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Solar Energy Services
1514 Jabez Run
Millersville, Maryland 21108

info@solarsaves.net

410.923.6090

Two Anne Arundel County businesses set exciting example by generating their own clean energy, saving money, and delighting customers.

K&B True Value of Annapolis (https://kbtruevalue.com/) and Solar Energy Services (https://solarsaves.net/) of Millersville announced the commissioning of what they
believe is the first retail business in the City of Annapolis to become net-zero on electricity consumption. The 224-panel solar energy system, designed and installed by Solar Energy Services, Inc, will replace a 2012 installation that offset about 15% of the hardware store’s annual electricity consumption. Deciding to purchase this new system was a relatively easy decision for Jared Littmann, the owner of K&B True Value on Forest Drive in Annapolis.

Jared commented, “This solar system will offset our annual electricity consumption, saving over $18,000 per year for our business. The incentives have us recouping 64% of the investment in the first year, 100% of the investment by year seven, and then positive cash flow of $269,000 over the course of 25 years. In addition, this furthers our goal of environmental stewardship and responsibility.”

Because the business had invested in solar 10 years ago, Jared was familiar with the process and was already a believer in its value. At the time, in 2012, budget and technological limitations held K&B True Value back from pursuing a 100% offset, when Solar Energy Services installed their first system. However, advances in solar technology since then have made it relatively easy for K&B True Value to offset 100% of their energy without even filling the entire roof of the Annapolis store’s building.

Rick Peters, president of Solar Energy Services, shared that “Jared had the experience with solar and the forethought to plan for this investment, but other county businesses and nonprofits can do this too, with very accessible County-Sponsored financing through a vehicle called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). This kind of project is within reach for many businesses in the region, thanks to advances in solar technology as well as financing mechanisms to help property owners fund their own solar energy projects.”

Based in Millersville, in North Anne Arundel County, Solar Energy Services designs and builds residential and small commercial projects throughout the DMV. Located on the Annapolis neck peninsula, K&B True Value has been the neighborhood hardware store for almost 50 years, since 1974.

On Tuesday June 28th, SES and K&B True Value will host a ribbon cutting to celebrate the commissioning of the new solar generation system. Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman and Councilwoman Lisa Rodvien, plus State Senator Sarah Elfreth and others will attend the 1 PM Tuesday (6/28/22) celebration of the achievement of these two local businesses.

Net Zero Electric for K&B True Value

Jared Littmann was a real pioneer in 2012, when he made a substantial investment in a rooftop solar installation at his business, K&B True Value, to offset a chunk of the store’s electricity consumption. At that time, Solar Energy Services (SES) designed a 17 kilowatt (kW) solar project (72 panels in total) to offset about 15% of the store’s annual electricity consumption. With a projected payback of 5.5 years, this 2012 project was a good financial investment, but it was still a rare one. At the time, many commercial building owners were not interested in solar if it could not offset 100% of their energy. While 100% offset is ideal, it was certainly not a requirement for a good financial project. Jared understood that and to his credit went ahead with the investment. As promised, the system offset the projected energy and paid his business back in under 6 years.

solar panel install

Fast forward to 2021. K&B True Value’s solar system has been generating free energy for the business for years, but Jared wanted to do more. He reached out to SES and asked us to consider some options to increase his solar contribution. He had plenty of available roof space, so we looked at a supplemental system to the current one, but we also looked at a full new system to replace the 9-year-old system.

In a testament to the rapid decline in costs for solar, Jared was able to invest in an entirely new system to completely offset K&B True Value’s entire annual electricity consumption. That’s right – Net Zero on electricity! Have any other retail operations in Annapolis achieved this? We are not aware of any. Could other firms achieve this and benefit from the tremendous economics that will essentially provide free energy after the 7.5-year payback period? Yes, they can!

Solar energy costs have come down more than 75% since Jared’s first installation. That’s thanks to policy, competition, and scale. Now, many businesses and homeowners can achieve Net Zero electricity with relative ease, while making major improvements to the bottom line. Like Jared, businesses and homeowners can benefit from the state’s “netmetering” policy that allows excess solar energy to be fed back into the grid for credits to be used later. This allows the business owner to maximize the value of the solar investment without the need for batteries.

