Tuesday Apr 29

City pushes for solar water heaters

First-of-its-kind program will give qualifying residents $1,500 rebates

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Palo Alto is set to become the first municipally owned gas utility in the state with a permanent rebate program for residents who install solar water heaters.

City residents who install solar water heaters at home or work soon will be eligible for a rebate of $1,500, in addition to a federal tax credit, said utilities account representative Amanda Cox, who will manage the new program when it launches next month.

On Monday, the city council approved a five-year, $730,000 contract with the Center for Sustainable Energy California, an independent nonprofit already running a solar water heater incentive pilot program in San Diego.

After the Palo Alto program launches May 17 at Greenstock - the city's green festival - the nonprofit will help run the program, coordinating inspections, processing applications and giving technical advice through a phone hot line, Cox said.

The Palo Alto program may well prove more popular than the pilot in San Diego, where in the first nine months only about 100 residents applied for the rebate, said Andrew McAllister, the center's director of programs.

"Palo Alto Utilities has typically had very high participation rate in the programs they offer," McAllister said.

Cox said Palo Alto residents are already calling her to register. Businesses are also eligible for a rebate, which will be calculated using a different formula, she said.

Solar water heaters are smaller and cheaper than a full photovoltaic system, which requires 16 to 20 panels to provide electricity to a home and can cost in the ballpark of $20,000.

Solar water heaters need only one or two panels, which are hooked up with a pump to the water heater. And on average, a solar water heater costs between $6,000 and $6,500, Cox said.

"It's easier and cheaper," said Debbie Mytels, associate director for programs at Acterra, a Palo Alto-based environmental nonprofit. "With the cost of (natural) gas going up quite a bit, the payback period becomes much shorter."

Although a new state law passed in October requires natural gas utilities to offer solar water heating incentive programs, Cox said the Palo Alto program was already being developed. Last April, the city council approved the program's concept in the Utilities Department's 10-year portfolio plan. And Palo Alto's program will be in place before state requirements kick in.

"We were already saying 'it's a great idea,'" Cox said.

The last time Palo Alto had a solar water heating incentive program was in the 1980s, when residents with the technology were billed at a discounted rate. Cox said that policy will no longer apply.

Elsewhere in the state, a similar program exists. In Sacramento, residents can apply for a $1,500 rebate for solar water heaters that replace electrical heaters, according to the utility's Web site.

Palo Alto city staff said the solar water heater incentive program's Web site should be up in the next two weeks.



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.