Join The Solar Power Movement

Archive for the ‘Solar Log’ Category

As far as the hotel PV project is concerned, it’s dead. On my last visit I was told by the manager that he had gotten a couple of PV quotes from solar comapnies out of state.  I am sure that was a lie because I asked him to lay them out on the table and I would try to match within reason something that he could live with price wise.  He said that he would call me, but never has and that has been months ago.

Now later in the solar game I have become aware of a pattern protrayed by certain business persons from another country, say India, that have sort of a mofia mentality in that if you want to do business with them you must somehow come in face to face contact with the Grand PooPaa.  So it turns out that I have been talking to the wrong person in the command chain.

Oh well.  Live and learn.

Thanks

Stanley

Back when I was sending out mailers to various members of the Chamber, I encountered a person that was on the local electric company board of directors. He sent me a friendly email about how they were in favor of clean coal and sort of suggested that he had done enough study on solar to “know it won’t work”. That suggested to me that within the foundation of the local electric company there exists opposition to people going solar. I hope this just isn’t true but I am experiencing difficulty with my very first encounter to help a local hotel client get started in the energy evaluation process. It looks like the local electric company is dragging it’s feet. A hotel has lots of variables and I want to get the best over all picture of how their energy is being used.

So with permission from the client I went over to the local electric company and inquired about billing and formulas for determining peak charges and so forth. In the process I learn that they would put a monitor on the clients transformer and help see how much power is being used at different times of the day.  In addition to the monitor I learned that they would do a total energy audit through TVA and it could result in KWH credits being given to the client under certain conditions. So I passed this “good news” onto my client and he proceeded to make phone calls to his account representative in order to get the ball rolling on these services.

Well, that was over a week ago and my client has made repeated calls and left messages without any acknowledgment from the local electric company whatsoever. Now yesterday 11/8/2010, my client called me frustrated about the situation. He already feels like he is getting shafted by the electric company and is being over charged for power.

Do I get involved between my client and the electric company? Should I cry foul play and see if  the Tennessee Valley Authority knows about local utilities dragging their feet?

What do you think.

We, the solar energy company I represent, is putting in a call to a higher up personnel to get things moving. Sometimes you just gotta know who to call.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IS YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY BUSINESS.

This past week we kind of got back to normal at the solar power office I’ve been writing about. You may remember that several weeks ago I sent out sever hundred letters to many members of the local Chamber of Commerce. Well one such member kept my letter and recently called the office wanting to get acquainted with us and see how much solar power it would take to offset his monthly electricity bill averaging $4,000.00 per month. He has a hotel business and it is painfully obvious that after taking many steps to lower his bills, nothing seems to be working. So we are now at the point of examining what can be done to help him up the path of “Going Solar”.

Which brings me to my purpose of writing this post in the first place. I stumbled upon a program called PACE. It is a way for “home owners” and “business owners” to get solar power on their building without the outlay of a great amount of cash upfront. Here is what the PACE website says about the program:

A Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) bond is a bond where the proceeds are provided to commercial and residential property owners to finance energy retrofits (efficiency measures and small renewable energy systems) and who then repay the financing over 20 years via an annual assessment on their property tax bill.

PACE bonds can be issued by municipal financing districts or finance companies and the proceeds can be typically used to retrofit both commercial and residential properties.

What do you think about that? It means that if I own or have a mortgage on my home or business building I could get the local city government to foot the bill for me to get a solar power system on my building. With little or no out of pocket expense. I urge you to read more about this at the PACE website. Get involved and bring this excellent tool to your community.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IF YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY BUSINESS.

You don’t want to be in the face of potential clients, however, if you don’t remind them that you are still alive and they will forget about you.

Case in point. On September 1 I made a follow up on someone that had filled out a form out booth during an EXPO. A couple day later I called and asked about comeing by to do a site evaluation as they had requested.  Oh yes they said. could yo come today. It was about 10:00AM, so i said, would noon be alright. They said sure, come on.

I went and looked over the available roof area, the shading, orientation. They did not want panels on the front of the house which incidently faced due south. So I figured a really small PV system on the north roof on top of two dormers with East facing slope. I don’t like it but hey!

I give her some very helpful advice about insulation, putting a timer on the gas water heater(yes you can) and adding a thermal blanket. SO I got the email address and went home.

At home I put together a quote for about six panels. But them I sprang out of box and thought that we could use the dormers as a foundation to build a framework across and this would allow a much larger system facing the South.

I worked all this up with PDF and put into an email and sent it out to the home owner.   Than I waited.Two days, three days. I got busy with working on a mailing list and finally about six days later I called the home owner.

Oh! they had forgotten all about it. So with me on the phone she checked her email and sure enough, there it was dated 9/1/10. Then she remembered me.  Oh well that was a couple of days ago. Guess I’d better call and see if they are still interested.

The moral of this story: make contact, develop a relationship, keep contact.

This last August 20th 2010 I attended a 6 hour accredited seminar for engineers and architects. I was the only one the room without a 4 year college degree and was popping off questions and absorbing all I could. The seminar was of course solar power oriented. It was 4 hours of solar PV and 2 hours of solar thermal. I really learned or at least encountered quite a bit of meaningful information. I hope to utilize it in the days ahead as I continue to broadcast the benefits of “Going Solar”