Some might wonder what happens to the energy that K&B True Value feeds back to the grid at times when the store is not consuming all the solar generation. Jared’s neighbors may not know it, but some of them are periodically using solar energy from Jared’s rooftop. The neighbors are paying the utility for that energy and Jared is getting a credit. And best of all, the line losses of transporting that energy are negligible since the solar energy is consumed by the nearest load. Typically, traditional electric energy incurs line losses anywhere from 10-15% when it travels from a wind or solar, coal or nuclear plant to the consumer. Rooftop solar gets consumed at or near the source of generation, reducing line losses and in many cases unloading the grid.

As this project develops, it’ll soon be time to remove the original panels from 2012. Jared is interested in donating them to a non-profit who will use them. If you know of any interested entities, please reach out to Jared at K&B True Value or Rick Peters at SES.

What’s next for Jared? He has visions of tying in electric vehicle charging and possibly battery backup in the future. Do you own your building and have some tax liability? If so, consider contacting SES for a free solar evaluation. Just ask Jared, you won’t regret it.

Editor’s note: K&B True Value is an Annapolis Green Founding One Hundred Supporter.

Small and Medium Commercial Solar Systems in Maryland

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Building Owners – Your Time Has Come!

Deployment of both residential and large utility-scale solar systems has exploded in the last 10 years.  Much of that growth has been driven by policy and further sustained by scale and competition, which combine to continue bringing us cost reductions and technology advancements.  To provide some historical perspective on this, our installed costs today are 75-80% lower than 10 years ago, before any incentives are applied. 

With all that amazing progress, our industry still has not made similar inroads in the Commercial & Industrial (C&I) solar market.  Many believe that is about to change.  Washington, D.C. has led the way in this market segment with strong SRECs and a flexible rooftop Community Solar program that motivate building owners to monetize their rooftops.  Property owners enjoying these benefits include churches and non-profits who are going solar at a remarkable pace, despite their lack of tax liability.  Over the past several years, SES has installed more than 10MW of solar energy systems throughout the D.C. region, including several churches, apartment buildings and office/retail spaces.

Maryland has been noticing, learning from their neighbor that all this private investment in a cleaner and more reliable grid is something we should be incentivizing.  Increasingly over the last few years, Maryland has improved commercial solar economics with enhanced incentives, driving the urgency for property owners to act now to maximize their solar incentives.  Below is a quick summary of incentives and financing that exist for Maryland commercial property owners to act now on long term solar investments.

 

Tax Credits

  • Federal Investment Tax Credit (26% until Dec 31, 22% in 2021, 10% in 2022)
  • Maryland authorized a 2020 commercial storage tax credit to incentivize businesses to add energy storage to their solar investment

 

Grants from Maryland Energy Administration (MEA)

  • MEA provides solar grants of up to $20,000 based upon system size
  • MEA offers incentives for solar carports of up to $200,000

 

Production Incentives (SRECs)

In addition to the value of the energy produced, the system owner in Maryland also benefits from selling the environmental attributes of that clean energy in the form of solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs).  Legislation passed in 2019 in Maryland to increase the state’s clean energy goals has impacted the value of SRECs dramatically, further improving the economics for any system owner, regardless of tax appetite.

 

Financing

PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) is a program available in many Maryland counties to help property owners deploy energy improvements, even a new roof.  The loan is backed by the improvement and is paid back through a property tax assessment.  The return on the investment must exceed the loan payment to ensure positive cash flows for the building owner.  The financing is off-balance-sheet and does not require personal guarantees.  This underutilized program is a tremendous vehicle to make customer-owned energy investments with no out-of-pocket costs.

Solar Loans:  Solar has become one of the most reliable and predictable long-term investments around.  With projected annual returns for the building owner in the 10-20% range over 25 years, most banks are entirely comfortable loaning for commercial or residential solar projects.

PPA’s: Third-party entities will own and maintain solar systems for property owners, selling them the energy at a discount over the traditional supplier’s rate.  For commercial building and land owners, these Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) typically require relatively large projects to provide the necessary economics.

 

Aside from all the benefits above, there are two more strong business cases for solar investments.  First, aside from the money savings, if you can fix a large portion of your energy expense by investing in solar, you’ve giving your CFO more control over future expenses while locking out price increases from the supplier for that energy.  Secondly, by investing in solar, you are able to show your customers, your employees, your prospects and your recruits that you are committed to clean energy.  In this day and age, there is a truckload of value right there.

