SBS has had a wonderful and successful time on the side-order list for the City of Missoula’s Green Blocks energy saving program.

We began work back in the Fall of 2010 by getting 2-inters from the University of Montana’s COT Energy Program and got them fully trained on doing a basic solar site assessment.

Our Team ended up doing over 120 assessments over the course of 3-months last fall.  They braved blazing sun, side-ways rain and blowing snow from October – December.  But, it was well worth it.

This spring 2011 marked the final phase of this project.  The City added about 60-90 participants to get to their total count of 300.  We got ourselves another COT Energy intern for this past Spring and he went out and did about 48 more solar site assessments.

Half way through this phase we saw an 18% REDUCTION in the cost to install solar, plus the state and feds decided to KEEP the tax credits in place for renewable, Northwestern Energy gave us a dozen more $6k grants to hand out to customers in good standing, and the MT DEQ revolving loan fund keeps on chugging along (although they are 8-10 weeks out on funding).  To top it off, SBS starting taking credit cards for deposits.

The wet cold spring made for a slow start, and with the unseasonably cool summer, folks were not thinking about solar.  But with the aforementioned incentives, and a little 90 degree weather, we are in full swing.  Over half of the installs we’re doing in July and August came from Green Blocks leads and SBS is now booked out until September.

Thanks to the City of Missoula for this great opportunity!  We’d love to do it again.

If you’re interested in information about solar – get in touch: www.SBSlink.com or info@sbslink.com.

According to the Bitterroot Star, last week the the fifth home by Ravalli County Habitat for Humanity was completed and keys handed over to the owners. The new home is on Cherry Street in Hamilton and now belongs to Travis Sanderson and his family.

Much of the materials for the home were donating, including a Solar PV system – made possible through the work of Sustainable Building Systems (SBS) and Northwestern Energy’s Solar PV grant.  This system will reduce the family’s prior heating bill of $350/month in winter to around $80/month.

Read the entire coverage from the Bitterroot Star here.

After a PV module industry wide cost reduction, sourcing a lower cost mount system and dealers giving better pricing on all balance of system components, SBS has new numbers for potential Solar PV customers in MT that represent up to a 25% reduction in installed costs for PV systems!

If you couple the new lower prices with a $6000 Northwestern Energy PV grant, the 30% Federal Tax credit for renewable energy and the $500/$1000 (single/couple) State Tax credit, the costs are lower than every before.

And here in Montana, we can add to that a 10-year, 4% financing option (oac) from the MT DEQ revolving loan fund for renewable energy.

For a 2kw, 9 module system, total cost to the customer is in the $12,000.00 range.

After incentives this is roughly 3,200.00 out of pocket.

This on average powers about 25-40% of the average Montana home.

Here is an example of plausible breakdown for that $12,000 system

$12,000 GROSS
- $1000 (deposit to SBS to begin work)
=$11,000 NET
-$6,000 (NWenergy PV grant)
=$5,000 – Financed w/ MT DEQ loan
120-months
4%
=$51/month

Yes, that is correct, for at little at $51/month for a 10-year period, you can cover up to 40% of your energy bill. Awesome.  Check out this PV for more information: SolarPVFinancing-Basics-final.

And, when you file your taxes at the end of the year on that system, you’ll still get the $1800 Federal credit and the $500/$1000 state credit back.  You can keep these to use however you’d like, or put that money into your DEQ loan for early pay off (there is not penalty for early pay).

For a free solar site assessment, or to learn more, contact us at SBS today: info@sbslink.com, www.sbslink.com, 406-541-8410.

To get a general estimate of your solar or other renewable energy needs, try our Solar Calculator here.

Customer Name, location, system size:
Keegan Eisenstadt, Rattlesnake Valley, Missoula, Montana, 3450 watt solar PV system

What turned you on to Solar?

