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Understanding Long-Term Savings of Solar Power in Oklahoma

Though there is still room for further drops in solar prices, it isn’t likely to come from advances in solar technologies. Instead, it will come from decreases in the mass production of panels and the cost associated with installing them.

(TNS) -- “Once you have a face-to-face conversation with people, it clicks for them that this is a safe investment and what they’ve come to believe, their passing understanding of solar, has some holes in it,” Wilke said. “People think solar doesn’t work here, that it’s not cost-effective here, and that’s absolutely wrong.”

Three years ago, Wilke, Todd Hanley and Scott Merrick saw dramatic changes in the solar market, including rapid price changes.

“I thought the economics finally made sense for solar,” Merrick said. “When you can give someone anywhere from an 8 to 14 percent return on their investment through a product with no moving parts and a 25-year warrante, that just seemed like a no brainer to me.”

The three have a background in renewable energy and currently work for a wind energy company in Norman, along with their own company.

Delta Energy and Design has a variety of services for those interested in solar. Hanley is an engineer and has experience working with power electronic, inverters and towers. The company does custom installations and solar panel racks. Merrick said they have worked on residential, commercial and agricultural projects.

“We design and build renewable energy projects from beginning to end,” Wilke said.

Wilke said wind used to be significantly cheaper for individuals than solar, but that has “shifted dramatically.”

“Solar can tie into existing infrastructure,” Merrick said. “It’s producing power where it’s consumed, so you don’t have to build new grid lines and things like that.”

Merrick said there is still room for further drops in solar prices, but it isn’t likely to come from advances in solar technologies. Instead, it will come from decreases in “soft costs” involved in the mass production of panels and the cost associated with installing panels.

“People buy them to save money,” Merrick said.

Wilke said many customers want to hedge against rising utility costs with solar energy.

His analogy for the buying solar panels was buying 20 year’s worth of gasoline for two-thirds of what it currently costs, but that 20 years worth of gasoline had to be bought at once.

“It is a way to lock in lower energy costs long term,” Wilke said.

This doesn’t mean solar is inexpensive upfront, but Merrick said those buying a home or commercial property now have better options for financing solar energy systems along with their mortgage or other loan.

Some of those costs in Oklahoma are for unexpected services.

For example, Delta Energy and Design recently did an installation in Pawnee. Part of the project involved writing municipal legislation and working to establish new city laws about solar power.

Electricity produced by solar panel customers has been a point of legal contention at the state level between some utility companies and solar installation companies like Delta Energy and Design.

“One investor-owned utility company specifically is trying to make a solar specific tariff that diminishes the cost-effectiveness of solar,” Wilke said.

Also involved was AEP in trying to create this tariff but canceled their request with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission once OG&E released their own cost-of-service study.

Merrick said OG&E tried to prove the tariff was necessary because customers with solar panels caused a greater cost of service on the utility than other customers.

“They asserted that people with solar systems, so people with distributed generation, are subsidized by the other ratepayers, because they don’t pay their fair share because they don’t have to pay an electric bill,” Hanley said. “So, they’re not paying their fair share of all the electric wires and maintenance and so forth.”

Hanley said it was a fair question, but OG&E’s study showed the opposite was true. It cost about $10 less per month to service customers using solar than it did customers who didn’t use solar, when including the amount of electricity these customers added to OG&E’s system.

“Solar system owners are a net benefit to other ratepayers,” Wilke said.

Merrick said solar customers are trading electricity when it costs the most during the day and using it when it costs the least at night.

Hanley wrote a company white paper using data from Oklahoma Electric Co-operative showing solar panels add electricity to the grid during the day when energy usage is at the highest.

More information about Delta Energy and Design’s services can be found at Deltaenergyanddesign.com.

©2016 The Norman Transcript (Norman, Okla.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.