Published by Dave Llorens under Green Living

Dave Llorens, co-founder and general manager of 1BOG.org, will moderate comments on this forum until midnight Eastern Time, April 19. Dave also co-authors the blog SolarPowerRocks.com and is actively involved with San Francisco community and governmental initiatives for renewable energy. He is a graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been an eyewitness to residential solar energy and the various hurdles to its adoption. From working as a salesperson and hearing customers’ concerns while sitting in their living rooms, to creating a website that distills the solar incentives available per region, to co-founding a community buying club for solar…I’ve learned why people choose solar power and, just as important, why they don’t.

So the big question I’m asking today is “why solar, and why now?” Let’s break it into two parts:

First, “why solar?”

I think we all understand that renewable energy helps reduce carbon outputs and lessens our dependence on foreign oil; the discussion of the importance of this is beyond the scope of this forum. Rather, I’d like to address the gap between consumers’ rapidly growing interest in solar power and why so few people have actually pulled the trigger and installed solar on their homes.

When I first got into the industry, I thought that the decision to purchase solar energy would be primarily for environmental reasons. I was wrong.

Certainly the environment is a reason for exploring solar energy as an option, and for sure, there’s the rare model family with a tiny power bill that chooses solar because they’re thinking of their children’s future. But when it comes to signing on the dotted line, 95 times out of 100, it’s driven by economics.

But hey, we can work with that. The good news is that solar pencils out for a lot of people, though they may not know it.

If you have a large power bill in a state with solar subsidies, there’s a good chance that solar energy is one of the most rock-solid investments you can make. Very few investments have all of these properties:

1. Produces a valuable commodity for 40 years that will almost assuredly increase in price (unless someone figures out a safe way to split the atom),
2. Increases the value of your home, and
3. Helps the environment

Solar is a fixed and very stable long-term investment, which, as we all know, is tough to find today.

So if it’s such a wise investment, how come you and none of your neighbors have it yet? Good question. (To the readers who do have solar power, I thank you—please add a comment and let us know why you said ‘yes’ and how it’s going.)

I think many people have the perception that the solar industry is trying to “dupe” them into thinking it’s a wise investment. The moment we get a critical mass of the general public who understand that solar is often a wise financial investment, we’ll flip that paradigm on its ear and you’ll see the tipping point in residential solar.

But for now, unfortunately, a solar purchase is extremely complicated—it’s not just understanding the technology itself, but the rebates, net metering, tax credits, time-of-use rate structures, etc. This makes it very hard to become an educated consumer. As a result, very few people proactively reach out to get a quote, and even fewer pull the trigger.

Second, “why solar now?”

There are many obstacles that prevent people from buying solar. You might think that in the minds of consumers, solar would be competing with other renewable energy options, but the real competition is actually “doing nothing”. The biggest threat to the purchase of solar is people deciding that their best option is to wait.

Concern about new photovoltaic (PV) technologies replacing current technology is one of the top three reasons people don’t buy now. We’re using the same PV technology on homes we were using in the 70s, though it’s about twice as efficient now as it was 40 years ago.

In consumer electronics we’re so used to insanely rapid product lifecycles that we’re tempted to wait a year or two. However, PV isn’t the laptop you bought two years ago that’s now obsolete. Solar systems will produce electricity for decades, and they’ll continue to produce electricity regardless of what new technology happens to replace it.

Solar is not a clunky CRT TV you look at every day wishing you had a plasma screen—the gear is on your roof, after all. Also, if something whizbang comes out in five years that costs half to produce the same energy (and I’ll go on the record saying that we’ll still be using good ole’ fashioned crystalline silicon on homes in five years), you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, because the heavy subsidies that you can take advantage of now won’t be necessary then, and you’ll already have had five years without electricity bills.

I’d love to chat about the main solutions that I see, including the following: education outreach, smart financing alternatives to home equity, cost reductions, rebates, and the need for Federal standards that would allow installation companies to scale to multiple states.

What do you think? Did you consider solar and decide to wait? What roles should the solar industry, government, lending institutions, non-profits, and consumers play to make solar power a reality for anyone who chooses it?

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