As SolarCity expands, so too does the number of residential solar installations.

Why? The California-based company offers a 20-year, zero-down solar lease deal to homeowners. Translation: You pay a monthly fixed rate for using the solar photovoltaic (PV) system atop your house. That rate won’t fluctuate, like prices of conventional electricity. And even though that fee can vary depending on your region, SolarCity claims the savings you’ll see the very first month you use the system will exceed your payment.

The program is already in play in California, Arizona, Texas, Colorado and, most recently Oregon. Now the company has announced plans to expand eastward.

Beginning in February, SolarCity will offer its solar lease in Maryland, where the state’s energy administration is giving homeowners grants of up to $10,000 at a rate of $0.50/watt (W) to help with the cost of installing a solar PV system.

To boost solar power in Maryland, SolarCity has acquired the solar energy installation branch of Clean Currents — an independent solar energy company with an office in the Baltimore area. Soon thereafter, the company plans to venture into the Washington, D.C. market. It’s all an extension of SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive’s belief that people anywhere will install solar, “as long as it won’t cost them an arm and a leg.”

So far, there’s really no reason for SolarCity to believe otherwise. A total of 1,500 communities have bought in to the program so far. We’ll keep an eye on how things shape up on the east coast.

Whenever the discussion of solar cost, the focus is usually on the cost of equipment, like solar panels and inverters. But, according to a recently released report from California solar installation company SunRun, there’s another factor that’s adding up to 30 percent to the solar installation cost: permits. Solar installers across the country are becoming increasingly frustrated with different requirements, even between neighboring counties. So what’s the deal with solar permitting?

In southern California alone, there are roughly 50 different permitting offices with different fees and documentation requirements needed from installers before they can install solar energy systems on homes or businesses. In order to keep up with the complex system, solar installation companies are having to hire workers just to drive from office to office to pay fees and turn in the correct paperwork. For example, Orange County, California installer Verengo Solar Plus has a 15-person staff just to carry out these tedious tasks. That adds to the company’s overall expenses and, in the end, those expenses are passed on to the home and business owners in the installation price.

SunRun’s study suggests that, as the cost of panels and other materials decline, these permitting fees account for more and more of the solar installation cost. According to the report, the permitting process accounted for 13 percent of the installation price in 2007. Today, that figure has ballooned to 33 percent, and if the trend continues, it could account for half of the installation cost within a few years.

In order trim the cost, SunRun’s report offers the following solutions:

• Prize Program: SunRun is suggesting incentives for building permit offices that standardize their process. More specifically, the incentives would reward counties that comply with the Solar American Board of Codes and Standards — a set of permitting standards adopted by the U.S. Energy Department in 2007 under the Solar Energy Technologies Program.
• Online Integration: The study also calls for a n application that allows installers to process permit applications online rather than having to do so in person. This would save the companies money on transportation and would likely enable them to trim down the number of employees needed to handle permits. In the end, this cost reduction measure should be passed down to the home and business owners.
• Standard Pricing: Perhaps most importantly, SunRun wants a uniform pricing formula to calculate the the cost of a permit. As it currently stands, some counties don’t charge a dime for the permits. Others use it as a money grab and charge as much as $2,000.

According to the New York Times, a more uniform process would add a $1 billion stimulus to the solar energy market over the next five years. Coupled with the declining cost of parts and labor, solar installations could soon be affordable everywhere.

Hi, everyone! My name is Miriam and I am a member of our customer service team here at GetSolar.

Each day, I speak with individuals from across the country who are interested in learning more about solar power for their home. Thanks to the modern marvel called Google Maps, I get to cruise around our beautiful country in search of roofs that have yet to reach their full potential, like this one:

From the halls of New York to the sunny shores of California, I review aerial images of properties and help answer homeowners’ solar-related questions. We thought it might be fun — and hopefully helpful — to share some of the questions we hear most frequently.

This week’s question: Where would the solar panels be installed? Read here for a helpful blog post explaining good roofs for solar.

The short answer is on the south-facing portion of the roof, as that’s the direction offering the most sunlight. When it comes to maximizing the output of solar panels, generally speaking the more sunlight the better.

But let’s dig in a bit further. Let’s assume that our homeowners live in a state with a good solar rebate or other incentive, and can take advantage of the 30 percent federal tax credit. Let’s also assume that their home’s roof faces south and that shading — from trees or nearby buildings — is not an issue.

So great candidate for solar, right? Well, that all depends on how our homeowner feels about solar panels displayed on the front of the home!

Occasionally, I’ll talk to homeowners that have a south-facing roof that — unlike the roof in the image above — is in the front of the home. This fact brings with it some important aesthetic considerations.

