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Author: Sklar, Scott1

I want to add solar panels to my house for the environmental benefits, but my wife is concerned about how they will affect the property value. Do you know how solar panels affect the resale value of a home? If solid evidence is available that suggests solar panels increase a home's value, then this would be a great selling point, not only for my wife, but also for anyone interested in buying them.

The answer depends on where you live in the United States, the quality of installation and whether local real estate agents and appraisers are knowledgeable about solar options. In areas such as Arizona, California, Florida and New Jersey where concentrations of solar water-heating and photovoltaic (PV) installations exist, houses with solar installations have been rising in value as quickly as houses without these systems. In other areas with a high number of electric outages or utility rate increases, homes with solar installations command higher resale values.

Andrew Black of REgrid Power, a renewable energy service company in Campbell, Calif., specifically targets your question in his article "Why is a Solar Electric Home Worth More?" (go to www.millionsolarroofs.org/articles/static/1 and scroll to the bottom, click "binaries/" and then "BlackASES.pdf")

Black says: "These monetary benefits are financially quantifiable. A solar-electric system increases a home's value by $20,000 for each $1,000 in annual reduced operating costs, according to The Appraisal Institute. A solar-electric system compares very favorably with other home improvements in percentage of cost recovered. Often, a solar system can recover much more than 100 percent of its cost, and this percentage actually increases over time as electric rates rise." The Appraisal Institute (www.appraisalinstitute.org) publishes reports for home appraisers to support their conclusions and explain the evaluation process clearly --it is these professionals who have the most impact on resale costs for housing.

"Bad-looking photovoltaic installations could be a disincentive for others to buy homes," says Joel Gordes, president of Environmental Energy Solutions, in Riverton, Conn. But high-quality installations are aesthetically appealing in every detail and play a huge part in resale value. In areas where appraisers and real estate agents have less experience with solar homes, where few if any incentives are available, and where consumers are not knowledgeable about such systems, solar installations have slightly dampened resale values. But overall, with high natural gas prices and ever-increasing electric utility rates -- coupled with decreased electric power quality and reliability --solar installations on homes, if done professionally, increase their value significantly. Many states actually exempt the added value from local tax assessments as a way to encourage solar installations, although they will increase the home's base tax assessment.

How do I find distributors of residential solar water-heating equipment for my state?

Contact your local Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) chapter (www.seia.org/statechapters.php) or your state's chapter of the American Solar Energy Society (www.ases.org). In states without either, I'd contact the closest state chapter because many distributors cover multistate regions or will know of a contact in your state. The vendor you buy the system from can recommend a good installer, too.

A quality installer should belong to a state or regional SEIA chapter -- or the national association. Ask to see pictures of previous installations and request references you can contact.

How do I find information about any green energy providers in my area?

Buying utility-traded renewable energy credits, or "green power," is a solid step that consumers can take to transform the energy market -- particularly renters and homeowners who have limited options for using solar water-heating, geothermal heat pumps, small-scale wind power, PV or other on-site dean distributed energy sources.

In March of 2004, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released its annual ranking of leading "green pricing" utility programs, and, according to NREL, more than 500 utilities in 33 states now offer these programs. In 2003, more than 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy credits were sold through green pricing programs, an increase of more than 30 percent from 2002.

The Environmental Protection Agency now offers a "Green Power Partnership" section on its Web site (www.epa.gov/greenpower) that features a locator for green power providers by state. One of the better e-newsletters is the "Green Power and Market Research News" (www.wapa.gov/es/greennews), distributed by the Western Area Power Administration.

I want to install a small solar system that can power our lights and water pump. We live in a new log home and use a wood-burning stove to heat the upstairs, and back up the stove with an electric heat pump. How do I figure the electrical load for these appliances? I would think that I could use the electric bill for a month such as April or October when the heat pump is seldom used.

Yes, check your electric bills from the spring and the fall to find your electric load without the heat pump. Once you get the lowest kilowatt-hour-per-day readings in those two seasons, it is easy to minimally size your system, either to address your entire electric load or to size your solar electric system to power just the important smaller appliances.

