By David Demille • ddemille@thespectrum.com
September 22, 2009
ST. GEORGE - Local officials have been touting Southern Utah as an ideal spot for solar energy for years, but that potential could now be trending toward reality.
At least that was the thinking of Jack Scully, a builder working on two new passive solar homes in St. George, as he showed off the buildings' features Monday.
"Our philosophy is that the housing industry is going to move to smaller, more efficient homes anyway," he said, adding that 70 million baby boomers nearing retirement will soon be looking to downsize and live in more energy-efficient homes, especially if those homes are affordable.
Scully owns Off Grid Construction and is working with Sun Savvy, Inc., a local company that promotes its homes as creating more energy than they use through a clever combination of solar power and energy-conscious building.
The process, which involves solar panels, airtight walls, a geothermal air exchange system and a host of tried-and-true conservation techniques, has been used in Europe for decades and the technology involved is relatively simple, said Kerby Karkula, Sun Savvy owner and the buildings' architect. He said he took a lot of the techniques from German building strategies.
"Places that have been paying a lot for energy have already made these changes," he said. "This isn't an experiment."
The falling associated costs are also making the process more attractive.
Prices for solar panels have fallen as far as 30 percent since the middle of last year, according to the Utah Solar Energy Association, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, polysilicon, which multiple new factories throughout the world are starting to produce. Demand is also down in Europe, especially Spain, which dissolved some of its solar subsidies in the face of the economic downturn.
The price drop, when combined with a healthy tax incentive and various local incentives - the Sun Savvy home, for example, could benefit from the St. George Energy Services Department's net metering program - has helped create a growing market for solar-powered and green-minded buildings.
The federal government is offering a credit of 30 percent for solar panels, and many power companies offer rebates for energy transmitted back into the power grid if the photovoltaic panels create extra power.
That's not to say everyone will be putting panels on their homes any time soon.
Rene Fleming, conservation coordinator with St. George City, said she has seen an increased interest in the net metering program, but not much of an increase in actual solar installations, which can commonly cost well over $20,000 for a standard home. She said Monday that 21 installations throughout the city had installed net metering, including three businesses.
"I know they've dropped in price, but I don't know that they've dropped enough so that your average person will be installing them," she said.
The city is trying to offer alternatives, such as its SunSmart solar farm, which residents can buy into, as a way to allow people into the solar market. Fleming said the solar farm could double in size in the next year if a grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act comes through.
The push for more solar in Utah has come from the top in recent years, as officials eyed St. George's average of 310 sunny days annually.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. had pushed Southern Utah as a potential national leader in solar energy development, and a state task force identified large parts of Washington County as especially suitable for the practice.
The problem has been the cost. Traditional energy sources like coal are still the least expensive, and traditional building processes have been cheap enough that new strategies haven't been in demand.
However, all of that has changed with the federal and local incentives. Scully said the Sun Savvy homes will cost the same as a regular house to build, except for the cost of the solar panels. A longtime builder of traditional homes, he said that he was surprised at how easy and how inexpensive the process has been.
"Why haven't we done it this way? I don't know," he said. "Why wasn't GM making cars that could sell? We just got stuck doing things the same way."
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