So don’t wait another minute.  SES is using technology to conduct remote meetings and preliminary evaluations in order to get budgetary numbers to prospective customers very quickly.  We currently have availability for projects to be complete this calendar year, but let’s not wait another minute people – commercial contracts signed in 2020 get to realize the full 26% Federal Tax Credit and highest SREC values.

In other wordsâ€ĶSunshine’s a Wastin’!

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Maryland Solar – Ready to Grow Again

For many years, Maryland has been a leader in solar policy and solar deployment.  In the last 3 years, we’ve fallen behind other states, watching our robust growth give way to several years of decline.  It’s almost hard to believe, but Maryland has been losing solar jobs for more than two years after peaking at approximately 5300 in late 2016.

Policy Clouds

Why is this happening?  One of the biggest reasons is the value of the state solar production incentive, the SREC (Solar Renewable Energy Certificate).  Those of you who own solar or have considered buying solar are probably all too familiar with SREC pricing.  Because Maryland property owners adopted so much solar in the first half of the decade, we outpaced the state’s goals, depressing the value of the market-based SREC incentive.  This was a good problem for the industry to have until it became clear that our goal (25% renewables by 2025 with 2.5% solar by 2022) was clearly not aggressive enough.

The Time is Now

We are now at a time of severe urgency for the Maryland solar industry.  With installations on the decline for over two years and job losses mounting, we are losing a trained employment base and leaving federal tax benefits on the table.   The solar industry has been working with other coalition members (wind industry, environmental organizations, etc.) for a few years to try to increase the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), but have been hampered by the Hogan Administration’s reluctance to incentivize more renewables until the completed RPS Study Report is released.  The study was due to be released in December of 2018, but has been delayed and some fear this is intended to stall an RPS increase for another year.  We cannot wait.

Governor Hogan has gone on record with his desire to fight climate change.  He recently coauthored an OpEd in the Washington Post with Virginia’s Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam to emphasize the urgency and the need for bipartisan solutions to climate change.  It is in this bipartisan spirit that we hope to see the Hogan Administration support the Maryland General Assembly in passing the Clean Energy Jobs Act
(CEJA)(SB0516, HB1158) of 2019 that will increase our renewable energy goal to 50% and the solar portion to 14.7 %. “Click here to read more about this

No-Brainer Investment for Maryland

One of the primary arguments against increasing the RPS has to do with the impact on utility ratepayers.  The preliminary indication is that the increased renewable goals associated with the CEJA will add approximately $1.85/mo. to the average electricity bill.  While this is not insignificant, it is important to note that a 2018 Daymark study, commissioned by the Hogan Administration’s Public Service Commission, found that for every $1.00 of investment in solar, we return approximately $5.00 in economic and health benefits to the state.   Solar jobs are good jobs that pay well, representing a path to economic stability for many installers.  And best of all, solar installation jobs cannot be exported.

We need YOUR help

As a solar advocate, we ask that you commit to express your support for CEJA in the Maryland legislative session this year.  The bill has been submitted and we should have a bill number shortly.  In the meantime, please continue to advocate for more solar whenever you can and be prepared to contact your Maryland state legislators to support this important legislation when the time comes.  Stay tuned for a special email notification with the bill number, and suggested talking points in the coming weeks.

Solar is Booming in Washington DC

Washington DC has been a leader in solar development for many years.  In the last 12 years, DC legislators have set aggressive targets, helped to streamline solar permitting, introduced a solar access rights law, and passed a landmark community solar bill to increase access to solar for those without an available sunny rooftop.   Many of these policies include mechanisms to help bring the benefits of solar to communities of low and moderate income.  The collaboration between the solar industry and DC policymakers has helped to build a robust market where solar installations are happening throughout the city, from downtown office buildings to churches, warehouses and residential rooftops across the city.   These policies and the resulting private investments are creating good jobs in the District and reduced energy costs for many of its residents.

Double Down

Since solar and clean energy have been delivering in DC, the stakeholders decided they wanted a more ambitious goal.  In the summer of 2018 the District started on a path to double down with their commitment to renewable energy by proposing the most aggressive renewable energy target in the country when compared to other state policies.  The new goal calls for 100% clean energy (5.5% solar) by the year 2032, with 10% solar by 2041.  Hawaii and California are the only other states that have 100% goals, but both of those targets are positioned for 2045, quite a few years later than DC. 