The cost depends on how you want to approach it. If you take a 15-year second mortgage (say at 9 percent), it's approximately $203 per month for a 2-kilowatt (kW) system with "the works." A lower-percentage loan with a lower-cost installed PV system -- and maybe some added energy efficiency -- probably could get the cost below $150 per month. NREL offers guides to solar energy, as does the U.S. Department of Energy. Both have information that is worth looking over as you consider a residential PV system. Here are some helpful Web sites:

• Solar radiation: rredc.nrel.gov/solar

• PV watts calculator: rredc.nrel.gov/ solar/codes_algs/PVWATTS

• Department of Energy Consumers' Guide to PV (PDF file): www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35297.pdf

I was in a debate with someone who said that renewable energy should just compete in a free market like every other industry and should stop receiving government and state subsidies. I wanted to disagree with him, but I didn't have the facts.

The United States subsidizes its conventional energy industries more than any other industrialized country, so there is no "free market." Some examples of these subsidies are oil and gas depletion allowances, special treatments for coal royalties, tax waivers for companies with overseas refineries and federal appropriations for black/brown lung benefits for coal miners. There are many other subsidies, and they all total billions of dollars per year. In legislation just passed last October by Congress and signed by President Bush, the U.S. taxpayer provided billions of dollars in subsidies for refined coal, as well as to a private consortium for a natural gas pipeline from Canada.

In comparison, renewables receive much less -- less than $100 million per year in subsidies. The concept of a fair and free market would apply to renewable energy if the subsidies for conventional energy were dropped and the barriers that limit distributed-energy (decentralized power plants) access to the electric grid were removed at both the transmission and distribution levels.

I live in upstate New York and have a 1,200-square-foot hot water radiant-heated area that is well-insulated I have a relatively large south-facing roof area available for solar heating, so I need some information on solar heating equipment to supplement or replace two large 40,000-British thermal unit (Btu) propane heaters in this system.

From my point of view, you must ask yourself when you need this heat the most. The answer is generally when the sun is not out, such as in the middle of the night or in the winter when days are shorter. I say keep your propane system as your evening-only input. Adding a solar thermal heating unit to your propane radiant-heating system is possible, but you'll need a large, well-designed system, in addition to space for both hot-water containers and solar panels on the roof.

If you choose solar space heating, Don Bradley of Solar Strategies in Philadelphia says you will need ample hot-water storage, from 400 to 700 gallons, depending on the size of the area needing heat. In addition to two solar hot-water panels for domestic solar water-heating use, you will need at least eight solar thermal panels for space heating. Ask a qualified solar installer to check the solar access and roof orientation to ensure optimum performance. Good luck!

I was wondering about the high cost of silicon and whether it will prevent the price drop in solar residential systems that everyone expects.

Today's PV solar panels are made primarily from silicon, which in the 1990s was derived from the silicon waste that came from the computer chip industry.

In April 2005, reports from the biggest PV companies indicated that solar-grade silicon prices had jumped from $9 per kilo in 2000 to $25 last year, and were expected to jump to $60 this year. These higher silicon prices are a result of the fast growth of the global PV industry, which produced more than 1.2 gigawatts of power in 2004, and a result of new efficiencies in the traditional silicon chip industry that leave behind less solar-grade silicon waste.

With the SEIA's announcement of the American Solar Power Industry Research and Investment in Technology collaborative, the PV industry is working to build upon its earlier efforts for fair access to silicon. The industry-funded collaborative is designed to reduce the cost, increase the efficiency and improve the manufacturing process of PV through better designs and processes, which should lead to low-cost manufacturing and new silicon production processes, among other goals.

While there are some promising PV materials in the marketplace, such as thin films that replace silicon with indium, selenium and gallium, and cadmium telluride, another emerging player will be nonsilicon nanotechnology, which uses light-sensitive dyes. In fact, Konarka Technologies, a manufacturer of nonsilicon nanotechnology, is setting up a pilot plant this year.

With smart tactics for using existing nonsilicon materials, nanotechnology and improved efficiency in the use of traditional silicon, the shortage of silicon should be seen only as "growing pains" for an industry in its early adolescence. For more information, go to the National Center for Photovoltaics Web site, www.nrel.gov/ncpv.

You can significantly increase the value of your home by installing high-quality solar panels that blend well with its design.

This house in Golden, Colo. uses flat-plate solar panels to heat water, which is then stored for domestic use in a tank similar to a conventional gas or electric water heater.

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with Scott Sklar

Scott Sklar is the co-author (with Kenneth Sheinkopf) of Consumer Guide to Solar Energy and is president of The Stella Group, a distributed-energy marketing and policy firm in Washington, D.C. These questions and answers are reprinted from www.renewableenergyaccess.com.