Corky Hilliard mounted 19 solar panels atop her Austin home last month and expects to pay less than $4,500 — about a quarter of the initial cost estimate.
“My God, I mean, why wouldn’t you do this?” said Ms. Hilliard, whose neighbors on both sides have also added solar arrays.
For many Texans, however, there is good reason not to go with a solar option: generous local incentives that allow Ms. Hilliard to pay so little for panels projected to account for about two-fifths of her electricity use do not exist in most of the state. Environmentalists had hoped that Texas lawmakers would pass a bill this session to establish a statewide rebate for solar projects, financed by extra charges on electric bills. But it died without getting out of a House committee.
Texas prides itself on being the national leader in wind power, and many renewable-energy companies are looking to this big, sunny state as the next frontier for solar power, which California currently dominates. But solar technology remains expensive: notwithstanding its environmental benefits, it can be twice as costly as coal or gas power on a nationwide basis before incentives. The recent fall in natural gas prices has made it even harder for solar to compete (although panel prices are falling, too).
“I don’t really want to explain to my mother why she’s got another dollar on her bill,” Representative Byron Cook, Republican of Corsicana and the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, said in an April hearing.
A raft of solar incentive bills also died during the 2009 session.
Nonetheless, some large solar projects are emerging. San Antonio began getting power from a 14-megawatt solar farm late last year, and in May a developer started building a 30-megawatt solar facility in Webberville, a small community near Austin (the power will be sold to Austin Energy).
For both large and small projects, incentives can make a big difference. Ms. Hilliard’s installer quoted her a total cost before fees and taxes of $19,190. But an Austin Energy rebate reduced that amount by nearly $11,000, and another local incentive (from a smart-grid project) and a federal tax credit cut it further, to the final $4,438 estimate.
Oncor, the electric poles-and-wires utility serving the Dallas area, will begin taking applications for a new round of solar incentives on Monday. A similar round last year sold out in a month. Electric utilities in El Paso and San Antonio also offer solar incentives.
West Texas is generally considered to have better solar power potential than East Texas, which is cloudier. Randy Sowell, the McCamey-based field operations manager for Fremantle Energy, a renewable-energy developer, said that transmission lines being built by the state to aid wind power could also benefit solar power, and he predicts that projects large enough to supply utilities could be built in a few years in the Trans-Pecos region. It will be important, he said, to site solar farms in places unlikely to see much oil and gas drilling and to make sure mineral-rights owners have adequate access.
Two solar bills did pass this session. One will make it somewhat harder for homeowners’ associations to bar solar panels. Another clears regulatory hurdles to solar leasing and other third-party ownership arrangements, which for tax reasons will be helpful to schools and churches.
A proposal to require Texas to add 500 megawatts of non-wind renewables is pending at the Public Utility Commission. A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who appoints the P.U.C. commissioners, said that the governor supports a diversity of energy sources but “without imposing burdensome and costly mandates.”
“My God, I mean, why wouldn’t you do this?” said Ms. Hilliard, whose neighbors on both sides have also added solar arrays.
For many Texans, however, there is good reason not to go with a solar option: generous local incentives that allow Ms. Hilliard to pay so little for panels projected to account for about two-fifths of her electricity use do not exist in most of the state. Environmentalists had hoped that Texas lawmakers would pass a bill this session to establish a statewide rebate for solar projects, financed by extra charges on electric bills. But it died without getting out of a House committee.
Texas prides itself on being the national leader in wind power, and many renewable-energy companies are looking to this big, sunny state as the next frontier for solar power, which California currently dominates. But solar technology remains expensive: notwithstanding its environmental benefits, it can be twice as costly as coal or gas power on a nationwide basis before incentives. The recent fall in natural gas prices has made it even harder for solar to compete (although panel prices are falling, too).
“I don’t really want to explain to my mother why she’s got another dollar on her bill,” Representative Byron Cook, Republican of Corsicana and the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, said in an April hearing.
A raft of solar incentive bills also died during the 2009 session.
Nonetheless, some large solar projects are emerging. San Antonio began getting power from a 14-megawatt solar farm late last year, and in May a developer started building a 30-megawatt solar facility in Webberville, a small community near Austin (the power will be sold to Austin Energy).
For both large and small projects, incentives can make a big difference. Ms. Hilliard’s installer quoted her a total cost before fees and taxes of $19,190. But an Austin Energy rebate reduced that amount by nearly $11,000, and another local incentive (from a smart-grid project) and a federal tax credit cut it further, to the final $4,438 estimate.
Oncor, the electric poles-and-wires utility serving the Dallas area, will begin taking applications for a new round of solar incentives on Monday. A similar round last year sold out in a month. Electric utilities in El Paso and San Antonio also offer solar incentives.
West Texas is generally considered to have better solar power potential than East Texas, which is cloudier. Randy Sowell, the McCamey-based field operations manager for Fremantle Energy, a renewable-energy developer, said that transmission lines being built by the state to aid wind power could also benefit solar power, and he predicts that projects large enough to supply utilities could be built in a few years in the Trans-Pecos region. It will be important, he said, to site solar farms in places unlikely to see much oil and gas drilling and to make sure mineral-rights owners have adequate access.
Two solar bills did pass this session. One will make it somewhat harder for homeowners’ associations to bar solar panels. Another clears regulatory hurdles to solar leasing and other third-party ownership arrangements, which for tax reasons will be helpful to schools and churches.
A proposal to require Texas to add 500 megawatts of non-wind renewables is pending at the Public Utility Commission. A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who appoints the P.U.C. commissioners, said that the governor supports a diversity of energy sources but “without imposing burdensome and costly mandates.”
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