New Jersey Outshines Most Others In Solar Energy

An anonymous reader points out this CNBC story which says that "New Jersey—known more for its turnpike, shopping malls and industrial sprawl—has become a solar energy powerhouse, outshining sunnier states like Hawaii and Nevada. And it's largely because of incentives that make it cheaper for residents and businesses to buy and install solar power systems."

Comments

Not solar panels...

[Anonymous Coward]

All that shine is coming from their hair gel.

Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[elrous0]

Seriously, it would be nice if my state had something like this. The crazy high upfront costs are the only thing keeping me from installing solar panels myself.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[benjamindees]

You can buy photovoltaic cells on ebay fairly cheaply, for about $1/watt. You have to assemble them yourself, though.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[MyLongNickName]

You realize that there is an upfront cost whether the state kicks in or not, right? Basically your argument is "this is not worthwhile for me to do, but it is worthwhile for other people to do it for me". If the overall cost of solar isn't worth it to you, then it is likely not an economically viable project.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[Smidge204]

You realize that if you live int he US, you're paying state and federal taxes too, right? A portion of that money already came out of your pocket, and you've already paid for someone else's project.

There's nothing wrong with applying for tax-subsidized funding if you're already a taxpayer. That's kind of the point.
=Smidge=

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[mi]

A portion of that money already came out of your pocket, and you've already paid for someone else's project.

Right — the cow is already dead, so all you, silly vegetarians, may as well eat it!

There's nothing wrong with applying for tax-subsidized funding if you're already a taxpayer.

You are right, that there is nothing wrong with applying for the tax-subsidized funding.

That's kind of the point.

No, the GP's point was, that it is wrong to provide tax-subsidized funding for such things — or advocate such provision, as the GGP was doing: "would be nice if my state offered that!"

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[benjamindees]

You don't understand. It's free money. That's how it works. Free. Money. They print it on big printing presses and everything. You'd better get in line or you'll miss out.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[MyLongNickName]

This is the kind of thinking that has gotten this country in the mess it is in. Everyone from the poor to the rich looking for a way to take a swig from the trough and not worrying about putting it back in. Want a new car? Go to the government. Screwed up your bank? Go to the government.

I think we have abstracted money (which in itself is an abstract concept) to the point that no one gets that resources are not infinite. If a project is not worth doing without government subsidy, then it is economically not viable. Sometimes, gov't should offer subsidies to kick start a program. But solar is far past that point.

The bottom line is that practically everyone is looking to someone else to pay for their wants, needs and desires. That is no sustainable. I fear that my children will be the first generation to inherit a country that is in worse condition than the one I inherited.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[tmosley]

What are you talking about? You can get a full 2 kilowatt system with a 2.5 kW grid tie inverter for about $7,500 installed. That's pre tax credit. You get the cells here. These start as low as $2/watt, but the cheapest in stock right now is $2.40 ($4800). Add the grid tie inverter, available here on sale for $1825. That's $6625. You should have no problem finding someone to instal the whole thing for $1000. That ought to be enough of a system for most people, assuming they use gas or heating oil for heat in the winter. You should build up a high enough balance over the year to run A/C in the summer without difficulty.

I'm going to be setting up such a system within a year or so, once I move into my new house.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[MyLongNickName]

Sounds great. Let's subsidize home owners. We will tax every family $5,000 to provide a $5,000 subsidy for everyone. Sounds great.

Wait a minute, I think we will have some overhead in the program. Administration costs, etc... let's say maybe a 20% overhead. So, let's alter our plan. Every family get's taxed $5,000 so we give households a $4,000 subsidy.

I love your idea.

Alternatively, we might consider limiting subsidies altogether.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[MyLongNickName]

Howdy,

When one is funding the roads, one is giving a direct benefit to the public as a whole.

Corn farming should not be subsidized. It makes no sense when we have a surplus of food. Ethanol production seems like it is a lobbying group which managed to get ahold of enough congress critters.

If we were talking about subsidizing a solar power plant, that would be one thing. In exchange, I'd want tight controls on the price we get charged for the power. If my money is being used to help build it, then that is the tradeoff that must get made.

