Brian Sadler gives an overview of solar power installations in Massachusetts and talks about the key benefits of solar power, how it works in the context of the local climate, financial incentives for installing solar panels, regulations and permits, and how net metering works.
John Maher:
Hi. I am John Maher, and I’m here today with Brian Sadler, vice President at Solaris Renewables, a solar company in Massachusetts, providing premium Solar and storage technologies with exceptional customer service and designing, installing, and servicing solar systems in Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Maine. Today our topic is “Understanding Solar Basics”. Welcome, Brian.
Brian Sadler: Hi, John. Nice to meet with you today.
Key Benefits of Solar Energy
John: Yeah, you too. So Brian, what are some of the key benefits of solar energy, especially here in Massachusetts?
Brian: Yeah, so solar energy in general, the benefits fall into a few general buckets. It’s financial, environmental, and then however you want to look at it, either control or security. So obviously, the financial benefits are essentially saving money, so being able to offset one of your major utility bills and expenses at your home or business with your electric utility, and being able to offset that to whatever degree your site is good for solar.
Then, obviously the environmental impact, being able to lessen your carbon footprint by not having energy that’s sourced through traditional fossil fuels and conventional means. So there’s a tremendous environmental benefit as well.
Then, the control and/or security, essentially being able to control that utility and fix that cost, and also be more resilient against that utility bill that is kind of ever fluctuating and growing over time, because one thing that we do know is that utility rates do go up over time, and that that’s a constant.
John: What do you think the percentage is, of your customers that come to you, and they’re focused on lowering their energy bill for the month versus those that come to you and say, “Hey, we really want to go green, and that’s really important to us”?
Brian: Yeah. That’s a great question. I would say that the bottom line is always a key factor. So savings are always something that folks are motivated by. Then, a lot of our customers, to put a percentage on it, I would say upwards of 80, 90% say that environmental, the motivations are a factor, but generally speaking, I would say it’s more like 100% or 98% are doing this in some fashion to have savings.
How Does Solar Power Work in the Context of the New England Climate?
John: And how does solar power work, especially in terms of the local climate here in Massachusetts and in New England? Obviously, we’re not down south. We’re a little further north. We’ve got four seasons. We’ve got a winter where there’s snow and things like that, so talk a little bit about the local climate and how that works with solar now in 2024.
Brian: Right. We’re a little ways away from the equator, that’s for sure. But one indicator, for instance, is sun hours, so how many sun hours in a day does a particular state or region get? And what might be surprising is that Massachusetts falls kind of in the upper mean of that in the United States. So we are in the range of 4.5 to 4.9 sun hours per day, given the seasons and the time of year like you talked about. And for context, Maryland which is halfway down the Atlantic coast from us is the same. They’re 4.5 to 4.9 sun hours in a day, so we have very similar solar access benefits than Maryland, which is considerably south of us. And then for instance, Louisiana is 4.5 to 5.4. So, they have a little bit longer, maybe in the summertime, a little bit longer sun hour opportunity.
Then, Oklahoma, for instance, which is further south and in the middle of the country, which is known to get a lot of sun, is 5 to 6.4 hours a day, so not far off from where we are. And so the opportunity to gather sun throughout the year in Massachusetts is really good, and then we model for how many rainy days on average, how much snow is going to be there, and that’s all taken into consideration with A) the sun hours, and then the modeling that we do for each customer on the panel position on their home and on their property, and so, really, Massachusetts is great for solar and surprisingly, most of the places until you get way up towards the poles still can have meaningful impacts with solar.
John: How are the sun hours calculated? That seems kind of low when you look at it. The sun’s out for more than four hours a day. Why are we only getting four hours of sun time? Is it that you’re factoring in days when it’s raining, cloudy, or things like that?
Brian: I believe it’s more of an average throughout the year and seasonal. So in the wintertime, like we are now, there’s a much lower sun angle in shorter days, and so that probably has a lower average of sun hours. I think what the sun hours is meaningful contact with the solar panels and potential, right? So when the sun gets up over the trees and is able to have more direct contact with the sun. Now, the panels that we use now, they’ve continued to improve over the last decade that I’ve been in the industry, but they are able to gather photons of sun that are bouncing around the atmosphere. But still, the more direct sunlight that you’re getting, the more impactful that energy production’s going to be. So I don’t know all the science behind the sun hours, but I would say that it’s the hours of the day when the sun is up and can make more meaningful solar product.
John: Yeah. It’s almost like shining directly on those panels as opposed to being at a low angle when it’s just coming up over the horizon or when it’s low in the wintertime, things like that.
Brian: And the panels and the systems are making some production when it is down low. We can’t really see the sun yet, but the more meaningful impact is when the sun gets up above the level of the trees and is a little higher in the sky.
Financial Incentives for Solar Installation in Massachusetts
John: Okay. Are there any financial incentives that are available for solar installations in Massachusetts?
Brian: Absolutely. So Massachusetts has been a leader for going on a decade now for incentives, and a lot of it has to do with how we source our conventional energy means. Now, historically, coal, for instance, is used to burn, and power plants in Massachusetts, being a more forward-thinking and environmentally conscious, has transitioned to natural gas only in energy generation in the state, which is also still a fossil fuel. It also has disruptive means of harvesting that fuel. And so we also have none of it here in Massachusetts or, really, in the region. It all needs to be brought in, so Massachusetts was, again, really progressive in supporting renewables and aggressively supporting that by incentivizing homeowners and businesses to transition to renewable power, and therefore rewarding them with incentives to make that financial change.
