Thinking about going solar in Huntsville or Birmingham?
One of the many factors in your decision probably has to do with how long it’ll take for your solar power system to pay for itself. Of course, since Huntsville and Birmingham are only about 100 miles apart, you might assume that the timelines are roughly the same.
Nope. Not so much.
If you live in Huntsville—or Madison, Decatur, Athens, Florence, or any other part of north Alabama under the jurisdiction of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—you can reasonably expect a payback on your solar investment within 10 to 12 years. But if you live in Birmingham—or most anywhere else in Alabama—the payback time on your solar project will be much longer. In fact, it might never happen. Well if you want to connect to the grid.
Why the difference? It has everything to do with policy.
An investment in your future
Let’s look at a couple of examples based on real solar projects right here in Alabama. The first is a 6,000-watt solar setup at a residence in Huntsville. The up-front cost was $18,000, for an average expense of $3 per watt. Subtract $5,400 right away for the 30% federal tax credit that all new solar projects currently earn. That leaves $12,600 to pay off. In this example, 71% of the residence’s energy needs would be offset by solar, which means that household would only need 29% of its energy from the grid—and would thus pay only about 29% of its usual utility bill. Imagine the savings.
Thanks to TVA incentives, going solar in Huntsville has certain advantages.
In addition to that, the TVA pays solar customers the current retail rate for any electricity they generate. (According to the Huntsville Utilities website, the current rate is $0.08856 per kilowatt-hour for the first 1400 kWh.) This fair purchase price reduces the payback time considerably. For our example project, the estimated payback time is 10-12 years.
Think about that for a moment. Sure, 10 or 12 years might sound like a long time up front. But for residential solar generators, that timeline makes plenty of sense. After a dozen years or so, your solar system would produce pure savings. So if you’re in a house for 20 or 30 years, the incentive is strong. And if you build your solar array at the time of purchase and roll the cost into your mortgage, your earnings from selling electricity could be greater than the increased cost to your mortgage.
Either way, all of the savings come from simply running your system as you normally would any other time. So it’s not like you have to change any behavior drastically. Even better, you’re investing in yourself and your home.
Why incentives matter
The incentives for going solar in TVA territory are less enticing than they used to be. But then again, solar prices have dropped dramatically. That said, TVA’s stance on renewables is the best in Alabama. To understand why, let’s look at another example project, this one in Birmingham.
Instead of reaping the benefits of incentives, many potential solar homeowners in Alabama are penalized by being charged a grid access fee. That means solar generators incur an extra tax of $5 per kilowatt of capacity to connect their system to the grid. This fee, which is one of the highest of its kind in the country, can reduce your monthly solar revenue by as much as 50%. Non-solar customers do not pay the fee.
Furthermore, most solar producers in the rest of Alabama are only paid what is known as the avoided cost. As of this writing, that’s approximately $0.025/kWh. This “avoided cost” represents a buyback of less than one-fourth of TVA’s and seriously dampens your return on investment. This makes it virtually impossible for our example system in Birmingham, or any grid-tied residential solar array in the bottom two-thirds of Alabama, to pay itself off, regardless of how long it’s in service.
Of course, commercial solar is different. More on that next time!
