More solar panels light up county

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

Solar panels are popping up on county-owned buildings this summer as Larimer County uses grants and reserve funds to go green.

Most recently, Hydro Electric of Bellvue installed 84 solar panels at the county landfill on South Taft Hill Road. The 19.32-kilowatt system will provide electricity for the solid waste department's office building and hazardous waste building.

Tied into Poudre Valley REA transmission lines, the photovoltaic system will send energy back to the grid when it is not being used for the two county buildings. That, in turn, will reduce the energy bills for the buildings to little or nothing.

Stephen Gillette, director of the solid waste department, said the city and county had received a $20,000 grant to place solar panels at the landfill, but the county decided to upsize the system to make it a net-zero project. To do so, the county spent $71,000 from its solid waste fund.

The county will also use the landfill solar array as a demonstration project for citizens wanting to learn more about the performance of solar panels.

Contractor Mike Carmien, owner of Hydro Electric, noted that the landfill site presented an additional challenge. The panels' supporting structure had to be engineered to withstand 115-miles-per-hour wind gusts.

"The county has wind pockets, and the landfill is one of them," Carmien said.

When attached to the framework, the panels are angled at 40 degrees facing south. Each of the 84 solar panels, which were manufactured in Canada, will produce 230 watts.

The county turned on the PV system at the landfill on June 15. On June 10, it turned on the system installed atop the county courthouse offices building in downtown Fort Collins. Both are performing according to expectations – cleanly and quietly, said facilities manager Steve Balderson.

The downtown building has a 26.82-kilowatt system with 138 solar panels. Because the office building is so large, the system is expected to cut the facility's energy bill by 1.36 percent annually.

It is tied into the Fort Collins Utilities' electrical grid. Standard Renewable Energy of Boulder was the contractor. Panels were manufactured in Mexico.

Gillette noted that he's been told the landfill's solar array is producing more electricity than the buildings are consuming, but he has not yet seen a utility bill to prove it.

This is also a good time for residential customers to consider solar. Clara "Sam" Burnham, owner of Burnham & Sun, said currently offered residential federal tax credits are straightforward. Solar equipment installers can tell a customer how much credit the installed system qualifies for based on the contract price, then the customer takes care of the rest.

Both grid-tied and off-grid solar systems qualify for the federal tax credit.

"The federal tax credit is 30 percent of the installed cost after rebates, if any," Burnham noted. "Since this is a tax credit, not a deduction or rebate, one has to have the tax liability to take advantage of it."

Renewable energy credits from utilities, however, are much more complicated, Burnham advised. For starters, off-grid systems do not qualify. Fort Collins Utilities and PVREA have a wait-list for rebates, she said.

Xcel still has some available, she said, but they are rapidly decreasing. Xcel customers may initiate their own applications.

Fort Collins and REA "rebate applications must be made by the solar contractor and require lots of time-consuming details in the packet," Burnham said, adding that the utility employees who process the rebates are helpful.

Getting a rebate through the Governor's Energy Office, she noted, proved to be very difficult this year, and it was compounded by computer glitches.

Burnham said the most common residential solar electric application in northern Colorado is utility grid-tied without batteries. In remote areas without utility power, people have installed stand-alone, off-grid, battery-based solar and wind systems.

"Our average size residential grid-tied system in northern Colorado is a 5-kilowatt PV array for reasons ranging from rebate caps, to solar space available, to annual electrical usage of individual customers," Burnham said.

The company's average off-grid PV array is 1,500 watts. Off-grid systems are often upgraded as time goes by, she said.