Solar PV rebates and Taxing

[Sierrasparky]

Hi,
I made another thread to continue this discussion in a proper forum.

1) does your state provide incentives or rebates if you install solar equipment for your home or Business.

2) Does your state or County Tax assesor tax such an installation

I checked with my state Calif and they do not tax for your home. However if the solar is used to heat a pool they will tax the value of the system due to the fact it is a luxury to heat a pool. I think that is BS. The gov. wants us to use renewable energy but then want us to be taxed to death.

 

[dereckbc]

I am in TX, other than the city of Austin there are no State incentives or Net Metering Laws. Most of the Public owned utilities will allow grid tied systems to be connected but will only pay wholesale for any excess you generate not retail. Most Coops do not allow any thing to connect to their systems. In my county the tax is accessed at whatever value the added system brings which is OK in one sense but bad in another sense. Typically here in TX a solar system only adds $3 of value for every $10 invested, so there is a net 70% loss right up front. Kind of hard to justify solar and renewable in TX when you only pay 9.6 cents per Kwh down from 12 cents a year ago.

I suspect it will be in the very near future many states and the fed will either cut back incentives or eliminate them all together as the states cannot afford it, and RE is not accomplishing what it claimed to do.

 

[iwire]

I suspect it will be in the very near future many states and the fed will either cut back incentives or eliminate them all together as the states cannot afford it, and RE is not accomplishing what it claimed to do.

Unless they change some laws they cannot do that.

And it looks like the mandates will be growing not shrinking.

On the Fed level
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iIFWw67uPOa3EU5kjHuIY5fbt-0QD9ICGT7O1


And even CA, maybe 1/3 of the power would have to be RE by 2020

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-renewable-energy-20100923,0,912960.story

 

[dereckbc]

Unless they change some laws they cannot do that.

Bankruptcy and defaults have a nasty habit of changing policy and attitudes. I suspect after the November elections the Dems will not have a super majority in the House and Senate and we can get back to some sense of normality Grid Lock gives us because it is predictable and business knows what will come out of Washington, nothing. Grid Lock is a good thing for business.

 

[Sierrasparky]

Living in Ca I did not realize that there were such obstacles such as taxing that come into play.

My biggest upset over the years was the cost for PV panels. I though they were so over priced because there was an artificial shortage. Meaning that manufatures did not want to mass produce because they were happy with the current profit margin. As PV panels come down in price due to cheaper manufaturing it appears that consumers in other states will not adopt due to higher taxes on their home and other negative reasons.

 

[dereckbc]

My biggest upset over the years was the cost for PV panels. I though they were so over priced because there was an artificial shortage.

Nope it was because the moncrystaline panels are very energy intensive process. Monocrystaline panels are the most efficient in terms of yield, but depending on where they are used not likely to ever make more energy than it took to make them. Polycrystaline and thin film techniques are less efficient but take far less energy to produce.

Here in TX solar system are accessed at their added value which is not a good thing, and not as bad as it could be because here you only get $3 added property value for each $10 it cost to install them. So you do not get whacked at face value, but it really is bad if you ever want to sell your home, as it is possible you the owner gets to write the check at closing if you took a loan out to pay for the install. Only good news is we did not loose property values like a lot of states did over the last 4 years. Poor folks in NV and CA are upside down if they bought from 1998 to 2006.

 

[Sierrasparky]

I don't know if you are read up on the history of Producing Silicon wafers. From the resarch I had done about 4 years ago I learned that yes the production of the Wafer is/was intensive. There was a time when the raw silicon cone or something as they called it flooded the market place. This killed the price hold the electrionic chip manufatures had on the world. The silicon producers gained control back sort of the way Diamonds are controlled from what I remember. Over the past few years several companies have in europe have been making silicone and the wafers for PV. From my research I also learned that the Silicon used for PV did not need to be as high a quality as that of the high power micro processors. This also was a potential cost savings area.
With the increased production world wide once again we will see PV panels drop in price further.
Yes it has been an artificial market place.

I think you need to do some more research, I as well need to dig up the stuff so I can quote more acurately.

sparks