So here, the entire country gets the federal tax credit, which is a huge piece of the incentive and offset for the investment in solar, which is 30% of the gross cost of the project, and Massachusetts has its own tax credit, which is 15% of the gross cost of the project, but it has been capped for some time now at $1000, and really the cap is due to other incentives that the state has. And so, we always have had some type of income program, and that’s kind of a broad term that I use because it’s changed a little bit over time, and it’s basically they’re cash payments to the homeowner or business owner of the solar system. First it was a significant rebate that was about the equivalent of the tax credit. It then transitioned to a program called SREC, Solar Renewable Energy Credits, that paid homeowners and businesses directly for their solar production.
Then, it transitioned to a couple iterations of SREC, and then it went to what’s called SMART, which is Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, which was a more encompassing program for solar in the state. And it paid, again, customers directly, and it showed that calculations on their utility bill was calculated by the major utilities in the state and paid to them directly. Then, we have transitioned back towards what SREC was, with another program called Renewable Energy Credits, which is, again, cash payments made to customers directly. And this also is based on the performance of the solar system, so you essentially could look at it as every kilowatt-hour of production you’re making, you’re receiving a monetary benefit, which offsets the cost of your solar investment.
John: And do you help your customers to understand all of that as you start to work with them and start to plan for putting solar panels on their roof? Depending on where they live, what town they’re in, etc., you’ll walk them through what all of those rebates are that they might be able to get and help them? Do you help them to apply for those, etc.?
Brian: Yes. I mean, that’s huge…the education and the time we spend with folks that are looking at solar and how this works, that’s a big piece of it, right? Because there’s a lot of moving parts, and not everyone is buying solar every year. A lot of times it’s the first time they’ve looked into solar for their property and how it’s going to work, and there are these foreign concepts of tax credits and getting paid a revenue stream for the performance of your solar. Then, the other major incentive is we have a robust net metering program, which is what gives you your energy savings, right?
So these are things that are not common to all of us. It’s different than buying a car, for instance, where we all understand that process, the features, what we’re looking for in a vehicle and how to go about doing it, where solar is new to most folks, and understanding those different concepts and how they marry together. So we do spend a lot of time on the educational piece. We make sure that our proposals and our presentations have these things line-itemed out, and we spend a lot of time going over how they work.
Massachusetts Solar Regulations and Permits
John: Are there also permits and regulations, permits that have to be pulled in order to get solar installed on a roof? And again, do you help your customers with working through those and getting those permits?
Brian: We sure do. We want to make this a turnkey process for our customers and a very easy process for them as well. So, we do everything in-house. We do the consultation upfront with the property owner. Then, we do all of the design, engineering, installation, and service thereafter. There are a lot of permitting and regulations here in Massachusetts. We do have a lot of regulations, which is why, partly, we have the high quality of living in the state that we do. So we get frustrated by it at times, but we also have to remember that’s how we keep everyone safe. That’s how we have such a high living standard here in the state. So we do need permits for every job.
Typically, they’re building and electrical permits, and they’re separate inspections as well that need to happen on the back end. In some cases, with storage in particular, battery storage, that we need a fire permit as well, and in some cases, solar requires a fire permit now. There’s some new fire code. So the code in Massachusetts is ever evolving. We early adopt the national code and then put our own spin on it every code cycle, which is three years. So there’s a lot of code and regulation to that, and then there are utility regulations and a process that we also need to meet. And again, that’s something that we handle across the board for all of our customers.
Net Metering
John: Okay. And then, finally, you mentioned net metering. Can you tell us a little bit about what net metering is and what that means?
Brian: Yeah. Net metering is really the most basic incentive and the motivator for why people are looking at solar, it’s how you get your energy savings. So as it stands now, without solar, you have a meter, a utility owned meter on the outside of your house that spins, right? It’s spinning one direction. It’s spinning forward, and it’s counting every kilowatt-hour that you are using at your home. Then, when you go solar, that meter is swapped out for a net meter or what is a bi-directional meter. That meter can spin backwards. Now, these don’t spin anymore. They’re actually digital, but I always do the indicator of the spinning for reference, and that’s what we are used to seeing. But now they’re all digital, but in effect, that is counting all of the kilowatt-hours that you’re bringing to the house.
That number is going up as you’re bringing power to the home from the utility. Then, when making solar power, and you are covering all your need at your property, you’re then pushing the residual power back through that meter and onto the grid, and therefore that meter is then spinning backwards at that point, or counting down in the digital format. So that’s a give and take throughout the day. So potentially in the morning or overnight, and then in the morning you’re pulling power from the grid. Your solar system comes online, it starts covering the demand of the house and then pushing power back. So most of the day, on a sunny day, you’re effectively spinning your metering backwards, lessening your demand on the grid, and then at night it turns back over where you’re pulling from the utility again. Then, you’re still getting the same utility bill on a billing cycle schedule that you’re used to.
They’re going to read that meter and it’s just a matter of do you owe them or do they owe you? And in the case where you owe them, you pay a normal bill, and in the case when they owe you, you have credits that are built up. They’re real dollar amount credits that live on your electric bill, kind of like rollover minutes. There was a cell phone company years ago that did rollover minutes. So similar to that, you build up these credits that, they’re real dollar amounts. Then, in the future, say the peak of summer, when you have your AC running, your pool pump, things like this, and you have a higher demand, you might use some of those credits to cover your electric bill. Then, in the wintertime you build up credits throughout the spring, potentially summer, and early fall. You have a bank of credits. Then, in the wintertime, your solar system doesn’t cover your full need, and so you use those credits to pay your residual electric bill.
John: All right. Well, that’s all really great information, Brian. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Brian: Thanks, John.
John: And for more information, you can visit the website at solarisrenewables.com or call (781) 270-6555.