Informative Essay: What Is Community Solar?

The Sun’s energy out powers all of the energy sources made on Earth. Even though only a fraction of the Sun’s energy makes it to Earth, it is still ten-thousand more times powerful than the energy sources on Earth. However, we are unable to harness such energy because of the many breaches we have to past through to achieve solar energy. As well, solar energy lacks certain aspects causing fossil fuels to be valued more. Although, by creating engineering advancements to improve the efficiency, expenditure, and availability of solar energy, the problem of solar energy usage will be resolved.

Climate change has been a major global issue for the past years and the use of non-renewable energy sources is only adding to the pollution that is responsible for the destruction of our planet. One of the biggest indicators of unproductivity is the lack of utilization of renewable energy sources. Currently, only a small percentage of Florida’s energy is attained by renewable sources (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2017). The state of Florida is capable of at least partly running on solar or hydro power, but most schools don’t take advantage of the resources that are naturally occurring. Specifically, the School District of Palm Beach County operates a total of 112 schools, as reported by the school district website. Of them, ten have achieved LEED certification, a rating system that certifies “green schools,” meaning that they are energy efficient and use sustainable resources. This leaves the other 102 schools to continue to use up non-renewable resources and contribute to the mass pollution of the Earth. According to XCel Energy, schools spend billions of dollars yearly, just to deal with the daily expenses. However, a significant portion of a school budget is used for utilities such as air conditioning, water, and electricity. Both individual schools and the school district could save money by taking advantage of the natural resources in Palm Beach County. If schools were to incorporate more renewable

Though the trends in generation in the industry fluctuate, a power company’s generation fleet is pretty set in stone (nuclear, coal, combined cycle, natural gas and diesel). This diversification of generation help the companies insure reliability in their system. However if there is one area that could use significant improvement, it would be the companies response to periods of high demand. As stated above in the opening, a power company has two main objectives. One, serve power to all of their customers regardless of the situation, and two, make money. Buying power from surrounding companies and shedding load are the worst case scenario. Also, running diesel generators are not cost effective and have no sign of getting any cheaper considering the current situation in the gas and oil industry. Therefore, solar power has the opportunity to fill a major void in how power companies react in peak demand situations. However if you compare to the two graphs shown

While I trying to research a hot topic in California Real Estate, I came cross and found solar energy penal interesting effect in real estate market. The country’s major professional association of real estate appraisers stated that solar photovoltaic systems classically increase market value and almost always reduction marketing time of single-family homes in the San Diego metropolitan area. A group of California economists observed at that question in a recent study and found that on average, homeowners in California who connect photovoltaic solar panels to power their homes can recover nearly all the investment costs if they move–and that’s on top of the annual energy savings.

SolarCity strives to reach excellence in all aspects. This starts from the first point of contact to the potential customer all the way through follow up referral retrieval from completed projects. SolarCity believes in honest communication between employees, departments, and to consumers. All SolarCity employees are to be held to the utmost standards of customer service because without satisfied customers SolarCity’s vision will never come to fruition.

Not many address the economic point of view in regards to solar energy, and how it will compete with electricity generated by fossil fuels. In order for the solar industry to stand on its own, communities will have to contribute to the movement by simply being willing to install panels onto their homes. An interesting approach to this takes place in Nelson, British Columbia called the ‘Community Solar Garden’. A community solar garden is a centralized solar array installation where members of the community can subscribe to buy a portion of the solar generation. Generation will be sold on a per panel basis. The solar energy that is generated by the garden is credited to the subscriber’s electricity bills in proportion to their investment. (Community Solar Garden). If there are incentives for people to add a feature to their house that will save them money, especially if there is access to a community solar garden or farm, it is essentially a wider-scale individual level approach to implementing the solution. Advantages to communities’ solar panels is that the solar energy is local. This will create local jobs and materials and are less likely to encounter community opposition (as opposed to outside energy entities). Barriers, or disadvantages to community solar energy is how little the demographic owns the solar panels they use locally. There are many laws and regulations that make it

