Use of solar energy on the rise in the Triangle
For the Sliger family of Cary, installing solar panels to their roof six months ago was a no-brainer.
"We've been saving about five years to make this happen,” said Jennifer Sliger. “I'm pretty passionate about the environment and sustainability in general, so this was something that was real important to me."
Solar power is on the rise as the cost of solar panels has come down while the efficiency has gone up.
Residential customers like the Sligers only account for about six percent of solar power. Government and commercial companies have been the big drivers for the growth.
Blake Alford, president and CEO of CEI in Raleigh had his company's solar panels installed last year.
"What we wanted to do is reduce our energy dependence, so we put 615 solar panels on here, and we will reduce our energy dependence by almost 80 percent,” he said.
While the savings are great for the consumer, the power companies don't get any savings from customer's using solar energy.
Duke Energy's Jeff Brooks realizes that.
"We are into the solar game as well, we understand it is going to be a resource that we need in the future and we certainly are helping it grow in our state,” he said. “We just have to make sure that the policies around that technology grow with it and are fair to all customers."
Part of that fairness, according to Duke Energy, is having solar customers pay at least a fee to help maintain the electrical grid.
The electrical grid is where the Sligers excess solar energy goes and where the Sligers pull conventional electricity from when the sun is down. Jennifer Sliger said family put 24 panels on their roof and they produce a lot of solar energy.
“We are covering our electricity 100 percent, so we are actually now making more energy than we are using,” she said.
The Sligers are set up on Net Metering. This means they get a credit from Duke Energy for their excess solar energy they create and don't use.
“We are required to purchase that electricity back under the law and that energy goes into the energy mix that we have," said Brooks.
Since, as of now, there is no way to store the excess solar energy Duke puts the excess solar immediately back on the grid for general use.
Solar panels on roofs are what that public can see. What isn't seen is the inverter that is inside the house, and in the case of the Sligers, inside their garage. The inverter converts the solar energy into electricity.
The Sligers are able to monitor their solar usage by using a phone app.
Ben Sliger has an app on his phone that shows when they are using solar energy and when they need to use conventional electricity. The app uses a color code to indicate the energy that is being generated and the energy that is being used.
"So the green is the solar that's being generated, the red is the energy being used in our household, and then you can see we were sleeping then and we woke up this morning and did laundry before the sun came up so we were pulling from the grid," he said.
The screen showed red at night but a lot of green during the daytime.
Even though the upfront cost for installing solar has come down, it's still the major reason more people aren't adding solar panels to their rooftops.
To help encourage rooftop solar, the federal government and North Carolina have a combined tax credit of 65 percent for new solar installations.
That discount has helped Greg Olenar of Solar Now! sell more rooftop solar.
“You're going to recover 65 percent of anything you invest, so if someone invests $20,000 for instance, they would recover 13 thousand in state and federal incentives,” he said. “You have the net cost to own the system around $7,000, and then the equipment alone is more valuable than the net cost to own."
Those government credits helped the Sligers afford the initial cost of solar panels.
"After all the tax credits, it costs us about $5,000 and in about five years we should have full return on investment," Jennifer Sliger said.
The Sliger family has received a lot of attention from their neighbors since they installed solar panels, Jennifer said.
"Our neighbors are really interested in our solar panels, and when they were being installed there were people coming to our door asking how they can do solar panels,” she said. “There's a lot of excitement in the community, so I hope more of our neighbors will get solar."