For some, installing solar panels on the front of their home isn’t a big deal at all — in fact, some homeowners like how the panels look. For others, the idea of adorning their dream home with solar panels that are visible from the street is enough to make them seriously reconsider their solar pursuits.

If you want to go solar but are afraid to put the panels on the front, no need to abandon your solar power dreams just yet. Solar panels may not be as ugly as you think! Just check out these images. Not bad, right?

If you’re still uneasy, what’s about a ground-mounted solar array or solar fence? (Read here for more on solar roofs vs. ground-mounted systems) Provided that you have sufficient shade free property, a ground-mounted system may strike that perfect balance between function and form, all while maintaining the architectural integrity of your greek-revival home.

Usually we find that where there’s a will, there is a way. In the end, discussing your wants and needs with professional solar installers is the best way to find a solar home energy solution that’s right for you.

So, that’s it! I hope you’ll drop me a line at mmaguran@getsolar.com or call me at 1-800-265-3646 ext 706 to discuss your project. I may not be able to explain quantum physics, but I’m confident I can help answer a more relevant question — can solar power work for you?

Qualified California homeowners are realizing what many leaders of the solar energy industry hope is the future: free solar energy.

Main Street Power, a Colorado solar installation company, has launched a ten-year ‘no-cost’ solar pilot program across California. In partnership with Morgan Stanley, Main Street Power is working with two energy-services companies to create Solar Access California (SACA). SACA will own and operate the solar energy systems and give away the generated energy for free for a decade.

The initiative’s aim is to provide clean energy to low-income communities. In order to qualify, residents must live in multi-unit apartments — though specific income requirements are not yet known. Beyond helping lower electricity costs for participants, SACA is also meant to serve as a teaching tool. Each California solar installation will be equipped with a monitoring system, and the companies involved will train non-profit workers in those neighborhoods to read the system and install solar panels. This way, the initiative’s backers hope to impart job skills while encouraging the adoption of residential solar power.

Main Street is not new to doing business in California. In September, the company was awarded solar contracts at 36 schools in San Diego and 12 other sites in northern California’s Contra Costa County.

Stellar Solar, a San Diego-based solar power installation company, today announced the launch of a new program that offers a discount on residential solar energy systems for active and retired members of the armed services in San Diego County. The news comes amid an on-going discussion in the Pentagon — and beyond  – about how to best reduce the military’s dependence on fossil fuels.

As noted by Stellar Solar’s VP for Sales and Marketing, Michael Powers, the new military solar discount program is intended in part to help make solar more accessible to more people.

“The armed forces and Department of Defense have taken an aggressive approach to installing solar on military bases nationwide, which is really leading by example for their soldiers, sailors, airmen and officers, both active and retired,” Powers said. “Stellar wanted to do our part to make going solar more within reach of the sizable population of military personnel here in San Diego County. This program, combined with the Federal tax credit and California State rebate does just that.”

The program offers a discount of:

• $1,000 off a residential solar energy system up to 5 kilowatts (kW) in size;
• $1,500 off a residential solar system between 5 kW and 10 kW;
• And $2,000 off a residential solar system bigger than 10 kW

So if you’re veteran or active service member interested in installing solar panels in San Diego, you may want to check out Stellar Solar.

Despite all the growing interest in solar energy, the fact remains that only one percent of the energy produced in the United States comes via solar power.

Generally speaking, the upfront costs associated with installing a residential solar system remain relatively high — a hindrance to many. In a bid to help more homeowners install solar panels, a number of companies have in recent years developed solar lease options.

Alteris Renewables, a leading renewable energy company in the northeast, has just joined the fray by unveiling a new option to install solar energy systems for no money down.

The primary goal of Alteris is bring solar energy to as many people as possible. Eliminating the up-front cost will certainly help to that end, as consumers will still be able to take advantage of incentive programs and save money on utility bills. But Ron French, President of Alteris Renewables, sees other benefits, too, as he said via a recent press statement.

“It is more affordable than ever for homeowners to go green with solar power,” said French. “By having finance options that allow residential customers to take advantage of state and federal incentives without a significant cash outlay, we are eliminating cost as a hurdle for homeowners looking to reduce their carbon footprint and their dependence on fossil fuels.”

Alteris’ program is the first “zero down” solar purchase program available to homeowners in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.

For the third and final installment of our GRID Alternatives series, Getsolar hit the road and visited a GRID installation site in Oakland, California to gain a better understanding of how the organization is impacting some of California’s low-income communities.

