Connecticut Family Saves Enough with Solar to Add AC

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Connecticut Family Saves Enough with Solar to Add AC

Monday, August 15th 2011 4:10 PM

By GetSolar Staff.

Sitting along the east coast, Connecticut can get pretty warm in the summer, but it still may not seem like the place for central air conditioning. Paying 17.63 cents per kilowatt-hour as of February, Connecticut suffers from the second highest electricity rates in the entire country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Only Hawaii, stranded thousands of miles out in the Pacific, deals with worse rates.

With these kinds of prices, air conditioning just would not seem to be worth the incredible expense, so the Pollins of Ledyard, Connecticut, simply dealt with the hot, muggy summers. In 2006, however, Stewart Pollin told the Stonington-Mystic Patch that he noticed an opportunity.

With solar power growing in popularity and dropping in price, the state government had created its Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which pools millions of dollars collected from surcharges on utility bills. These funds go to support renewable energy projects across the state from residential solar installations to full-scale power plants. According to Emily Smith, the managing director of the new agency that has replaced the CCEF, the fund has helped finance more than 2,000 clean energy projects as of 2011 and still holds more than $800,000 as of August.

While others may have been hesitant, Stewart saw no reason not to take advantage of the fund and decided to invest in a rooftop solar installation. Only two years later, the Pollins were so pleased with their system that they decided to double up on their investment. When that solar installation was complete, their modest, two-story house boasted 42 photovoltaic panels with a combined capacity of 9 kilowatts.

While the Pollins are certainly environmentally conscious enough to support solar power, they were mostly interested in saving money and maintaining a high quality of life. With a full-size refrigerator and all the other common household appliance, their utility bills could be quite high. With 9 kilowatts of solar capacity on the roof, however, Stewart saw his costs plummet so fast they could easily justify adding air conditioning to the house. Even with that added energy guzzler, the Pollins still barely needed electricity from the grid.

While those 42 solar panels might not produce all the electricity the family needs when they need it, the new net metering laws in Connecticut require utilities to credit solar electricity put back into the grid at the same rate as they are charged for taking anything out. This means that, by ultimately producing as much electricity as they will eventually use over the course of the year, the family can reduce its electricity bills to nothing more than a $16 service fee.

All these savings, cost something to get, of course, with a substantial up-front investment for the solar installation. However, between the state and federal solar incentives, such as a tax credit worth up to 30 percent of the total costs of the system, the Pollins paid only around $25,000 in all. With electricity rates as they are, Stewart expects to earn as much in savings within just 10 years, while the solar installation is guaranteed for a full 20 years.

It is hardly a safe bet that electricity prices will remain the same, however. Instead, costs look likely to rise in the near future. In 2006, when high electricity prices pushed the Pollins to invest in solar panels, Connecticut was still at least the fourth most expensive state, but the average electricity rate was only 14.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the EIA. After five years, prices are up nearly one-fifth, and have actually gone down from 2010, when they reached as high as 19.08 cents per kilowatt-hour.

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