Bright future in region for green energy

Image: Collected
Across sectors, the COVID-19 pandemic has substantially impacted businesses large and small, sometimes forcing some localized favorites to shutter for good. But for the green energy market in the Monadnock Place and beyond, there may be a bright spot on the horizon.

According to a written report published in December by the SOLAR TECHNOLOGY Industries Association, solar energy accounted pertaining to 43 percent of fresh U.S. power capacity additions through the third one fourth of 2020. And the sector expects to install a lot more than 19 gigawatts of solar this season, which is enough to power more than 3.6 million homes - a 43 percent increase when compared to previous year.

Local companies say they’ve seen an identical trend on the Monadnock Region. Victoria Roberts, co-founder and co-owner of Southern Vermont Solar in Brattleboro, says sales have spiked for the business during the pandemic.

“The interest level just skyrocketed,” Roberts notes. “The [quantity] of folks interested and willing and all set solar has dramatically increased. This is the positive, but there are so many problems.”

The company, that provides residential and commercial solar installation and battery storage installation, made use of the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) early in the pandemic, she says. That helped the business enterprise stay afloat while its installation projects were stalled through the shutdown.

However when Southern Vermont Solar could open back up, problems remained, especially when it found procuring enough supply to meet the local demand for its Tesla Powerwall batteries.

“We got a huge amount of sales, and then we even now have not gotten merchandise,” Roberts says, “which put us in an extremely challenging situation because we'd the staff to meet up the demand, but then the merchandise never came in.”

In Keene, Green Energy Options has faced identical obstacles amid a rise in product sales, according to owner Valerie Piedmont. In addition to solar assembly, the business enterprise offers efficient heating alternatives such as pellet stoves and mini-split temperature pumps. But Piedmont says through the pandemic, their suppliers may possess simply 90 percent of the parts they have to assemble a stove, departing Green Energy Options stuck.

“It just seems like, generally, it requires longer because there’s each one of these little glitches in the source chain that we never had to manage before,” Piedmont says.

She notes that while Green Energy Options previously contracted out almost all of its installation services, the company has brought those services in-house during the pandemic to meet up the increased need and ensure worker and customer safety.

Piedmont says a number of the surge in fascination has result from new residents moving to the Granite Talk about, although some established residents have been focusing on do-it-yourself during shutdowns which have confined them with their living places. She says it has been apparent that customers happen to be stressed and exhausted by the general public health and wellbeing crisis, which has managed to get even more important for Green Energy Options to focus on building customer relationships.

“I think part of the ability has been figuring out how exactly to serve our customers from behind these masks,” Piedmont says, “also to have the ability to be our warm and friendly selves through our masks and merely sort of normalizing what we’re facing at this time.”

Roberts noted that Southern Vermont Solar is partnering with the local utility provider, Green Mountain Electric power, to provide affordable loans for Tesla Powerwall batteries that retailer solar technology, with new spots in this program opening up in January.

“The timing of everything, making the battery storage affordable through the utility programs plus the pandemic, was just like a recipe for people wanting these services in an extremely bold way,” Roberts says.

According to the Solar Energy Industry Association’s report, about 70 percent of the industry’s market in the third quarter of 2020 originated from utility-scale projects, partially because of cities and towns attempting to meet their carbon-reduction goals.

The Elm City is one of the communities attempting to reduce its carbon footprint. By the end of the year, the Keene City Council was on the brink of approving a sweeping energy plan that aims to changeover the city to completely renewable sources for all power by 2030 and for all heating and transportation strength by 2050.

John Kondos, a board person in the Peterborough-based Monadnock Sustainability Hub, says the nonprofit organization can be performing with Cheshire County, the location of Keene and many area towns to build up community power programs - in which local governments procure and provide power to residents - next few years. Such courses give municipalities more control over the foundation of their ability, he explained.

Kondos notes that advocacy attempts have continued in the region through the entire pandemic, with the Monadnock Sustainability Hub selling presentations and workshops around the weather crisis and electric motor vehicle charging initiatives on Zoom. Simultaneously, green energy options such as solar and wind electric power have continued their surge, he says.

“COVID has clouded everyone’s assessment of what’s going on, but the really good information is, wind and solar have really exploded,” Kondos says. “They are actually, in lots of places, the world’s most cost-effective electrical way to obtain energy, beating the pants off of coal and even gas in many places.”

That’s thanks partly to federal tax incentives, which allow filers to deduct 26 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy program from their federal taxes. The fate of the tax credits have been unclear as 2020 wound to a close, but right before the end of the entire year, Congress approved a second COVID-19 relief bill which includes prolonged federal incentives for solar power installation.

“If they opt to keep [the tax credits], I think it will just keep on an upward trajectory, and there’s nothing stopping people from wanting to head out solar,” Roberts said in mid-December.

At the same time, the Monadnock Region’s potential convenience of renewable energy is expanding.

In late December, status officials gave the ultimate go-forward for a 110-acre solar array to move forward with building in Fitzwilliam. The project will be the major solar array in the talk about, with the capability to power about 7,000 homes. Power firms in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will be signed to buy the electricity up to now.

A bit to the east, the Antrim wind task was completed in late 2019, with nine turbines now producing enough energy to power about 12,000 homes.

Native green energy providers and advocates say the general public health crisis could cause long-term impacts for the field, partially through emphasizing to Americans how ill-prepared the united states is for the looming risk of climate change.

“People are going to come to grips with the actual fact that the pandemic was really almost a warning or a good warm-up or a - pick out your analogy - just a little League game,” Kondos says. “And you’re right now going to continue to the big leagues versus the weather crisis.”

Piedmont points to protests which have erupted during the outbreak around issues such as racial justice, casing equality and climate-transformation mitigation as a sign of changing attitudes that could continue steadily to fuel the green strength sector.

“For right now, there’s simply a big, surging social motion that says we can’t continue with the way business has been conducted during the past,” Piedmont says. “And we need to really have all of our decisions reflect our take pleasure in of humanity and the earth and progressive thinking instead of some short-sighted greed.” 
Source: https://www.sentinelsource.com

Tags :

Share this news on:

Previous Story

Trending Topics

Archive