Solar arrays are ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear
Something old, something new. A pitchfork, and Mimi and Norm Wheeler’s new solar panels. Photo by Martin Ludden
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Out in our meadow beyond the vintage apple trees planted by Irish immigrant potato farmers named Sullivan over a century ago, Don Lessard set up a tripod topped by a round sheet of curved graph paper under a plastic globe. We could see the nearby trees and hills reflected upside down in the globe, and Don traced the shadow lines on the graph paper as he said, “This is a great spot for a solar panel!” He then sent the graph and our energy use information to his son Ambrose down in Lansing, and from GPS data and records of sunshine in Leelanau County recorded over many years, they calculated the size of the solar panel needed to produce the kilowatts we require to cover our annual electric needs.
We are excited to move ahead with this technology that has now become affordable for a single-family home and will enable us to reduce our carbon footprint in a big way. Sadly, Don Lessard died suddenly a few days later, and our hopes were put on hold, though not dashed.
Don’s wife Rebecca, caretaker of the nearby Wings of Wonder raptor rehabilitation center, put us in touch with Harvest Energy Solutions, a national solar energy installation company that is establishing a presence in Michigan and Leelanau County.
Field rep/sales manager Ken Zebarah visited soon after and confirmed the site and the plan we had hatched with Don. Ken then configured an array using the newest American and Canadian technologies, and we signed a purchase agreement to install a 10-foot x 60-foot fixed array of solar panels that would match our annual use.
The deal is sweetened by a couple of incentives. In 2008 the Michigan legislature passed Act 295 requiring all Michigan gas and electric utilities to offer energy-saving programs to their customers and to set increasing energy saving goals via energy efficiency resource standards (EERS). So Ken hooked us up with Consumers Energy’s Experimental Advanced Renewable Program (“EARP”). This program provides financial rewards for energy we produce beyond what we use. Also, through the federal government, a taxpayer may claim a credit of 30 percent of qualified expenditures for a system that serves a dwelling unit located in the United States that is owned and used as a residence by the taxpayer. Combining these incentives and monthly savings on energy bills, our new solar array should pay for itself in 8-10 years. And the panels and inverters have 25-year warrantees.
Because solar panels are a new technology, the permitting process was slow. The Leelanau County Department of Construction Codes required Harvest Energy Solutions to jump through a lot of hoops for permits and approvals, but finally, in mid-July a crew arrived. Because our meadow is surrounded by forest and difficult to access, the workmen had to haul all of the posts, cement, steel I-beams, solar panels, inverters and wires through a narrow wooded lane by pickup truck and bobcat. Despite hot days, ground wasps, and the almost 300-foot run from the panels to our electric meter, Harvest Energy Solutions installed everything in just two days.
We are now awaiting the final hookup when an electrical inspector, a Consumer’s Energy technician, and a representative from Harvest Energy will convene to install a double meter on our house, one to measure how much energy is coming from our new panels, and one to measure what we draw from Consumer’s Energy during the cloudy months. We will be able to monitor the activities of our panels on our computer through an application, and so will Harvest Energy. It should be a bit better than a zero sum equation for us, and we’ll get a little kick back on the extra energy we produce in the sunny months to keep the air conditioners running downstate.
We still harvest apples from the old trees that sustained the Sullivans when they farmed this land with horses, cleared the fields with a stone boat, mortared up stone walls for a “Michigan” basement, pumped water with a windmill, and collected rain water off their roof into a cistern back in 1906. Hopefully the energy gathered by this new solar array will continue to be harvested by the residents of this land at least a century into the future. The technologies change, but the human impulse for self-sufficiency prevails. If you are interested in Harvest Energy Solutions, contact Ken Zebarah at HarvestEnergySolutions.com.
