Ear­lier this sum­mer, Howard County com­pleted a 217 kW DC Solar PV sys­tem at the Lit­tle Patux­ent Water Recla­ma­tion Plant.

The pho­to­voltaic sys­tem com­prises two roof mounts (42.5 kW on the Dis­in­fec­tion Build­ing and 47.2kW on the Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing) and two car­port struc­tures (127.4 kW). The project is part of the County’s elec­tri­cal pro­tec­tion sys­tem upgrade to safe­guard the Water Recla­ma­tion Plant from elec­tri­cal out­ages, such as the one that occurred dur­ing trop­i­cal storm Sandy. Since late May 2014 we have gen­er­ated 66,181 kWh. It is esti­mated that the solar pan­els will result in a yearly power cost sav­ings of $22,900.

Home­own­ers also have more oppor­tu­ni­ties to go solar than ever before. Solar energy options in Mary­land are avail­able every­where in the State and there are a lot of incen­tives that makes it more attrac­tive than ever. You will be reduc­ing your energy costs as well as con­tribut­ing to the State’s renew­able energy goals. Mary­land Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard (RPS) requires that 20 per­cent of Maryland’s Elec­tric­ity be gen­er­ated from renew­able energy sources by 2022, includ­ing 2 per­cent from solar energy.

There are many advan­tages to res­i­den­tial solar power:

1. Save on your elec­tric­ity bills
2. Increase your home value
3. Take advan­tage of incentives
4. Help to decrease your car­bon footprint
5. Help to reduce U.S. depen­dence on for­eign sources of energy

Here is a list of some of the finan­cial incen­tives avail­able for Mary­land residents:

Fed­eral

The Fed­eral gov­ern­ment is offer­ing the invest­ment Tax Credit – a tax­payer may claim a credit of up to 30% of the cost for a system

More info at http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=US37F&re=0&ee=0

State

The State of Mary­land offers a Clean Energy Pro­duc­tion Tax Credit for elec­tric­ity gen­er­ated from solar and other clean energy sources.

More info at: http://energy.maryland.gov/Business/CleanEnergyTaxCredit.html

Res­i­den­tial Clean Energy Grant Program:

Fund­ing for res­i­den­tial solar sys­tems up to 20kW

More info at:

http://energy.maryland.gov/Residential/cleanenergygrants/index.html#goals

So why not take advan­tage of a pow­er­ful yet free energy source….the Sun. Live Green and get Solar!

I just saved another $50 bucks this sum­mer by being in the PeakRe­wards pro­gram. That could have been $100 if I had cho­sen the high­est level in the pro­gram, but I like a good com­pro­mise so this works for me.

If you’re not famil­iar with the pro­gram, home­own­ers receive money towards their bill for allow­ing BGE to “cycle” their energy on days where there is high energy demand. Renters can be in the pro­gram with their landlord’s per­mis­sion. Energy com­pa­nies are try­ing to reduce the need for build­ing more power plants and reduce the chances of brown-outs and black-outs.

The one time last sum­mer that I actu­ally noticed a “cycling,” my air con­di­tioner would turn off for 15 min­utes then on for 15 min­utes and this went on for a few hours. The indoor tem­per­a­ture went up to 80 dur­ing that time but it was back to the nor­mal pro­grammed tem­per­a­ture by the time we went to sleep. Not bad at all.

I called BGE and was told that there are usu­ally 4–6 cycling events per sum­mer. These high demand times usu­ally hap­pen on week­days between 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sum­mer of 2013 had only one “emer­gency” event. In non-emergency events, every­one is cycled at 50% (even if you sign up for a higher level) and emer­gency events are cycled at your cho­sen level (50%, 75%, or 100%).

I have been in the pro­gram for sev­eral years and I saw a big improve­ment this year in BGE’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Now you can get email alerts let­ting you know a cycling event is hap­pen­ing. Also, I think they are bet­ter about putting the info on the web­site. I found this very help­ful, rather than hav­ing to look at my pro­gram­ma­ble ther­mo­stat to see if it had the “SAVINGS” mes­sage that comes on dur­ing cycling events.

The free pro­gram­ma­ble ther­mo­stat that was installed when I signed up is actu­ally my favorite part of PeakRe­wards. You don’t have to get the ther­mo­stat, you can get an out­door switch instead. But I LOVE the one that I got. It is very easy to use and I’m sure I save a bunch of money by using it. MUCH bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous “pro­gram­ma­ble” ther­mo­stat that came with my heat pump. I found that one incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Now I use the easy touch screen to pro­gram day and night tem­per­a­tures and I change those dur­ing vaca­tions, etc. You can also sign up to be able to change your tem­per­a­tures remotely, but while I am a fan of the pro­gram, that’s one step beyond me.

PeakRe­wards is part of a larger energy effi­ciency effort called EmPOWER Mary­land. The goal of EmPOWER Mary­land is to reduce energy use 15% by 2015.

Other cool things about PeakRewards:

• You get bonus money the first year you sign up.
• You can opt out of up to 4 non-emergency events per summer.
• There is also an elec­tric water heater pro­gram.

For more fun facts, here is a suc­cess story page of the program’s results.