Other Benefits of the legislation

In addition to doubling the renewable energy target, the proposed legislation would provide a few more benefits to solar advocates.  The bill:

  1. Limits geographic eligibility over time to concentrate the solar development in the District or on the District’s grid
  2. Pulls the current solar carve-out schedule forward by two years to increase SREC demand
  3. Extends the solar carve-out from 5.5% in 2032 to 10% by 2041
  4. Addresses specifics about previously contracted (“grandfathered”) load that is exempted from the newest RPS
  5. Includes transparency requirements on the energy suppliers to provide insight into the exempted load and associated time periods
  6. Modifies Alternative Compliance Payment (ACP) schedules to require $300 ACPs through 2041
  7. Increases the shelf-life of an SREC from three to five years, increasing SREC price liquidity and stability.
  8. Introduces various reporting requirements on the Public Service Commission in order to keep the Council and the Public apprised of the progress of renewable energy development.

We’re in the Home Stretch

The Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018 was introduced in July 2018 and made its way through the Council over the fall with hearings and two unanimous votes of support on November 27th and December 18th.  In January, the bill was submitted to Mayor Bowser for her signature and she obliged on January 18thClick here to read the bill“.   The remaining hurdle is for approval by the US Congress within 30 legislative days.  The only way that Congress can stop this legislation is with a joint resolution and the President’s signature.  As a result, passage into law is considered by most to be inevitable and in fact we are seeing market pricing for SRECs responding accordingly.

Thank your Legislators

So now that the law is almost passed, it is time to prepare to deliver.  The industry has a lot of solar to build and we’re working hard at that.  As a solar advocate who cares about renewable energy in DC, please consider taking a few moments to call or write to your Councilmember to thank them for their support of Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018.  It’s always important to show our gratitude.

Thank you for your support of solar!

Solar Plus Storage is Ready for Prime-Time Backup Power for your Home

As we’ve seen the cost of solar drop rapidly in the last ten years (more than 80%), we continued to endure those naysayers in the distance arguing that “no matter how cheap you make solar; much like wind, it will never dominate the energy landscape because of intermittency.” It’s hard to believe people still say “Never” in the context of technology? That term only provokes our great American drive and ingenuity, which continues to deliver. Witness electric storage costs have dropped 80% in the last eight years, outpacing the dramatic solar cost reductions!

Battery technology today

Today, electric batteries continue to back up solar in more and more markets every year. Batteries are giving solar system owners a lot more control and choice about energy independence, while giving grid operators a game changing tool to help manage the modern grid with greater economic efficiency. We’ll talk more about the how and why, later in this post.

Storage market is heating up

So far SES has contracted for 7 battery installs already this year in Maryland, up dramatically from 2017. The residential solar plus storage market has begun to take off in many markets. In fact, the preferred battery suppliers were out of stock for more than 4 months this year, both from increased demand to complement solar projects, but also due to the soaring demand increase for Electric Vehicles (EVs) that use the same battery technologies.

Storage is like bacon

Why is storage so valuable? One of my favorite energy experts, Katherine Hamilton (https://38northsolutions.com/team/bios/) once said that “storage is like bacon, it makes everything better.” Storage has almost a dozen value streams that can be monetized now or in the future. The two biggest and most obvious value streams are that it can provide extra capacity in times of high demand, and it can provide extra demand in times of excess capacity. In both cases, it provides stabilizing value to the grid and more efficient use of generating assets.

A testament to the value of storage on the grid was seen several years ago when the California Public Utilities Commission required utilities to procure a minimum amount of storage. Not only did the major utilities comply, they all procured more storage than mandated. They are well aware, storage helps them modulate an increasingly dynamic and decentralized grid.

Residential Solar Panels Anne Arundel County MD

Why should I consider solar plus storage for my home?

If you deploy solar along with your energy storage solution, you can utilize the same federal tax benefits as you do for solar, namely the 30% investment tax credit. In Maryland, you are eligible for an income tax credit on the storage portion of the system, in addition to the other state solar incentives (https://energy.maryland.gov/business/Pages/EnergyStorage.aspx). As a result, the economics in Maryland for residential solar + storage are much improved from a few years ago.