10800 Edes Avenue in Oakland is home to a Habitat for Humanity East Bay, low-income housing structure. The colorful, multi-stage development that began in 2006 is a ongoing project and, visiting it, you’d never know that the land it stands on was previously a brownfield.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has played a supporting role in this transformation. Working with Habitat for Humanity, the California utility sponsors the donation of a solar electric system for each new home Habitat builds in PG&E territory. The installation of these systems is handled by GRID Alternatives and Solar Power Partners, a large-scale solar power installation company. When all is said and done, each of Edes Avenue’s 54 homes will be equipped with a small rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) system of about 1.8 kilowatts (kW). In total, the project will come to roughly 90 kW.

While relatively small, the systems deliver meaningful savings. Families who have already moved in are benefiting from electricity bills that are $30 to $40 lower per month than they would be in the absence of solar panels. Some of the other homes, still in various stages of construction, have yet to have solar panels installed.

On the day of our visit, a warm and windy afternoon in June, roughly 20 GRID Alternatives volunteers and Solar Power Partners workers were positioning panels and working on wiring a single system into place atop a duplex that had already been erected. The third level of a scaffold provided a good vantage point from which to watch progress unfold. To the west, clear over a wall that separates already-occupied homes from the work site, there were cars parked in driveways and people bustled in and out of their homes. Some occasionally stopped to look up and observe the work in progress. Starting at ground-level, volunteers passed solar panels along a chain of hands up the scaffold. The panels were then placed side by side, mid-roof. It went on like this throughout the day, the workers making smooth and steady progress.

PANEL PASSING: GRID Alternatives volunteers and SPP workers pass panels to the rooftop of an Edes Avenue home.

From GRID Alternatives’ perspective, the decision to take on the Edes Avenue project was an easy one — it was already completely funded, a fact that can make all the difference in the world. But beyond funding, a number of other site-specific factors dictate whether a given project is a good fit for solar — and for the organization. These variables hold true for just about any residential rooftop solar installation:

• The roof in question must be in good condition. If necessary, GRID can sometimes help the homeowner replace or repair the roof. Other times, however, an old roof is a project killer.
• The roof must also be in a non-shaded area — trees and tall buildings, in other words, are another type of project killer.
• Ideally, the roof faces due south, as this ensures the solar panels receive optimal sun. Panels may be placed on roofs that have southeast or southwest exposure without substantially reducing system performance.

“You don’t really want to tell people to cut down trees so that they can have a solar energy system,” said GRID Alternatives volunteer Maura Fallon-Mcknight. “Sometimes it’s just not a good idea for them if there is too much in the way.”

Beyond the site-specific variables, which relate to the solar energy system, GRID Alternatives also, of course, weighs community-specific variables that relate to the organization’s mission of helping low-income California families. Homeowners interested in having GRID assess their particular situation and eligibility can sign up on the group’s website. But GRID’s Development Director Zach Franklin said that is not the way they connect with the majority of their beneficiaries.

“In terms of clients, the challenge is that the funding we have often times can be so specific that if we were just to say ‘hey, low-income folks, go to our website and maybe you can qualify,’ in most cases we can’t serve them unless they meet the criteria of all of the dollars we have,” Franklin noted.

The Edes Avenue site in Oakland met all the main criteria for GRID, Habitat for Humanity and PG&E.

As GRID Alternatives continues to expand, it seems the organization will maintain its focus on California. “Our focus is here [California],” said Franklin. “We have so much that we are working on and so much that we want to do.” Given that California is home to more than two million low-income homeowners, Franklin may have hit the nail on the head.

In case you missed it, check out the first two Installments of Getsolar’s three-part series on GRID Alternatives:

• California Org Brings Solar Savings to Low-Income Families
• The ‘Habitat for Humanity’ of the Solar Industry

When California faced an energy crisis in 2001, Tim Sears and Erica Mackie were installing renewable energy systems in the private sector.  But as they watched their state and profession makeup two halves of a state-wide power breakdown, the two engineers sprung into action, determined to spread the knowledge and skills needed to make solar energy available to underserved communities.

The offspring of their ambition is GRID Alternatives, a company that is imparting everyday Californians with solar equipment and installation training. Grid Alternative’s Affordable Solar Housing Program, launched in 2004, has led to the installation of 369 solar electric systems on the roofs of houses of low-income homeowners from San Diego to Sacramento.

The newly installed systems are reducing electric bills by roughly 75 percent. Over the projected lifespan of the systems, the total solar savings will amount to nearly $7 million and prevent over 27,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions from infiltrating the atmosphere over the next 30 years.

The genius of the company lies in saving low-income homeowners on professional installation by pairing them with GRID Alternative’s installation volunteers throughout the Bay Area. The volunteers can earn a living as an installer while saving on installation cost by installing their own home system. According to GRID Alternatives, entry level system installers earn between$10-20 an hour, an Installation Foreman can earn up to $38 an hour, and an Installation Engineer can max out at $50 an hour. GRID Alternatives’ volunteers are mandated to take an installation crash course upon signing up with the company. Once that’s completed, the freshly trained installers are thrown knee-deep in real-life experience, taking on solar tasks in nearby neighborhoods.