When we are talking about adding value to your personal home with me picking up most or all of the cost, then I get upset. The utility to me personally for this happening is minuscule. If it the preponderance of the benefit goes to one person, then that one person should pay for it.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[commodore64_love]

>>>It's free money. They print it on big printing presses and everything

No wonder the dollar is only worth half a euro - our saved wealth is rapidly disappearing as more-and-more paper is printed. Keep it up Americans and soon we'll have a healthy economy like Venezuela

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[mi]

You don't understand. It's free money. That's how it works. Free. Money. They print it on big printing presses and everything. You'd better get in line or you'll miss out.

Right. And next time there are elections, be sure, your State backs the winner. Or else you'll miss out big time!

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[commodore64_love]

In a quest for fairness we should stop subsidizing. Period. After an initial period of government-promoted research and invention, devices should stand or sink on their own merits. Like the internet has done.

The Cash for Clunkers is a good example. First off, cars are a mature technology and don't need subsidization. They should have received ZERO assistance.

Second this was a FAILED program, because all it did was promote exchanging one pullutemobile for another pollutemobile that was a mere 1-2 points higher on the http://greenercars.org/ scorecard. BFD. Also it shifted future demand (people buying new cars circa 2015) to the present (2009). It didn't create any new demand, but it did put us a few billion deeper in debt to our Chinese landlords. Bloody stupid.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[commodore64_love]

For those like me who don't normally read linked articles, here's a summary:

Obama, Biden, and other executive officers have spent 75% of their time in states that put them into office. i.e. The blue states. AND these trips are publicly funded, according to this Associated Press article. They are solidifying their base in preparation for the next election. (Apparently the red states can go to hell as they get ignored.) Dubya Bush did the same thing, spending a lot of time in red and "purple" states.

Quote: "The vice president has made five stimulus trips just to Pennsylvania, a must-win state in 2008 that never faded from Obama's political planning meetings. All told, administration officials have been to the Keystone state more than three dozen times since January."

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[mi]

Dubya Bush did the same thing, spending a lot of time in red and "purple" states.

The article also alleges, that the States important to Democrats get substantially larger pieces of the "stimulus" money — an accusation, that can not be thrown at G.W. Bush if only because his stimulus consisted of tax-cuts and tax-rebates, that went to whoever paid small taxes (and some who didn't)...

But my point was non-partisan — whoever is in charge, they'll try to use everybody's tax dollars to reward their own supporters. There is no reliable stopping this, other than to reduce the amount of tax dollars at their disposal.

This is where I turn into a raging Libertarian and the audience loses interest...

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Thomas Jefferson

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[drinkypoo]

When we are talking about adding value to your personal home with me picking up most or all of the cost, then I get upset. The utility to me personally for this happening is minuscule.

The utility to you if it happens once is basically nil. The utility to you if only homes not likely to wash away and which are grid-tied are attached to the system is enormous, so long as it is done over and over again, because that is building a solar power plant. It just happens to be a distributed one. So long as the sites are worth a damn, it should actually be more reliable than a monolithic solar plant, and produce more [constant] power on partly cloudy days, too. I don't have a problem with the people who live under the pieces of the solar plant getting free power.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[CannonballHead]

You got it wrong. People making under $70k/yr can't afford that (note to self: get past $70k/yr sometime). What we should do is take $5000 from all households making $100k or more (and an additional $10,000 per $100k after that, that sounds fair) and give $2500 to households making $70k or less. We can use the other part of the *ahem* "fee" to pay for infrastructure like roads and bridges. And turtle crossings.

No, of course this isn't redistribution of wealth! This is just being fair to people that don't make enough money and thus don't have that inalienable Right to Entertainment and a Well-Paying Job.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[FlyingBishop]

Reducing the amount of tax dollars at their disposal just increases the number of dollars at the disposal of Wall Street. Basically you trade an imperfect democracy for a veiled oligarchy.

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[OverZealous.com]

"Oh no Teller, I'm out of Pie!

"You have pie, however, so give me some of your pie.

"You see, Teller, we're not taking pie from you, we're giving pie to me. That's fair, right?"