If power plants make minuscule changes to their production and facilities, electric companies will show a small fixed and variable cost in the income statement. Even if they have to produce a new facility, the benefits will outweigh the cost, and the new plants will be paid for in a short amount of time. The resident or business installs the solar panels, so the only cost the electric company has are the loss from the rebates. With this, they will not have to change their facilities, and yet they will still make somewhat of a profit. Immediately expensing the cost of building a new electrical system, by solar panels or through a geothermal system, for example, will not immediately affect how much electricity is produced.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission and the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association should choose our proposal because solar panels are expensive but they will last up to twenty-five years. Solar panels are important to our society because photovoltaic and solar-thermal panels generate free electricity by converting sunlight into electricity or transferring the sun's heat to heating and ventilation systems. Also, the use of solar panels generate to where energy provides many benefits, which include reductions in the costs associated with generating

Solar is quickly becoming a popular project to take on. Not only does it help save the environment, but it can also help save money for businesses and homes that elect to make the switch to solar. However, completing a solar project is expensive and it is important to look for ways to promote efficiency of the install and of the system itself.

The proposed system is a 20 kW solar array that will cost $82,000 and last an expected 40 years. Jordan Weisman, owner of Sunbridge Solar, stated in an email that the proposed solar array will require 800 to 1000 square feet of land for installation. The solar array will come with a 20 year warranty and require minimal maintenance. Within this report I will show that the benefits of this project will outweigh the cost. My recommendation is based on the conclusion that this project will pay for itself within five years of installation. I will evaluate the net cost of this project based on energy saving, tax credits received, available tax write offs, rebates, and payments on the loan proposed. I will also examine the environmental and public relation benefits of installing solar panels.

With a community of about 120,000 housholds we average about 1,872,000,000 kWhs annually in our community. I reccomend my community upgrading to a solar power based energy source of power. This source would be best for my community because we have many homes and business that use alot of energy and the use of solar power will provide clean energy for my community and environment. Although it would be costly to start investing in solar power the long run result would allow for less moeny being spent on light bills and could result in ninety dollars in savings per month and 21,000 dollars after a period of twenty years. Solar panels would begin to pay for themselves in about 14

Our business will be changing fairly dramatically and it will only be successful as long as we have cooperation internally. We will require our employees to install the solar panels on our customer’s property which will be about 10% the first

Solar energy is an eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. Our planet has been experiencing an average increase in global temperatures. Slowly but surely our planet is deteriorating, unless we change our form of energy into a greener alternative. Deterioration of our planet may occur at a faster rate. The depletion of fossil fuels is detrimental to our environment. By substituting fossil fuels with the solar energy, our planet will benefit. These benefits include: reduced climate change, beneficial economic opportunities on both a large scale benefitting our government and on a smaller scale helping individuals decrease their energy bills, and solar energy is renewable and sustainable.

Approximately one-third of all distribution network losses are due to transformers and 70% of the transformer loss is due to distribution transformers [1]. Installing slightly more efficient transformers in the United States has the potential to yield large energy and monetary savings. This creates an opportunity for ENERGY STAR to encourage increased market penetration of more efficient distribution transformers. Due to the large market size and difference in technology and material efficiency, ENERGY STAR can encourage higher efficiency products despite the higher cost. Additional research and stakeholder engagement is necessary to understand the potential barriers to adopting the more efficient technology, from its different operational characteristics to the incentives that utilities face during purchasing decisions.

Solar power is one of the most environmentally benign energy sources available. Just 20 days of sunshine produces the same amount of energy as everything stored in Earth’s reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas—yet does not come close to producing the same amount of environmental damage as even one of those options (Greentips, 2005). Solar farms are a clean renewable source that can meet high energy demands and can creates thousands of jobs in the future. It is also used during peak demand for electricity. During the hottest days, the panels are absorbing more energy while homeowners have the a.c. on full blast. They can be installed anywhere