I live in a small town­home com­mu­nity on a mostly quiet dead-end street. When a sales­per­son comes to my door, I feel aggra­vated and imposed upon, while simul­ta­né­ously feel­ing great respect for some­one who is try­ing to earn a liv­ing by going door –to-door.

A few months ago, my hus­band signed up with an elec­tric­ity sup­plier who had come to the door. As I had been intend­ing to change our sup­plier for some time, it forced me to spring in to action. He had got­ten a bet­ter price than we would have had we stayed with BGE… but I wanted more. I wanted to sup­port renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion. After sev­eral phone calls (one to can­cel the new sub­scrip­tion) and an online reg­is­tra­tion process, our energy sup­ply now comes from renew­able energy sources.

One resource that I just learned about that would have been very help­ful to us in our energy sup­ply deci­sion process is:

http://www.opc.state.md.us/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=EZNZCx3ZGEI%3d&tabid=71

Take a look at this invalu­able infor­ma­tion col­lected all in one place! You’ve got all the rel­e­vant data nec­es­sary to make an informed deci­sion. Note: I work in the sus­tain­abil­ity field, and even I wasn’t aware that this resource was avail­able to Mary­land residents.

Reduc­ing our col­lec­tive car­bon foot­print starts with small indi­vid­ual choices. Make the choice to sup­port renew­able energy generation!

Are you inter­ested in get­ting money back from your elec­tric util­ity? Then please keep reading.

The heat wave that hit Cen­tral Mary­land in July is notable for a few rea­sons. One is the fact that we endured it with­out black­outs of any sig­nif­i­cance. Next, the sum­mer is not over yet. Finally, the expe­ri­ence reveals the impact of an elec­tric­ity mar­ket inno­va­tion known as “demand response,” which allows util­i­ties to pay their cus­tomers to scale back elec­tric­ity usage at crit­i­cal times.

As always, neces­sity is the mother of inven­tion. Demand response is a solu­tion to the lim­its posed by the very large (and very elderly) net­work of power gen­er­a­tion assets that sup­ply elec­tric­ity in the North­east and Mid­west U.S. The capac­ity to gen­er­ate and dis­trib­ute elec­tric­ity is flex­i­ble. This means that more (and more expen­sive) elec­tric pro­duc­tion capac­ity is put into oper­a­tion when demand for power reaches peak pro­por­tions. That hap­pens dur­ing heat waves when homes, offices, and stores crank up their air con­di­tion­ing all at the same time. While power demand cer­tainly spiked upward in July, cer­tain mea­sures are help­ing to min­i­mize the use of expen­sive power sup­ply and to avoid black­outs. These inno­va­tions are col­lec­tively labeled “demand response.”

Demand response is a mar­ket inno­va­tion that reverses the tra­di­tional rela­tion­ship between power util­i­ties and their con­sumers. These pro­grams allow util­i­ties to pay their cus­tomers to cut back on power con­sump­tion at cer­tain crit­i­cal times.

Cus­tomers vol­un­teer to par­tic­i­pate in these pro­grams. Res­i­den­tial par­tic­i­pants can have ther­mostats and cer­tain equip­ment auto­mat­i­cally scaled back by the util­ity.　 Com­mer­cial and other large energy con­sumers have the option of acti­vat­ing their on-site power gen­er­a­tors in lieu of draw­ing power from the util­ity. These pro­grams pay the cus­tomer a fixed fee just for sign­ing up. The BGE Peak Rewards pro­gram offers $100 — $200 the first year and $50-$100 the next years depend­ing on what level you sign up for. Addi­tional value to the cus­tomer is the dol­lar sav­ings from reduced con­sump­tion at peak hours. These cut-back episodes last a few hours at a time, per­haps a half-dozen times dur­ing the sum­mer, and almost always on week­days dur­ing the late after­noon. In the BGE pro­gram, you also have to option to opt out of up to 2 cycling events per sum­mer. So if you are hav­ing a party or event that you need your air on full, you can sign up in advance to opt out of that day.

In a press release from the BGE web­site, the util­ity announced that Peak Rewards pro­gram load cur­tail­ment on Fri­day July 22 reduced power demand by a vol­ume equiv­a­lent to 600 megawatts, which is the capac­ity of a mid-sized power plant. The busi­ness propo­si­tion is sim­ple: it’s cheaper to pay cus­tomers to scale back their power than it is to build new power plants that only oper­ate dur­ing peak times.

Demand response pro­grams are increas­ingly imple­mented through­out the U.S.　 In total, they could cut peak demand by up to 15 per­cent in the United States, sav­ing con­sumer dol­lars and reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions. In our area, pro­gram par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent reversible demand capac­ity equal to about eight per­cent of total peak power require­ments. The pri­mary hur­dle to the growth of demand response is lack of cus­tomer aware­ness and under­stand­ing. The sav­ings incen­tives are the main moti­va­tor, but the par­tic­i­pants also often feel that they are shar­ing the respon­si­bil­ity to off­set over­whelm­ing the sys­tem. Bet­ter to have a few days when you might be uncom­fort­able for a few hours than to have to deal with black­outs. Util­i­ties have very good web­sites for explain­ing their demand response and other energy-saving mea­sures. These are worth the time to visit. Here’s the BGE Peak Rewards page.