My father was a solar energy engineer in the 70s-80s in New Mexico.  They have had water heating panels on their house since then.  Additionally, my own work at ClearSky Climate Solutions is related to changing the course of climate change – which is predominantly driven by human demands for energy.  The clear need for more distributed generation of power from renewable sources is the most important element to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, and leaving a more stable world to my children.  Solar is a great way for me to practice what I preach, and also get a great price on power for my house!

SBS is an innovative, Missoula company that is looking at a holistic approach to analyzing and reducing energy use (and greenhouse gas emissions) of planned and existing structures.  My company works to mitigate carbon footprints with its clients, and a linkage to SBS was a natural for us.  Once I started learning more about what SBS does, I realized that I needed them to install a system on my home.  The solar system install team at SBS proved to be smart, capable and thorough.  I also think they are genuinely as excited about my system as I am!!!  I know they log into my system’s internet monitoring pages to see how it is performing, not daily as I do (which is great fun!), but at least weekly.

Racking system in, panel get ready!

What were your goals for this system?

My goals for the system were threefold: 1) make my house a laboratory for how to mitigate climate change with distributed generation of renewable power (which is something I have thought about, talked about, and worked towards for years), 2) give me a better-than-market price on electricity – which it will certainly do, and 3) provide an educational/outreach opportunity for my community to see just how easy it is to make your own power!

The financial incentives available right now for installing domestic alternative energy systems are good: 30% federal tax credit, $500/tax payer state tax credit, NorthWestern Energy grants, and low interest loans available.  My system will be financially paid off in 10 years, using a 4% fixed loan from federal stimulus money.  The system payback, from the energy created will be between 8-12 years, depending upon how fast prices for energy rise, and the panels on my system have a 25 year warranty.  So, my house will make roughly 1/3 of it’s power for free from about year 10 until 25.  That’s a good power bill!

Josh setting the first panel. Check out the nice lines on those racks and micro-inverters.

What do you like best about your system?

Actually, I’m surprised by this answer.  I had no idea how much more aware of energy use in my house I would become.  I now see/feel the house using energy….literally with the real-time monitoring tools that are part of the installation.  I turn on the stove, microwave, the stereo and I can see the kilowatts used jump.  It is amazing……I know that the mot

or in my refrigerator uses about 95 kW, that a big light fixture in the living room is 225 kW, that the microwave and clothes dryer are huge energy HOGS.  Frankly, I wasn’t really aware of those things before.  I never really internalized the energy demand of things in my house that way.  Even being interested in these things, I hadn’t internalized them in a tangible way.  It is such a surprise, and I am really enjoying it.  I’m sure in time, I will be happier with the cost savings….but right now, I am learning a lot and feeling great about it!

We just finished installing a 3450 watt solar PV system in the Rattlesnake where we employed 16 Enphase micro inverters. Micro inverters offer several advantages over more conventional string inverters.

Micro-inverters, monitoring and mountains...

Each solar module power production is optimized individually so little module mismatching occurs.  As well, if one module is shaded from a nearby tree, this one module will have reduced output, not the entire series string of modules as with the larger string inverters.  This advantage alone makes a huge difference but the pluses don’t end here.

The Enphase engineers designed one of the coolest monitoring programs found in the PV world.  Each individual module reports its power output over the existing AC output wiring to your in home computer or with internet service, this data is directed to the company’s website where current and cumulative data is displayed and stored.

A good graphic says a thousand words so if you are interested check out this link to the Enphase monitoring examples.

For more information on Solar or to talk with Dan:

Dan Brandborg
NABCEP certified Solar installer dbrandbog@sbslink.com

The Moore’s of Hamilton, Montana completed installation this Fall 2010 of a 10 module photovoltaic system which will provide 40% of the electrical power used in their home.  The pole mount solar array is mounted on a tracking system which follows the sun from East to West through the day.  The electricity is run into their home where it powers any electrical appliances that are currently in use.

If more power is available from the array than can be used by the home, this excess power will then turn the electrical meter backwards creating a financial credit with the utility.  This credit can then be used at night or this winter when the power draw of the home exceeds the solar power production.  So you can see that a system can easily be designed to provide any portion of you power bill that a homeowner determines.

