LIPA Restarting Solar Energy Cash Rebates

The Long Island Power Authority made its residential solar cash rebates available again as of Wednesday.

These rebates are at the $1.75 per watt level, or up to $17,500 for a 10 kilowatt home solar electricity system.

Funding for the LIPA Solar Pioneer program had been suspended on Oct. 1 when the last batch of cash rebates totaling $1.75 million were fully subscribed by customers in contract with solar energy companies in just 11 minutes.

LIPA had previously announced that it would not restart the program again until its budget year began in January, but federal stimulus funds came through to enable LIPA to open the program as of Dec. 1.

John Moriarty, owner of Alternative Power and Light in Port Jefferson, said that the rebate would help people who were waiting to buy a solar energy system.

"It definitely helps," he said. "It gives people more confidence to move ahead."

Moriarty said that people were not only holding off to see when the program was going to restart but they also wanted to know if it was going to offer the same rebate as last time or less. The $1.75 per watt level is the same as it had been in the previous incarnation of the program.

When rebates ran dry so quickly in October, Long Island Solar Energy Industry Association chair Sail Van Nostrand said high demand for the LIPA solar incentives was "testimony to the increasing public awareness that solar energy is a good investment and good for the environment." LISEIA is the area's industry trade association.

Recognizing the strain the wait was putting on the local solar energy industry, LIPA made the request to New York State for funding earlier this month. The governor made the announcement last Tuesday that $8.3 million in federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy would be earmarked to LIPAs residential Solar Pioneer program. LIPA announced the next day that the utility would begin accepting applications Dec. 1.

As a result solar energy companies are now hurrying to help their customers fill out the rebate applications, sign contracts for solar-electricity installations, and complete the other required documents to submit them to LIPA in hopes that their customers will benefit from this new batch of rebates.

Calls to Alternative Power and Light haven't been overwhelming as of yet.

"People are looking at it," Moriarty said. "It's typically a slower time of the year with the holidays."

He said that he received about a half dozen phone calls this week inquiring about solar energy systems. He attribites only a couple of those to buzz about the new LIPA solar energy rebate.

"Maybe one or two but we do generally get somewhere around that amount per week," he said.

Once a solar contractor submits the application package to LIPA on behalf of a homeowner, it takes several weeks for the utility to process the documents and to issue a rebate award letter. When the homeowner receives the LIPA rebate letter, then the solar energy contractor is greenlighted to apply for permits, and to design and customize the system engineering drawings enabling installation of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar panels connected to inverters. The utility grid-tied PV system then seamlessly converts the light from the sun into regular household electric current, the production of which LIPA then credits to the homeowner.