The main reason our residential customers are deploying energy storage is for backup power during a grid outage. This is typically done by way of an essential loads subpanel in their electric system. SES often installs these subpanels as part of our solar + storage project.

Another factor driving this trend is a residential customer’s desire to position themselves to cut the cord in the future, if the utility relationship becomes unappealing or uneconomical for them.

Lastly, future changes to electric rate design and/or net metering policy, could present solar + storage owners the ability to increase their savings or even generate revenue from the services that their frequently-idle storage can provide.

Are you building a new home and want to be sure it is ready for the energy architecture of the future? It’s easier than you think. Ask your builder or electrician to insure you have an essential loads subpanel (to use with electric battery storage, or possibly a generator). Secondly, request they install an empty (capped) electrical conduit from attic to electric room for us to easily add your solar energy conducting wire in the future.

Please see Roger Perry’s technical writeup on residential storage applications recently implemented by SES.

What has brought about this market opportunity?

Electric storage has long been an essential part of any true off-grid solar/wind application and this is where the earliest developments have taken place. As solar began to penetrate the grid in the last 10 years, there has been a lot of R&D investment in this future “holy grail” of renewable energy development. The investment is now paying off.

Storage broke into the US grid-tied market about five years ago. In the case of Hawaii, it was mostly a market driven change. Extremely expensive power, a grid congested with rapid solar growth, denials and delays of solar interconnection applications, and abundant sunshine, all contributed to the new paradigm. This resulted in economics that justified a certain segment of residential customers in Hawaii to cut the cord and embrace storage as a long-term solution. This sent an alarming message to utilities around the world: You better embrace these changes or plan to go the way of the buggy whip!

At about the same time, California’s PUC mandated a specific quantity of storage on the grid, much of it behind the meter. The utilities went on to exceed that mandate in the first auction and later in 2017, the target was increased again, with little to no resistance. In the past year, we’ve seen California utilities choose new battery storage over new gas fired peaker plants to meet peak loads in three separate cases. This is a tremendous validation of the economics of storage, particularly in an age of record low natural gas prices.

What’s ahead for energy storage?

The horse is out of the barn. Distributed energy generation combined with storage, will be the foundation of the future electric grid. The role that storage will play in this transformation will be enormous at the macro level, but somewhat uncertain at the micro level due to regulatory policy, incentives, and local market conditions.

We should expect to see strong storage growth in markets with the following attributes:

  • Places where local or state incentives are promoting storage – Maryland is one of them.
  • Markets where system owners can capture supplemental revenue from their storage investments (Our grid operator, PJM has piloted bundling distributed storage as a revenue generating resource for storage system owners)
  • Markets with high electric rates or Time of Use (TOU) rates.
  • Markets where electric “demand charges” represent a large cost for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. This is because storage can dramatically lower a building’s electricity demand profile, and thus add energy bill relief to a portion of the bill where solar has had limited impact.
  • Microgrids are increasingly popular, particularly with campus style environments and military installations. These applications will increase storage demand and further drive down costs through scale and experience.

Next steps

Be sure to contact SES if you are interested in solar + storage. We will be happy to design a system that is customized to your needs. As always, we’ll provide you all the support you need to capture the Maryland solar grant and the storage tax credit (which has a limited budget) so contact us right away.

Peters’ Journey to Net Zero

Solar Service,Home Solar PanelsWhat Net Zero Meant for Us? Our Severna Park based, four-person family was looking to offset some of our home’s dirty energy, but we really did not have an expectation we could offset it all, but we had to start somewhere. We took our first step shortly after I joined the solar industry in 2008.

Low Hanging Fruit. In February 2009, we installed a 120-square foot solar water heating system to offset most of our water heating, and a small portion of our space heating for the first floor of our home. We saw big savings from this 3-panel system right away. Ever since, I enjoy the act of turning off the back-up water heating in April and leaving it off until almost October. For us, offsetting a dirty and expensive oil-fired boiler was the obvious low hanging fruit. We would later convert that remaining load to natural gas when the utility extended the pipeline to our home.

