Not Your Mother's SOLAR POWER Anymore

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It is clear that the domestic market for PV cannot truly thrive with out government incentives or a comprehensive requirement for utilities to buy back power. Still, the utility market itself may provide an incentive for consumers. Deregulation of the utility industry has, for the moment, caused energy prices to skyrocket nationally, with the Northeast among the areas hardest hit. Since this near doubling of energy prices has only just hit the marketplace, there is no way of immediately gauging its effect on PV sales, but manufacturers are anticipating a surge in interest. Even factoring out staggering kilowatt hour prices, the solar market continues to grow (sales overall are expected to increase by 10% in 2000) and innovate, though often, perhaps, in curious directions.

The latest market trends begin with both large- and small-scale utility-intertie con nections. Sales of large systems (2 kilowatt panel arrays or larger) are up 68% in 1999, primarily because of Y2K power outage fears in tandem with some aggressive financing options available to some PV buyers in California. Small intertie systems are experiencing a similar upswing in sales. These four- or six-panel, 100- to 200-watt systems, complete with DC to AC inverters from companies such as Evergreen Solar of Waltham, Massachusetts are selling remarkably well, even with prices that top out at $2,200. They are designed to be installed in minutes and hook seamlessly into a home's grid power. What industry advocates can't deny, though, is that even with an output of 200 watts per hour, the systems can contribute only a miniscule amount of the power an average home consumes each day, and at $11 per watt, they are a very expensive proposition. We are left to wonder how an ostensibly energy-saving product sells, even when it does not wholeheartedly embrace thrift. "Well, it's true that you'd have to be [truly] green to buy one," admits Maycock. "To consumers it represents another type of value." For Weiss, this alternative value has particular resonance. "It's a home product like any other. If it pleases you to see solar being produced, then the product has value. It's not really fair to saddle solar products with a standard that almost no other home product has to bear. I mean, do people ever ask if their cars or SUVs pay for themselves over the course of their usable life?"

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