Repeats until there is no more pie left, including for Teller

"Now we have no pie! I know, let's go find someone else who does have pie, and make them give both of us some of their pie!"

-- Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller's Bullshit!

Pardon my paraphrasing...

Re:Carbon emissions sleep with the fishes

[moosesocks]

Although a few big cities have gotten big projects (such as boston, where the Big Dig was, in fact sorely needed), the condition of the roads and infrastructure in these areas tends to be absolutely horrible.

New York, in particular suffered from extreme neglect after the end of Robert Moses' tenure until part way through Giuliani's tenure. (Even still, New Yorkers foot most of their own taxes, receiving an insultingly low return on their state and federal taxes. The current mayor, Mike Bloomberg has actually threatened to secede from the state because of the tax situation)

Much of New York's massive metro/subway system was constructed between 1900 and 1930 by a private company. The remainder was constructed at the city's expense to keep the place actually inhabitable. The Lexington Avenue Subway line (4/5/6 on Manhattan) carries more traffic every day than the entire population of Boston. The city's roads simply couldn't handle that type of traffic. Arkansas doesn't have the population density necessary to make such a system effective.

Very few urban museums are funded using significant amounts of federal funds (the Smithsonian being the prime exception). I'm only directly familiar with New York's museums, although virtually all of them are self-funded.

Stadiums are an irritating by-product of our obsession with (watching) sports. I agree that they shouldn't be funded by tax money.

Yet another generalization...

[Anonymous Coward]

Turnpike? Shopping malls? Industrial Sprawl?

Clearly the submitter hasn't been through the Pineland's or seen the beautiful farming communities in the southern part of the state.

NJ != The Sopranos

So it's cheap...

[schmidt349]

And on the 4 days a year when the sun shines in my adoptive home state, you can help the environment!

Re:So it's cheap...

[afidel]

Yeah, I'm kind of wondering what the payoff is. I know that living in one of the cities with the lowest average solar insolation that I would do way more good for the environment by buying one panel for someone in AZ then plastering my entire roof with panels. Of course like Jersey we DO have a large body of water with a significant amount of available wind energy, so why aren't they building large scale wind farms just offshore instead of subsidizing inefficient use of solar panels?

Re:So it's cheap...

[NoYob]

Solar panels on roofs is an easier sell than big ugly windmills obscuring people's view of the ocean and lakes.

Now, ask yourself, who are the people that live on the ocean and lakes? What kind of political power they have?

Sounds absurd? See "Windmills Ocean Massachusetts Kennedy Martha's Vineyard"

Big ugly industrial infrastructure that benefits society has a place: near poor people.

2% by 2012?

[andy1307]

Seriously...WTF is wrong with people...why don't they consider nuclear power?

Re:2% by 2012?

[characterZer0]

Because they do not understand it, and people are scared by things they do not understand.

Re:2% by 2012?

[Bandman]

You know, very technically speaking, solar power IS nuclear power...

Re:2% by 2012?

[Unoriginal Nick]

New Jersey already gets 50% of its electricity from nuclear.

Re:2% by 2012?

[cryptolemur]

Because they do not understand it, and people are scared by things they do not understand.

Or perhaps because they do understand it? Compared to wind energy, the initial cost are twice as much, operating costs thrice as much and fuel costs infinitely more. And that was 6 years ago, wind has come down since, while nuclear remains the energy of the future...
Oh, and besides high costs and 8-12 years of construction time, nuclear energy has to deal with safety, waste and proliferation. Somehow it's just not what investors are looking for right now.

Re:2% by 2012?

[Unoriginal Nick]

Replying to myself because I was still looking for this when I posted. Year-to-date (to June), there have been 16,920 thousand megawatthours of electricity from nuclear out of 29,244 - almost 58%.

Re:2% by 2012?

[Tweenk]

Or perhaps because they do understand it? Compared to wind energy, the initial cost are twice as much

But it works 3-5 times as often, regardless of weather, and can be built almost anywhere. The only required condition is geological and hydrological stability of the area. Oftentimes existing sites can be used to build extra capacity. Wind farms have an actual mean power output of about 20-30% their peak power output, and of course they are intermittent.

