FAQ

This occurs when the solar energy technology produces more energy than the company uses, ie your business consumes 500 kWh and the system produces 550 kWh.  Net metering is where the utility offers a 1 for 1 exchange for every kilowatt hour (kWh) produced and not used at the client’s site.  The excess goes to the electric grid. In this event, the utility will  reduce the client’s total electric consumption by the total electric generation from the solar energy plant.  Solar Hawk Energy™ prefers systems that will not produce more electricity than your company requires for normal operation annually.  Solar Hawk Energy™ can show your officers the financial positions of different sized systems.  Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) is the industry standard metric for decision-makers. Let Solar Hawk Energy™ help you make the best decision with the right information.

We will evaluate your bills and recommend the best system for your needs, depending of course on the available space for the installation.

Please visit www.dsireusa.org . The income statement (located in the Commercial PV Analysis portion of your package if you are a client) has accounted for all the incentives.  Solar Hawk Energy™keeps abreast of these changes and informs clients of the upcoming these changes and the effects on the project’s bottom line.  Please consult your entity’s CPA/CFO/tax specialist as to how the incentives can be best applied according to the company’s tax strategy.  Please note that the Federal Tax Credit can offset your company’s taxes below the  Alternative Minimum Tax; this represents a recent change in the tax code.  Additionally, in Arizona and California (and soon elsewhere) that commercial clients will only have Performance Based Incentives (PBI) available; PBI incentives pay over the course of 5-20 years at varying rates with overall different total amounts paid by the utilities.  Many companies will not keep as current as Solar Hawk Energy™

It is important to keep track of system performance, which can be done via a web portal and/or direct connection with a commercial entity’s energy management system.  Routine maintenance involves washing the array with water after an event like a dust storm or monsoon rain. Inverters can often be fixed by pressing a simple reset button. Most reputable integrators can train the client’s technician(s) to troubleshoot the system and quickly reset any necessary system components.

Ballasted systems do not penetrate the roof but rather tie together to create an object too large to move.  Solar Hawk Energy™ and other reputable companies will offer you pros and cons to each system depending on the solar plant specifics, the ability to tilt the array to the south, and future concerns with solar plant output.  Current federal incentives will offset costs associated with improving the roof to sustain the solar plant’s performance and safety.

Solar Hawk Energy™ includes a preliminary environmental report with (or as part of) the budgetary estimate.  These environmental impacts are referenced to the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.   The number of vehicles removed and trees planted are an inexact measure with significant scientific investigations under way to more exactly account for these greenhouse gas offsets.  Solar Hawk Energy™ uses the most conservative of these calculations and methodologies so as to not overstate the solar energy technology’s environmental impact or GREENWASH.

Note that the utility incentive includes a direct purchase of all of the tangible environmental elements associated with the solar energy plant.  It is not possible  to sell the system’s carbon offsets at the Chicago Carbon Exchange, because the utility owns all these rights. Special conditions exist for firms interested in non-traditional incentives from the utility. SHE is the only firm that can provide you with an unbiased analysis to assist in making your decisions.

Any reputable firm will include data monitoring solutions for its clients. The client should be able to see total electricity produced, its environmental impact, and more, all in real time.

PPA vs. Ownership vs. Doing Nothing with a 200 kW Solar Plant

The graph above shows the payoff for a solar energy plant given an electricity cost that starts at 8.5 cents per kWh and increases at the historical rate of 6.57% annually. Incentives help pay a solar energy systems quickly. There are two ways to measure the simple break-even point. Either you break even when at $0 (approximately year 6.5 in this example) or when the cost of electricity without a solar energy plant exceeds the residual cost of the solar energy plant (approximately year 4 in this example).

A Power Purchase Agreement (PPA,) also known as a Solar Services Agreement, is when a third-party financier purchases the system, and the client signs a 10, 15, or 20-year agreement to buy electricity produced from this plant at a set rate with set annual increases; the client does not pay unless the system produces. The PPA price is normally set between 13.5 to 17 cents per kWh with annual escalation of 2%, which is less than historical rate increases. The PPA will not be more financially attractive with the actual grid electricity until about year 10, which is when the higher initial cost and smaller escalation rates break even.  In effect, you are simply changing utilities and the cost of doing business stays nearly the same if not costing more.  If a company is more interested in saving money than spending money for marketing its ‘green’ features, then Solar Hawk Energy™ can help your company make a wise investment in its future operations and improve the valuation of its property.

Solar Hawk Energy™ measures the opportunity cost for doing nothing, calculating as the difference between the cumulative value to the entity at year 25 and the cumulative cost of grid electricity at year 25 (approximately $2.5 million dollars in this example).  This shows the advantage of owning your own solar energy system.  The opportunity cost of pursuing a PPA versus doing nothing is only about $250,000 over 25 years, which is 10 times less than ownership.

