VIEW FROM THE STATES
Oregon Builds a Solar Forest
Rainy Oregon turns out to have better solar resources than Germany
or Japan — and it’s become a hotbed of solar development.
By Michael VanDerwater
Yes, it rains a lot in the course of an
Oregon winter, but the state actually
has a better solar resource than either
Germany or Japan, the world’s biggest solar
markets. At Solar Oregon, the state’s American Solar Energy Society chapter, we’ve been
pretty busy getting the word out, and now
policy makers, markets and businesses are
responding.
Solar Oregon ( solaroregon.org), formerly the Solar Energy Association of Oregon,
has experienced significant growth in the
last two years — our operating revenue
went from $26,000 to $165,000 in two
years. That’s 634 percent! An outreach
program launched in 2006 now encom-passes over 55 workshops and 30 days at
expos and festivals, with the goal of engaging 8,000 people and helping them to go
solar. This effort has been enabled by the
newly created Solar Now! Partnership
( solarnoworegon.org), a cooperative effort
by the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development, the Oregon Department
of Energy, Energy Trust of Oregon Inc. and
MATT STANSBERRY
Solar Oregon. Solar
Oregon provides outreach and market
transformation, City
of Portland Office of
Sustainable Development provides residents with customer
service, information
and resources, the
Oregon Department
of Energy provides
tax credits, and Ener-
Michael
VanDerwater
gy Trust provides financial incentives and
quality assurance. The common messages:
• Oregon is sunny enough for solar.
• Generous incentives and tax credits can
help get you there.
• Solar makes energy sense.
Solar Incentives: The big news this year
is the state’s business energy tax credit
(BETC). This covers 50 percent of the project
cost and complements the 30 percent Federal solar energy investment tax credit. The
BETC can be taken over five years, 10 percent
The business energy
tax credit complements
the federal tax credit to
cover 50 percent of the
project cost.
each year, and applies to both photovoltaics
and solar thermal (solar water heating).
When you add Energy Trust’s cash incentives of $1.25 to $1.50 per watt for PV installations and 40 cents per kilowatt-hour for
solar water-heating projects, the return on
investment starts to raise some eyebrows.
The incentives for residential solar projects are strong as well. The residential energy tax credit (RETC) for PV is $3.00/watt
installed (maximum of $6,000). This, coupled
with the federal income tax credit of 30 percent of the net installed cost (maximum of
$2,000) and the Energy Trust incentives of
$2.00 to $2.25 per watt (maximum of
$10,000) can pencil out to as much as 65 percent savings on project cost. For solar water
heating, the Oregon RETC includes credits of
60 cents per rated kilowatt-hour for the first
year, up to $1,600. Add the federal investment tax credit of 30 percent of net installed
cost (maximum $2,000) and the Energy Trust
incentive of 30 to 40 cents savings per first
year kilowatt-hour, and you see savings of
approximately 50 percent of the project cost.
For specifics on Oregon Solar incentives, go
to solaroregon.org/learn/financial-incentives.
Sunny Central Oregon. Oregonians know
that the state has two climates: Rainy west
of the Cascades and dry, sunny desert east of
the mountains. Bend, on the eastern slope,
gets 300 sunny days a year. But even misty
Portland sees sun 48 percent of daylight
hours — mostly, to be sure, during the long
summer days.