I once saw an article saying that with a lot of intermittent sources the probability of all of them being out at the same time asymptotically approaches zero, but that would be true only if the works/doesn't work state of the sources was uncorrelated. Unfortunately it is to a very large extent (e.g. there are significant periods of time when 100% of the area of US is not insolated at all, and for smaller countries the situation is even worse).

operating costs thrice as much

See above. Moreover this cost could be brought down a lot (probably 2- or 3-fold) by creating a few standardised designs, or better yet a single modular design of nuclear plants, that would be used nationwide for all new deployments.

and fuel costs infinitely more.

That doesn't mean they are high. Actually they are less than 1% of operating costs.

nuclear remains the energy of the future...

Nuclear power still generates more energy than wind power in the US.

There some people that say otherwise, but it's a myth; they talk in terms of peak power output, which wind farms cannot realistically achieve for any sustained periods of time. On the other hand, nuclear plants are entirely capable of consistently running at 100% of their rated capacity, sometimes even more (power uprates).

Finally, there is no country in the world that gets more than 10% of its electricity from wind farms. On the other hand, there are several countries which get more than 30% of their electricity from nuclear plants, and at least 3 (France, Belgium and Slovakia) that get more than half.

nuclear energy has to deal with safety, waste and proliferation

Safety: No civilian killed in nuclear power operations since 1986.
Waste: The idiots from environmental groups keep saying it's a big problem, and at the same time keep attacking all the reasonable solutions that could be implemented to solve it (underground burial, reprocessing, breeder reactors, etc).
Proliferation: Nuclear fuel in conventional reactors is only slightly enriched and not suitable for making nuclear weapons. There are breeder reactor designs that make extracting plutonium from them highly impractical.

Re:2% by 2012?

[HanClinto]

Yes, you are wrong.

The only reason we are tied to Uranium-235 is because of restrictions that make it illegal to recycle (reprocess) nuclear fuel in this country, hence we have a surplus of "waste" (that can still be used in a breeder reactor -- we're just legally prevented from doing so) that we either bury (stupid) or sell to France (who isn't so ignorant when it comes to nukes).

In short, there is plenty of nuclear fuel -- we're just not allowed to use it because Carter thought that recycling nuclear fuel could lead to proliferation of arms-grade plutonium -- we of course have long since now known that it doesn't, but that hasn't done anything to remove these laws outlawing nuclear fuel recycling.

Here is a link for further reading.

Tax dollars

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The real question is:

Would it make more sense to subsidize options like small scale solar in order to encourage homes/businesses to "go greener" and to take some load off the central grid?

OR

Does it make more sense to spend that money fixing the current rickety grid and then put all that green capacity in places that actually get a lot of sunlight all year?

No, it's very, very expensive...

[tomhath]

FTA:

The savings is what got New Jerseyans Bob and Mary Keppel to install a 6-kilowatt solar system on the roof of their Cinnaminson, N.J. home this past summer.... The full price of the project, including installation, came to $48,000. Right away, the state sent a subsidy check for $10,500 that the Keppel’s signed over to the contractors to buy supplies. Using computer software, their contractor estimates that they will get a $11,250 federal tax credit this year. That would cut the total cost to $26,250, a 45-percent reduction.

How do rebates "cut the total cost"? The system cost was $48,000 for a mere 6kw of capacity. It doesn't matter if the homeowners or the taxpayers foot the bill, it's still $48,000, that's not cheap by any measure.

Re:No, it's very, very expensive...

[Foolicious]

And yet others obviously don't see how long it would actually take to actually break even on it -- especially if you're financing the cost of putting it up with borrowed money, your own or somebody else's.

If you want to make it about cost savings, put 27000 USD into your favorite low-risk savings vehicle. Then wait the estimated amount of time it would take for you to break even on the 27000 you spent for the 6kW solar rig. Compare your cost savings from the solar rig vs. the investment. If you put your dough, for example, in a 10 year CD at 3.25%, you'd come away with ~10000. Then subtract what you (supposedly, by estimate) would have saved with the solar setup. Or...what if you invested half of that 27000, and spent the other half weatherproofing your home (also tax benefits there)?

