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Solar system
By Peter Reuell
Metro West Daily News Staff
Sunday, October 2, 2005

Brian Holland checks the weather reports religiously, hoping to see sun, but it’s not because he’s spending his days at the beach or working on his tan.

For Holland, sunny days and dollar signs go hand in hand.

The Framingham resident is one of a growing number of MetroWest residents who have installed solar panels on their homes or businesses and reaping the benefits in lower energy bills.

“I expect our electric bill this month will be about $30,” Holland said this week. Behind him, the massive solar array that covered one side of a small garage glittered in the afternoon sun.

Annually, he said, the panels generate about half the electricity used by his Edmands Road home, enough to add up to about $600 in savings.

As energy costs continue to rise, first in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and now in Hurricane Rita’s aftermath, experts say, more and more homeowners and businesses will begin eyeing alternatives such as solar power.

“When energy costs start going up, people get more interested in this sort of thing,” said Steve Wiese, a program manager at Conservation Services Group, a private, nonprofit company that works on energy conservation.

The company designs and oversees the installation of photovoltaic systems -- PV for short, the technical term for solar panels -- throughout the state, including Holland’s system.

“That’s created a tremendous amount of interest in these types of technologies,” Wiese continued. “The hurricanes reminded everybody that energy costs today are not what they’re going to be next year, or 10 years from now.”

Contrary to popular opinion, installing solar systems rarely results in home or business owners unplugging themselves from the electrical grid.

“The electronics in the system allow you to seamlessly integrate it into the existing building,” said Bill Kanzer, marketing and communications director for Marlborough-based Evergreen Solar.

“The way the system works is, as much power as the solar system provides goes in first, then whatever you need to make up for it is automatically, seamlessly made up for by the utility,” he said. “It’s absolutely seamless.”

The fun part, though, comes when solar users use less power than the cells produce.

“If you produce more electricity than you use, say it’s a nice sunny day (or) you’re on vacation, the electric company will actually buy back that electricity,” he said.

With the sun baking down on Holland’s solar array recently, the system was cranking out power at a solid clip, enough to make the electrical meter outside his house actually spin backward.

With 290 employees, Evergreen is the largest solar panel manufacturer in the state and has seen explosive growth in recent years as the popularity of solar power boomed.

From 2000, when the company’s revenue was just $400,000 to 2004, when Evergreen brought in more than $22 million, the company has grown 170 percent, Kanzer said. Worldwide, the industry has seen steady growth in recent years of between 30 percent and 40 percent.

Partly driving that growth in the United States, experts say, are wide-reaching tax credits, rebates and other incentives offered to homeowners and businesses who install solar.

Nationwide, more than 30 states offer some sort of incentives for solar installations, said Noah Kaye, a spokesman for Solar Energy Industry Association in Washington, D.C.

In Massachusetts, homeowners such as Holland can get a state income tax credit of up to $1,000, renewable energy credits which can be sold to utilities and rebates on the cost of installing solar systems.

For Holland, the offers add up. Though his system cost about $30,000 to install, rebates paid half the tab.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said. “If there had not been any rebates at all, I definitely would not have done it.”

He is hardly alone.

In April, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a quasi-public agency which promotes clean, renewable energy sources launched a rebate program for homeowners with solar systems.

In recent months, the program has exploded, nearly doubling the rebates handed out last month, from $115,000 in August to $206,000 in September. All told, the program has handed out nearly $700,000 to homeowners.

It’s not just homeowners who are jumping on the solar bandwagon, though.

BJ’s Wholesale Club in Natick began installing solar panels on the roofs of several stores in 1998, and today has 10 stores throughout New England with solar systems.

Though the company does not own the systems, which were designed and installed by CSG in Westborough, the power they generate is used to offset part of their utility bills.

“The roofs are just wasted space,” said Terry Civic, BJ’s manager of energy. “It’s very minor savings...it’s really to get renewable energy installations built and out there.”

That’s music to the ears of folks like Stan Tanenholtz of Southborough.

A professor at Bentley College in Waltham, Tanenholtz teaches a course on alternative energy, founded a short-lived company in the late ’60s and early ’70s to build electric cars and two years ago installed a solar system on his roof. He even drives a Toyota Prius hybrid car.

Though his solar system saves him about $500 annually, he says that’s only part of the benefit.

“The rest of it is that we are providing electricity to the grid, so we’re helping everyone,” he said. “If everyone did this -- imagine, what a wonderful world!”