This PV system(short for photovoltaic’s) is one of several in downtown Hamilton that Dan Brandborg , a native Bitterrooter has been involved with since he started working with PV in the early 80’s.  He has worked with Sustainable Building Systems out of Missoula, since 2009.

SBS is proud to announce that we now have two NABCEP certified installers in the house.  NABCEP is the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners.

Greg Guscio, our solar thermal expert, has just passed the NABCEP test. This means that both Dan Brandborg and Greg are NABCEP certified.

Congrats, Greg!

Now this is something I am excited about. My mom sent me the link to this video over the weekend and she is right on. Solar Highways. If we were able to construct a save road, parking lot, highway materials w/ photovoltaics under super strong glass we could harness enough energy to cover ALL USA ENERGY NEEDS PLUS 15%!!!

Let that resonate for a moment.

No oil based electricity.

No coal powered electricity.

All solar. ALL SOLAR.

They even go on to explain how post consumer waste, otherwise headed for landfills, would be the source, mixed with other organic materials, to form the base and structure for the panels.

And finally, from a safety perspective, they plan to include embedded LED lights, powered by the solar, that would be used for a myriad of reason like lighting up crosswalks, giving messages like “SLOW DOWN, CONSTRUCTION AHEAD,” changes in speed limit, etc…

Watch the entire video here.

As I was noodling around in related news, I came across another neat happening in the past year. The State of Oregon is putting together some of the first highway solar projects along the highway like the arrays along the autobahn in Germany.

You can view that video here.

In a post by the Council on Environmental Quality on the White House website, it was announced today that the President “plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House Residence, a project that demonstrates American solar technologies are available, reliable, and ready for installation in homes throughout the country.”

Please take a moment to read the entire post here.

We finished the off-the-grid system in Maui in June of 2010 and it seems to be working wonderfully all summer.

All in all, we installed a 5.6 kW solar array, battery bank and inverter system on the island of Maui for an off grid facility. The system powers a main house, two guest houses and a pool house.

We had fun with this project as it is located in such a beautiful part of the world and the local Hawaiians where integrally involved in the installation work. Because the system is beyond the power lines we employed a large battery bank and backup generator fired by propane. This system design varies greatly from grid connected systems where batteries are seldom employed as the power grid serves as “financial” power storage.

Cloud cover and precipitation vary extremely from 12 to 360 inches per year depending upon the microclimate which made the system sizing a bit more challenging. To compensate for this variable we included a 30 kW generator and four inverter/battery chargers which can recharge the batteries in several hours time.

Here is our photo show of the final install, inverter and battery bank, etc… If you want captions, please click on the image below and then on the icon in the lower right w /the four-arrows for full-screen mode.

Dan Bradbord, SBS Solar Guru

dbrandborg@sbslink.com

We just finished installing a 3450 watt solar PV system in the Rattlesnake where we employed 16 Enphase micro inverters. Micro inverters offer several advantages over more conventional string inverters.

Racking system in, Panel get ready!

Each solar module power production is optimized individually so little module mismatching occurs.  As well, if one module is shaded from a nearby tree, this one module will have reduced output, not the entire series string of modules as with the larger string inverters.  This advantage alone makes a huge difference but the pluses don’t end here.

Josh setting the first panel. Check out the lines on those racks and micro-inverters.

The Enphase engineers designed one of the coolest monitoring programs found in the PV world.  Each individual module reports its power output over the existing AC output wiring to your in home computer or with internet service, this data is directed to the company’s website where current and cumulative data is displayed and stored.

A good graphic says a thousand words so if you are interested check out this link to the Enphase monitoring examples.  http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/BxqT67#.

Micro Inverters, Monitoring and Mountains.

PS – don’t those snowy spring peaks just look great in the distance?  It sure is nice to be working Solar in Montana.

Dan Brandborg
SBS Solar guru
dbrandbog@sbslink.com