To find out about and attend GRID Alternative’s solar training classes, email info@gridalternatives.org and find out about future opportunities.

People come to GetSolar.com to learn about solar energy and its costs and benefits. They also come to us to be connected to qualified, reliable solar installers in their region. We touch base periodically with those we’ve helped to see how things are going, but occasionally, out of the blue, the customers call us first. We’ve had this kind of feedback consistently on one particular installer, and we just had to share the most recent success story. Let me tell you a little about this company, first.

Amir Abtahi is the CEO and head engineer for Florida solar installer Avon Park Construction, LLC. With a PhD from MIT, Dr. Abtahi has been involved with solar for decades and has brought that interest into the classroom as a professor of mechanical engineering at Florida Atlantic University. But he hasn’t let his expertise stay academic: in 1989, when Hurricane Hugo devastated (among other places) the island of St. Croix, Dr. Abtahi organized and headed an effort to install portable solar power collectors to provide island residents with electricity long before the grid came back online. Working for a solar manufacturer at the time, Dr. Abtahi networked with the Red Cross and flew in himself to do the installations–all this in a time when solar energy was perhaps at its lowest point of visibility in the United States.

Today, Dr. Abtahi personally oversees and manages all solar electric and solar thermal projects undertaken by Avon Park Construction, LLC. Avon Park engineers and installs commercial solar and residential solar projects throughout Florida. One recent installation in Bradenton was a bit of a tangle: the angle of the solar panels was an issue, as was the customer’s request for battery backup. Generally, battery storage for solar makes little or no financial sense unless the solar installation is in the middle of nowhere, far away from municipal power lines–it’s simply too expensive. But this customer has medical equipment that needs power in the event of an energy outage, and a small battery component was the sensible way to address this need. Here’s what this customer wrote to tell us about his experience with Avon Park versus other Florida solar installers that gave him quotes:

No company wanted to be concerned with a 30° angle. No company wanted to include a battery backup system. Nobody sent out a solar engineer who would be installing the panels. The only exception to every single statement is the company name that you sent me below: Avon Park Construction LLC.
My roof has already been measured for the layout of the panels and we are already in the process of getting permits from my county. The purchase of panels and the arrival of the electrician will be occurring this week.

All of this, less than two weeks after we made the initial connection between this customer and Avon Park. (Dr. Abtahi is unfailingly prompt in his responses to us and to customers so no surprise for us there, but it’s still great to see.) In another update, this customer humorously noted that the only problem so far has been dealing with Florida red tape, which Dr. Abtahi was doing an excellent job of fighting through regardless. He really summed up his feelings about working with this Florida solar installer in a few simple words: “Amir is fantastic!”

All of us at GetSolar are committed to promoting solar energy through information sharing and open, balanced discussions. But the real joy for us comes from seeing people who can truly benefit from solar panel installations connect with the professionals who make their projects happen. Amir Abtahi at Avon Park Construction, LLC, is one outstanding example of the difference a passionate, knowledgeable solar installer can make.

This is the first installment of our new Web series, “Get to Know an Installer.” We’re going to introduce you to the people who really make the solar industry tick. We also hope to show you how, exactly, our partner installers work with customers to help them meet their energy goals. So without further ado, here’s a profile of Paul Fleury and Greg White, two hard-working guys who are trying to bring affordable sustainable energy to greater Charleston, South Carolina.

Spend about a minute on the phone with Paul Fleury, and you’ll realize you’re speaking with someone who loves what he does for a living. The affable Maryland native left his previous job in the automobile industry to co-found Sustainable Energy Solutions, a Charleston, South Carolina-based company that specializes in installing solar thermal systems. Now Fleury and his partner, Greg White, spend their days helping homeowners understand the benefits of using the sun to heat their domestic water.

When asked what they enjoy most about their new jobs, Fleury chuckled. “No longer having a boss.” He then went on, ” We enjoy contributing to the community in a way that really helps people. We’re trying to help move Charleston forward to becoming a sustainable city. We want people to know that they can reduce their energy use and save money without giving up their lifestyle.”

Fleury and White, who both attended the University of Georgia, met in 2004, several years after they graduated. In the interim, White had gained considerable experience with structural wiring and smart monitors for residential applications.

On site in Charleston, South Carolina

Following some preliminary conversations, the two decided to get serious about starting their own company. They spent four months putting together a business plan. The decision to install solar thermal systems was “a natural choice,” according to Fleury. He noted that such systems are relatively affordable compared to solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, and offer a solid return on investment. “We saw solar thermal as one of the best ways to help homeowners save money and energy, right off the bat,” Fleury noted.

…click here to read more