Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
MHT's Jackie Noblett: Generating power from hot pavement
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Solar installation booms in New England
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
Massachusett’s wildly popular program to pump money into the solar installation industry through rebates may just be a victim of its own success. The depleted Commonwealth Solar program lacks an immediate successor, potentially leaving a booming industry of solar installers in limbo.
State and federal incentives for solar energy installations are the lifeblood of this emerging industry, which employs about 2,000 people across the state, even as the cost of installations declined significantly this year. Without an incentive program in place, few entities have the pockets to purchase systems — leaving dozens of installers to fight over a handful of big projects that suddenly have become less profitable.
“At a basic commercial entity or a homeowner level, solar as we know it in Massachusetts is on hold,” said Ron French, president of Wilton, Conn.-based installer Alteris Renewables Inc. and a major builder of systems in Massachusetts.
The $68 million Commonwealth Solar program was intended to last four years when it was announced by Gov. Deval Patrick in 2007 and began accepting applications in 2008. Providing fixed rebates per kilowatt on systems installed on homes, businesses and government buildings, the program’s administrator, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, sent a note to the installation community last month announcing the program was running low on funds.
Within 36 hours, $20 million in applications flooded the office, far more than it could award and more than two years before its expected sunset.
The timing is significant, insiders say, as it would have allowed the state ample time to build a successor to Commonwealth Solar which will be based on requiring utilities to buy power generation credits from solar generators.
The Department of Energy Resources is in the process of drafting regulations that would guide the program and have set a completion date of Jan. 1, 2010. Yet other states that have built so-called solar renewable energy credit (S-REC) programs took well over a year to have a working system in place.
“Massachusetts is learning from all of those experiences so that when we do launch ours we’re incorporating the lessons learned,” said DOER Commissioner Philip Giudice.
Late Wednesday, Giudice sent a letter to solar installers informing them that funding allocated under the Commonwealth Solar program will be distributed to residences and a reduced rebate will be offered to small commercial systems.
Many installers say they are excited about the energy credit’s ability to increase demand for solar systems, but are tepid about how quickly and seemlessly the change will come.
“Massachusetts had one of the best solar incentive programs in the country, and what we’re seeing with the S-REC system I believe we’re going to continue to have the best program in the country,” said Dan Leary, president of North Andover installer Nexamp Inc., “but I wouldn’t be telling you the truth if I said we were 100 percent confident about the (near-term) future because nobody is.”
Installers said they had a backlog of projects that would take them into next year.
A non-scientific survey of New Jersey solar installers in November 2006 — in the midst of the nearly two-year transition between rebates and an SREC program — showed that 62 percent of respondents laid off staff as a result of incentive reductions and 81 percent did not meet sales targets, according to the Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Industries Association.
“I’ll tell you, it destroyed the solar industry in New Jersey and the solar installers are just now coming back,” said Jeff Wolfe, CEO of White River Junction, Vt., installer groSolar Inc., which has operations in New Jersey and Massachusetts. “Massachusetts has really built some momentum with the Commonwealth Solar program, but the state can effectively decide to waste that if they don’t create stable incentive programs.”
RSS Feeds
Comments (1)
Please Login/Register to post comments.