Incentives
Mar 5th, 2008 by solarbill
Solar Incentives
There are two major incentives:
For the photovoltaic systems the rebate is $2.20 per watt by SCE’s (our area) calculations. For new homes the rebate is handled through the California Energy Commission. These rebates will be going down as more rebate reservations are made. Please see the “trigger tracker”.
The new million solar roofs or California SB1 is a rebate for installing solar electric (photovoltaic) systems or SDHW systems on homes with electric water heaters. At the moment (4/08) it is stuck in a “pilot program” in San Diego.
You can get a good idea of what a system will do by clicking on the clean power estimator at the right. Put in you zip code. It will then open up a page to build your system. For starters put in $9,000 per kilowatt, set the PV adjustment to 0, and the annual escalation to 5% . The rest of the info you will know and can play around with. It will give you an idea of payback and how much CO2 a system will offset per year.
The other is a tax credit from the Feds. It is 30% of the cost of the system capped at $2000. for residential. The cap may be lifted with the Democratic congress. The tax credit for businesses is not capped and there is a five year accelerated write off.