Guide%20to%20Federal%20Tax%20Credit%20for%20Residential%20Solar%20PV.pdf
Information on Solar Coops: https://www.solarunitedneighbors.org/co-ops/
Peter Heck is a Chestertown-based writer and editor, who spent 10 years at the Kent County News and three more with the Chestertown Spy. He is the author of 10 novels and co-author of four plays, a book reviewer for Asimov’s and Kirkus Reviews, and an incorrigible guitarist.
Jane Jewell is a writer, editor, photographer, and teacher. She has worked in news, publishing, and as the director of a national writer's group. She lives in Chestertown with her husband Peter Heck, a ginger cat named Riley, and a lot of books.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
More than 30,000 of our neighbors in Maryland’s first congressional district will lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid because of provisions in the GOP’s heartless tax cut and spending bill passed last week.
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