Solar Electric (PV) With the rest of the heat, A/C, and appliances all running off electric, it was time to look at the next opportunity. A few years later, when budget allowed, we decided to add a 5 kW solar PV system to our second story roof which faces SSE. My best determination was that we offset just over 40% of our electric load with that PV system. We were happy, but knew we’d want to find a way to get to NetZero eventually. , . I began to evaluate the remaining rooftops and consider what it would take to get us there. Solar panel efficiencies had improved a lot over the past several years so this reduced the remaining roof space we’d need to hit our goal

Phase 2 (PV). In the spring of 2016 we finished filling the balance of the south roof with some slightly higher wattage panels. As part of the same expansion, we added 24 relatively high efficiency panels to the E/W, low slope, rooftop of our one-story garage. We now had a total of 6.6 kW Equivalent of solar thermal and 13.8 kW of PV.

Not There Yetâ€Ķ.We almost tripled our PV with the last upgrade and according to my calculations, this would get us to NetZero electricity. We’d know for sure by April, the annual true-up time frame for netmetering with BGE. When April 2017 came around, we were disappointed to come up a bit short (unfortunately, with a couple teenagers in the house, my usage predictions were a little off). Where do we go from here? I was not ready to put panels on the north roof, there had to be something available to us on the demand side.

Oops – More Low Hanging Fruitâ€ĶOne thing about Energy Efficiency, there’s always more opportunity. I had changed out many bulbs to LED over the prior several years, mostly through attrition, but I had not replaced any of the more than 2 dozen canister lights we had throughout the ceiling upstairs and down. Not only were these lights very inefficient, but the heat they generated in the summer was just adding to our air-conditioning load. We found the LED replacements on sale and replaced them all, as well as the remaining few incandescent lights in the house.

Commercial Solar Energy,Solar ServiceEureka. we have arrived!… In April of 2018 we received a $46 check from BGE for the annual overage from solar. With the kids heading off to college soon and a new refrigerator around the corner, I’m confident our checks from BGE will be getting bigger for the near future. At least until we purchase an electric carâ€Ķ

PACE Solar Financing in Maryland and Washington DC

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Typical Commercial Challenges

As veterans of the small commercial solar market in this region, we are very familiar with the challenges of financing solar energy systems to this group of property owners.  Small businesses want solar as much or more than any other market segment, but they are capital-constrained like no others so they need affordable financing.

Third party solar developers have been the answer for other markets.  They can easily finance large systems because the cost of assessing the applicant’s credit is well worth the return.  In the case of residential systems, they can use universal tools like credit scores to help manage their risk.  For the small commercial and non-profit market, there hasn’t been a super-attractive  way to finance solar, until now!

Commercial Solar Systems Now Recognized as Public Benefit

Washington DC and Maryland now have laws and programs in place for commercial (and nonprofit) property owners to utilize PACE.  Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a vehicle that is used to finance energy improvements for buildings.  It operates under the recognition that energy improvements are considered to be a public benefit.  As such, PACE uses the property tax as a vehicle to structure the financing payments – much like we would finance a sewer extension, but in this case specific to one property.

PACE is very appealing to property owners because they can add significant value to their building on a cash-flow-positive basis without personal guarantees or the application of additional debt to the balance sheet.  The financing payment must be less than the savings and it’s paid in the form of a special assessment on the property tax bill over the term of the financing arrangement (5-25 years at competitive rates).  Multiple energy improvements (i.e. lighting, solar, new roof) can be bundled into one financing package.

The best thing about this approach to financing solar is that the property owner will own the system, not a third party.  The property owner gets all of the benefits, including the energy savings, the substantial incentives, the marketing value, and the satisfaction.  All it costs them is the interest on the financing which pales in comparison to the savings.

More info is available on your webpage on our PACE webpage but you may just want to pick up the phone and call us to see if your property is eligible.

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Press Release: Solar at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation

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Press Statement
6-15-15

Solar Service, Home Solar Panels, Chesapeake MDCBF Merrill Center to Install 106 kW Solar System

(ANNAPOLIS, MD) The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) and Solar Energy Services, Inc. (SES) announced an agreement today for SES to design and build a 106 kW, grid-tied solar photovoltaic system at the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, CBF’s headquarters.

The Merrill Center rooftop solar system will include more than 370 solar panels from US manufacturer SolarWorld, as well as inverter systems from Solar Edge. The panels will be installed primarily on the available roof tops, but the design also calls for some unique solar shade structures to provide additional benefits to the facility and its occupants.