A local guy put a 2kW rig on his roof. He was proud of his work, which is fine, but admitted it would take him 53 years to break even on the cost of the materials and install. I don't know how much maintenance is involved in solar configurations.

It wasn't about cost savings. That's fine if you have money to spend on the cause du jour. I just don't have that kind of money and my state doesn't either (Michigan). Truth be told, my country doesn't either.

Re:No, it's very, very expensive...

[mengel]

Hmm.. $48k at 6% interest is $2800/year or $240/month. That's a pretty good electric bill in a lot of places. Now whether it's sufficient to get rid of their electric bill altogether, I can't say.

And of course, once you pay off the loan (5 years?) you're ahead of the game.

Re:No, it's very, very expensive...

[tomhath]

There is always an interest cost on an investment. You pay it or you sacrifice the opportunity to earn it. http://www.answers.com/topic/opportunity-cost And please stop trying to use subsidized costs (after rebate, after tax incentive, low interest loans, etc); those don't change the cost, they only shift the burden of paying it to someone else. How about if the Federal government subsidized 100% of the cost of a nuclear reactor, would that make the electricity it generates free?

Re:No, it's very, very expensive...

[Mr. Arbusto]

To put it into prospective, I have 80KW 3 Phase Natural Gas generator that at full load takes about 200 cubic feet of Natural Gas an hour.

Current rates for residential Natural Gas are ~14.20 dollars per thousand cubic feet. At full load producing 80KW it costs about 68.20 dollars to run for a day producing enough electricity to power the neighborhood. So, we have an 80KW generator for $10K, another $10K for installation, the remaining $28K can run it for another 400 days.

There aren't any economics of scale for this pricing either. residential rates are about 2x that than commercial rates for gas and efficiencies power generation increase with larger scale.

So yes, a mere 6kw of theoretic peak power creation for 48k. That doesn't include the maintainence required for the installation, nor the reduced winter power nor the diminished output over the life of the system.

Re:No, it's very, very expensive...

[AshtangiMan]

You're forgetting the cost of the utility. In the investment case you have a recurring monthly cost (the electric bill) that offsets the investment income. In the solar case, the whole point is that you are (hopefully, if you sized the system correctly) ending up with a $0 per month electric bill. If you include that as part of the financial analysis it comes up a bit differently, though it is still an expensive endeavor and one that takes 15-30 years to payback. There are other incentives for the solar case. My electric company will pay me $.13/ kWh of electricity produced (that is whether or not I use it) and will also run my meter back for excess production. Factor that in and installing the system results in a net cash flow immediately, and takes the payback (for my case and a 3kW system) to about 8 years.

Re:Kills so many birds with one stone...

[NewWorldDan]

No, this is absolutely retarded. They're not "incentivizing" solar power, they're subsidizing it. Heavily. You and I are paying for it. That's money that could be doing a lot of actual good if put to better use. We've been waiting 30 years for the solar industry to develop an economical product and it hasn't happened yet.

Re:That's great to hear

[GameMaster]

Well, it would make sense that America would have two armpits. j/k

Solar on my NJ house

[mydots]

I live in NJ and have a 7.8kW solar system on my roof. I purchased it through Home Dept/BP Solar. The state rebate covered about 65% of the cost. I only had to pay the other 35% of the cost up front. I applied for the system in 2005 and about 6 months later in April 2006 I had a working system on my roof. I have been extremely happy with its performance especially since my roof faces pretty much directly south. Not only do I save in electricity, I also get Solar Renewable Energy Credits that I can sell to help pay for my cost of the system. An SREC is received for every 1000kWH of electricity generated. My system generates about 9 SREC's per solar year. The solar year begins in June and ends in May. After it was installed I immediately purchased RS485 communcation boards for the two inverters and an RS232 to RS485 converter for a PC and runs the SunnyData software that continuously monitors the system. It reads various data every 8 seconds and I use ssh/rsync to push it to a linux server every minute where I wrote some scripts to parse the data and create almost real time graphs of its performance. For anyone interested, I setup my own domain mysolarenergysystem.com where you can view all the details about the system. I also had the electric company replace my meter with a net meter, so each month on my bill I can see my exact in and out usage. The net meter has what looks like a phone jack that can be used for remote monitoring. I asked them about it because I wanted to connect it to my computer, but unfortunately they didn't give me much of an answer except that its not used, but would have been nice to monitor and graph daily statistics for that as well.