Do nothing, and pay the electric bill to APS, SRP, TEP, or another utility.  Rates almost inevitably will not decrease, which happened only nominally once in APS history. Check the APS rate graph in the ‘Commercial Solar Plant Analysis’ section for the real data on this topic.  (note to reader, only clients are eligible to receive this analysis)

Other technologies help reduce electricity demand, and potentially offset purchases from the electric grid, but solar PV technology his a bargain in the long run.  Solar installations have very little impact, almost no O&M concerns, when you have Arizona’s most experienced installation teams doing the work.

From the previous graphs, doing nothing will break even from doing something in about 4 to 5 years.

Solar Energy Plants will produce varying amounts of power depending on their orientation to the south.  Photovoltaic (PV) module placement has a significant impact on annual and seasonal output. From the graphs for the two proposed systems farther down this story, it is easily apparent that the power plants produce more during the summer than the winter. However, this effect can be enhanced energy modeling demonstrates that systems installed at 0º to the south (horizontal) produce more energy during the summer months than systems installed at 33.2º to the south (latitude in Phoenix, AZ). Systems installed at latitude produce more power over the entire year than those at horizontal orientation.

Overall output varies a maximum of 13% (0º vs. Latitude).  On the other hand, systems elevated 20º to the south only vary 1.7% annually compared to systems at latitude.  A 20º system will produce approximately 3% more energy during the summer peak months (May-October) than one at latitude. The system at latitude will produce approximately 6.8% more electricity than one at 20º during the winter months (November-April). These approximations all assume a constant irradiance and constant derating losses across the systems.

During certain hours of the day and months of the year, our customers use more power. When energy demand is high, power generation systems nearly reach their capacity, and the cost to generate or purchase power increases.

http://www.aps.com/ (Click to Enlange)

Therefore, you can lower your energy bill by spreading out your electricity usage. By doing so, you are charged less, on the average.

The highest average energy use in any 15-minute period during the billing month establishes the kilowatt (kW) demand charge.

Note: The demand also determines how much of the energy you use is charged at the highest kWh rate.

Solar Energy Plants will help a large energy user better manage its summer and winter peak demand as these systems only produce power during the daytime, which is when large energy users (non-residential) tend to draw the greatest (and most costly) amount of energy to run vital systems.

The graphs below used the industry standard ‘PV Watts’ data to show that a horizontal array produces more power than a tilted array during summer hours but also less during the winter months when the sun is lower on the horizon. At your request, we can demonstrate different output trends depending on tilt to the south.

200 kW tilted to South at Latitude (Click to Enlange)

200 kW Installed Flat (Click to Enlarge)

Newer commercial buildings often have extra room for added electrical capacity. Older service entrances that have not been upgraded are frequently maxed out. The Engineering team with the chosen integrator will determine whether any upgrades are necessary. Federal incentives can offset these upgrades, as they are necessary for the solar energy plant.

A reputable company only uses suppliers with industry-standard warranties or better. Our modules are guaranteed to perform at a maximum performance of less than 1% degradation allowance year over year. Industry research demonstrates this is high on the degradation scale, and ISO 9001 manufacturing processes ensure modules with extremely low failure rates and derating an average of only 0.5% annually.

Inverters are typically guaranteed for 18 months, and some others like Sunny Boy inverters have a 10-year standard warranty, an industry leader.

A reputable company will guarantee its workmanship for 5 years fully with the potential to extend this. With the exception of extreme weather conditions, like tornados, solar technology and working will rarely fail except for a very atypical inverter trip from fluctuations in the electric grid.

In case of an inverter malfunction, many companies deem a better balance of system is achievable with a multi-inverter system. This means that should an inverter trip, malfunction, or otherwise not perform to standard, the entire system’s energy output is not at risk, as would be the case with a single inverter system. Protecting the critical path from the PV module to the inverter to the service entrance is paramount. The risks and tradeoffs are explainable; industry literature supports both approaches depending on system scale.

The most common solar energy plants in the world are grid-tie applications. This means that in the event of a grid failure, the solar energy plant ceases to function. This is a necessity to protect utility line workers from electric shock. UL-1741 is the standard that forces all inverter manufacturers’ products to automatically shutdown in the event of a grid failure.

Large banks of batteries are required, sophisticated integration costs, and less efficient DC to AC conversions are evident with stand-alone systems capable of working when the grid fails. 99.9% of all commercial systems installed globally are grid-tie applications. There are only a handful of 100 kW DC installations in the world for stand-alone operation. Most such installations are for the military or tribal lands without immediate access to grid-supplied power.

Stationary systems are the most common commercial application. Sometimes, utility-scale solar power plants (ones greater than 6 Megawatts DC) use trackers to increase plant output. However, these utility-scale power plants need on-site O&M teams to ensure any malfunction is quickly dealt with to lessen the impact of such occurrences or the system grinding into malfunction. The peak power output for a tracking system compared to one that does not is minimal once O&M costs are included in the economic analysis. Stationary systems only require monitoring and occasional washing after a monsoon storm. Industry reports from the APS STAR Center attest to this fact.

Around 90% of the electric bill is based on variable pricing dependent upon the total kWh used and peak demand times. Solar Hawk Energy™ can show how your costs will go down according to the system’s size and power output and reduce your electric bill considerably with solar energy technology.