The Other Solar Industry? | As manufacturing woes make headlines, Central Mass. installers thrive
Harvard is a town of about 1,800 households. In the past few months, according to Kristen Ferguson, approximately 400 of them have made a phone call to the company she works for, Hudson-based New England Breeze, about getting solar panels installed.
Harvard is one of four communities in Massachusetts that are acting as test cases for Solarize Massachusetts, a program that gives bulk discounts for solar installation based on the amount of solar capacity town residents install. In late August, Harvard became the first of those communities to surpass 100 kilowatts of contracted installations, triggering the first drop in prices for residents.
Ferguson said the program has been “wildly successful” and has contributed to the biggest growth her 12-employee company has seen in its five years of operation.
The biggest headlines about the solar industry over the past year have come from the problems of major panel makers—Solyndra in California and Evergreen Solar in Marlborough—but some in Massachusetts say a more important story is the slow-moving success of solar installations.
The 100-kilowatt threshold Harvard reached might look like a small number, but the Solarize program is just part of a tapestry of incentives that are making solar companies across the country take an interest in Massachusetts.
Eyes On Innovations
Patrick Cloney, executive director of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which oversees the state’s renewable energy programs, said the future of Massachusetts solar energy is probably not with the mass manufacturing of commodities like solar panels. But he said there’s a lot of potential in companies doing new research, like a little cluster on Flanders Road in Westborough that includes the headquarters of CellTech Power Inc. and a research and development facility for 123 Systems Inc.
While those companies have grown up in the state organically, thanks to the presence of research institutions and highly trained workers, Cloney said the installation of solar facilities is the result of a very deliberate set of incentives.
“That’s sort of man-made, artificial growth,” he said.
The incentives include simple state and federal tax breaks for installing panels, a “net metering” policy that allows households and businesses to sell electricity back to the grid at the same rate they buy it, and a more complex program that requires power companies to get a set percentage of their electricity from solar power. Instead of buying the power directly, the companies can buy credits from anyone who produces power, including homeowners with panels on their roof.
Closing In On 100
These kinds of measures have allowed the state to go from about 3 megawatts of installed solar power in 2007 to 57 megawatts, with another 40 or so in the pipeline.
They’ve also caused an influx of solar installation companies into the state.
Among them is Astrum Solar, a California company that has chosen Hopkinton for its fifth operations center. Michelle Waldgeir, vice president of marketing for Astrum, said the company now does business in 11 states plus Washington, D.C.
“This is definitely, I would say, in the upper group of states in terms of how fast people have adapted,” she said.
Waldgeir said Massachusetts homeowners can often pay back the cost of a system in five years, one of the quickest in the country. Like many installers, Astrum also offers a leasing arrangement so people can get a solar array with no up-front cost and still get some of the payback from it.
Waldgeir said that, with time, it will take less government funding to make solar energy attractive. That’s partly because of technological improvements and partly because of economies of scale. For example, Astrum itself can reduce its prices as it adds offices and installs more systems, she said.
She said peer pressure also plays a role in encouraging more people to adopt solar systems.
That’s what the Solarize Massachusetts program is counting on in Harvard.
Jim Elkind, the program’s volunteer coordinator, said his fellow Harvard residents are enthusiastic about the program, turning out at meetings and chatting with him about it when they see him around town.
“There’s a kind of an emotional response people have,” he said.
Elkind said people who have already signed up are particularly happy to talk to their neighbors about the program since they know that if enough new households sign up, it will mean savings for them too.
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