Re:Macro economics not micro economics

[MyLongNickName]

Slight problem. If I am paying to put a solar panel on your house, I am giving you reduced rates AND making the value of your house go up by a significant percentage of what I am giving you. There is very little benefit to the public as a whole.

If you were talking about government subsidizing a solar power plant, that would be an entirely different scenario altogether. The public as a whole would be getting the benefit.

Re:Macro economics not micro economics

[careysub]

Slight problem. If I am paying to put a solar panel on your house, I am giving you reduced rates AND making the value of your house go up by a significant percentage of what I am giving you. There is very little benefit to the public as a whole. If you were talking about government subsidizing a solar power plant, that would be an entirely different scenario altogether. The public as a whole would be getting the benefit.

Bigger problem with your analysis. You are claiming that 4.5 KW of solar capacity added to a centralized power plant benefits the public, but the same 4.5 KW of capacity on top of a private residence does not? Can you explain how this is? Both capacity increments feed their power directly into the grid, and in both cases the private residence draws its power from the grid.I can't see how one is a public benefit yet the other is not on this basis.

Is the claim then that the fact that a private individual owns the solar system rather than, say, a private company deprives the public of a benefit? Don't follow that logic either.

And you do realize that a private household is kicking in most of the money to build the power system right? That the subsidy is mobilizing private capital to invest in power production, just as it would in the centralized power plant case? And that the space devoted to power production is not taking up any new land do so?

NJ nicknames

[becker]

I think that some people do not know why NJ is called "the armpit of America". It's not just the smell of its refineries and chemical plants along the coast. Look at its position on the map.

Most visitors just see the part of NJ along I95, missing the sections further inland which gave it the name "The Garden State".

$1000 for installation?

[sean.peters]

You should have no problem finding someone to instal the whole thing for $1000.

You're kidding, right? Around here, getting a contractor to install a asphalt shingle roof, with labor provided by illegal immigrants, costs $5000. I got two quotes for getting a 3 KW system installed on my roof and they both ran almost $30k. I appreciate the links to the low cost parts, can you provide a similar link for the installation?

Re:You've made an error here

[MyLongNickName]

Sean,

Yes, the two items are equivalent.

If it is too big a chunk, you point out the solution. For my education, I did take out a loan. The homeowner can do the same thing with a home equity loan. Having the government tax me to provide a private benefit is ridiculous.

In certain cases (like the Pell grant), I can see where this is necessary for lower income folks. However, someone who owns his own home should not get money from me for a home improvement that benefits him exclusively.

Re:Financing

[drinkypoo]

Good luck with that; the housing market in America is going to keep falling until most of the baby boomers are dead. The crash should crescendo around 2025, although various factors could kill them off earlier I suppose.

Re:Macro economics not micro economics

[careysub]

... But in New Jersey the individual only pays around 50% of the cost, so I would argue he is only entitled to half the generated electricity. The other 50% should be split off the solar panels and dumped directly to the publicly-owned wires for the benefit of other neighbors who paid the other half of the bill. That would be fair.

Actually all of the electricity is dumped directly to the publicly-owned wires. The homeowner actually only gets an offset for the electricity that is consumed from those wires, down to $0. Any excess production is free electricity for the utility, and it turns out the utility is getting a good deal on the offset cost as well - all of the solar generated electricity is valuable peak power, but offsets one-for-one electricity use of which is only partly peak power. And then there is the savings on the capacity that would have had to be added at a central power plant instead (an expensive an inefficient peaking plant at that), the cost of which otherwise would be charged to all ratepayers.

You need to look at the whole picture, not just part of it, before declaring what is "fair".