Here is a great way for a SMALL BUSINESS OWNER to help combat a crumbling economy and still keep his doors open.
Thanks to a wealth of roof space at Mike Roach's Gainesville warehouse (owns a small mailing business with five employees), Roach will soon install nearly 100 solar panels and earn an annual profit of $14,000 by selling his solar energy back to the electric company.
The program is being hailed as a pioneering step in U.S. energy policy, one that would transfer power production from massive plants relying on coal, gas and nuclear power to individual homes and businesses using sustainable and pollution-free sunshine.
This form of distributed electricity (*Feed-In-Tariff) gives business owners an opportunity to now profit on making electricity and selling it back to Gainesville Regional Utilities. (see below on system works)
But this model has set limits on how much it will produce in the form of Solar from the ultility company, not a bad thing because in order for this to work long term it needs to set production limits.
A crawl before you walk business plan per say, and looks like the crawling has almost stopped.
Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) has announced that it has aleady reached its first year solar PV reservation target with this groundbreaking Feed-In-Tariff program. (first city in USA to use the Feed-In-Tariff model adopted from Germany*) The Florida municipal utility will continue accepting reservations for an additional 4 megawatts (MW) in 2010 on a first come first serve basis.
Gainesville's program went live on March 1. The 2009 solar PV tariff of $0.32/kWh for twenty years will remain in effect for 2010 reservations. Avg.normal rates people pay are around $0.11-13 cents/kwh)
*Germany, which pioneered feed-in tariffs 10 years ago and is now a world leader in solar and other renewable energies. The program has created approximately 250,000 jobs while electricity prices have only increased by about $2.50 a month for the average customer, according to the German government.
Here is how the system works: Anyone wanting to sell energy would receive two separate electric meters – one for the energy coming in and another for the energy going out. The solar energy would not be used on-site, but transferred to the grid where it mixes with the larger supply. As incentive, solar providers would be paid far more for supplying energy than the utility is allowed to sell it for.
Advocates say the benefits are threefold: More jobs, a cleaner environment and energy security.
Good news is this program has initiated conversations to roll this program out across the state of FL and beyond. Other states like MI has just rolled out a smaller type Feed-In-Program to test the model.
