From the outside looking in, many people see the renewable energy sector as a massive competition between new technologies, each jockeying to replace fossil fuels. From this perspective, solar and wind power - the two leading forms of clean energy in the U.S. - would be fierce opponents. But John Blackman and Texas solar installer SolarCommunity worked together to show otherwise.
Living in Austin, Texas, John works in the booming Texas wind industry and "booming" is anything but an overstatement. The American Wind Energy Association reports that as of the fourth quarter of 2011, the state boasted nearly 10.4 gigawatts of wind power, nearly as much as the next three states combined and more than one-fifth of the entire country's capacity.
But when John and his wife, herself a singer/songwriter, encountered representatives from SolarCommunity at a nearby concert venue, it did not so much lead to a fight as a home solar consultation. The Blackmans decided that, while wind energy is an important step toward improving the footprint of utility-scale energy production, residential solar installations will be just as crucial in creating a stable, renewable electrical grid.
While many people have promoted the idea of small-scale wind turbines for powering homes, rooftop solar installations are generally a more practical form of distributed generation.
While Texas has been slow to put its full weight behind the solar industry, living in Austin, the Blackmans were fortunate to have access to some of the best solar incentives in the entire state.
The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency notes that the state of Texas is one of a handful that do not impose a statewide requirement for net metering on solar installation. However, Austin, which still works with a regulated utility, does require net metering. Even more impressively, the city has also imposed a requirement that its utility, Austin Energy, draw 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by this year. However, the city actually already reached that goal, relying on a combination of wind power, photovoltaic solar power and the somewhat less romantic but nonetheless practical landfill gas.
For homeowners like the Blackmans, however, the biggest program is Austin Energy's Residential Solar PV Rebate Program, which offers as much as $2.50 per watt for residential solar installations. The rebate can reach as much as $15,000 for a system size of 6 kilowatts, and this comes in addition to the federal tax rebate that can cover up to 30 percent of the cost of a solar system.
With a sizable house and equally large electricity bills, the Blackmans chose to go about as large as they could with their solar installation. SolarCommunity added more than 30 solar panels to the couple's roof, giving them a peak capacity of 6.3 kilowatts. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's PVWatts solar calculator, a system this size in Austin would be capable of producing around 8,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year.
For the Blackmans, that was enough to reduce their electricity bills by a staggering 80 to 90 percent. With Texans paying an average electricity rate of 11.28 cents per kilowatt-hour through November of last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that amounts to savings of nearly $970 each year.
With the installation itself taking only four days and the entire process only around two months, the kinds of savings that the couple could see seem like a worthwhile return for their investment.
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From the outside looking in, many people see the renewable energy sector as a massive competition between new technologies, each jockeying to replace fossil fuels. From this perspective, solar and wind power - the two leading forms of clean energy in the U.S. - would be fierce opponents. But John Blackman and Texas solar installer 