SES president Rick Peters shared that SES is pleased to participate in this marquee project. “I know personally that CBF has led the way on sustainable initiatives in our region for a very long time. It is an honor to be selected to construct this project, which will help advance CBF’s message and their environmental stewardship.”

The solar system is projected to produce more than 133 MWh of electricity annually, enough to power more than 10 average Maryland homes. This will significantly offset the facility’s consumption of traditional electricity.

“While we have had solar panels at the Merrill Center in the past, we are adding this new capacity because it is now more affordable as well as more efficient,” said CBF Vice President Mary Tod Winchester. “The new array will generate enough electricity to provide one third of the power for heating, cooling, and other needs of the more than 100 staff who work here. As a non-profit, we will not benefit from the many tax incentives available, but we encourage other individuals and businesses to closely examine the costs and benefits of adding solar generation.”

The project is expected to be completed before the end of this summer.

About Solar Energy Services, Inc.

Solar Energy Services, Inc. (solarsaves.net) designs, builds and services solar power systems for institutional, commercial, and residential customers. The firm was founded by 37 year solar industry veteran Roger Perry who has longstanding ties to the communities served by SES. Based in Millersville Maryland, the 21 person firm operates in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.

About Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Founded in 1967, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (www.cbf.org) is the largest independent conservation organization dedicated solely to saving the Bay. Serving as a watchdog, we fight for effective, science-based solutions to the pollution degrading the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams. Our motto, “Save the Bay,” is a regional rallying cry for pollution reduction throughout the Chesapeake’s six-state, 64,000-square-mile watershed, which is home to more than 17 million people and 3,000 species of plants and animals.With offices in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia and 15 field centers, CBF leads the way in restoring the Bay and its rivers and streams. Over the last four decades, we have created broad understanding of the Bay’s poor health, engaged public leaders in making commitments to restore the Chesapeake, and fought successfully to create a new approach to cleanup that features real accountability-the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint

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Solar Energy Trends

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Some Positive Trends:

  • System prices continue to drop
  • Maryland meeting its solar energy goals
  • Maryland Solar Industry exceeding 2200 jobs

Eastern Shore MD,Residential Solar PanelsThe Challenges:

Industry consolidation can be disruptive

Residential solar leasing is fast outpacing cash sales in many of the more developed states, like Maryland. It’s what many Americans want so it will continue to drive the market. It seems to work for more of America.   After all, we do like instant gratification and if I can save $10/month immediately, and feel good about it, where do I sign? While SES is typically strongly advocates for cash sales to our customers who are able, no one can argue the enormous impact and value that the various residential and commercial financing options have delivered. Getting solar access to the mainstream will be the most critical piece to advancing the development of distributed solar. It really has been transformational so far.

There’s other good news. System Pricing, though leveling off somewhat, has dropped dramatically in the past 5 years. While incentives decline as planned, the industry continues to drive down installation costs to maintain the impressive paybacks and internal rates of return.

Beneficiaries of solar price reductions include states like Maryland, who had the foresight to seed this industry over the last 6 years. Government and industry partnership in Maryland has built an economic environment that supports solar development and as a result, it is sustaining 2200 jobs while Maryland continues to meet its solar RPS goals. That’s right, our industry delivers over 2200 paychecks in Maryland. In fact, there is now a solar thermal equipment manufacturer in Baltimore. Much to be pleased about.

There’s also a darker side. Bankruptcies and consolidation of solar companies have carried the headlines quite a bit in the last year especially. While a natural part of the tech/business evolution cycle, consolidation and shake out are always disruptive, not only to industry members, but also to consumers of these solar energy products and services. As a result, all of the solar “investors” are asking lots more good questions – particularly about the longevity of the manufacturer and the installer. Popular questions, particularly in the solar PV panel world, are “Who will be here to support my warranty?” and “What is the design track record of these systems?”

The beneficiaries of these trends will be those with a proven commitment to the industry either through time or capital. It’s that commitment that gives customers confidence of future support if and when it is needed. Whether it’s an installer with 35 years experience or a manufacturer like SunPower that has 25 years in business, longevity is a key indicator of future availability to support the install base.

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