Horror Stories in time for Halloween [RE-wrenches]

matthew tritt solarone at charter.net
Tue Oct 29 11:07:15 PST 2002


Jeff,

Right on. Except for the "hand-out" part.

Only when the aggregate cost of equipment and installation reaches an
"affordable" level will the average homeowner ever be able to rationalize
installing PV. The reason for offering these hand-outs is to stimulate the
growth of the industry as a whole. Without them, we would still be in the
same place we were in 1980 in the PV biz; nowhere. They are the primary
reason that such great equipment as SMA is available at all in this country,
like it or not. Germany, the world leader in alternative energy, has many
attractive incentives for going solar and wind. That's how they got to be
the leader.

Matt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Yago" <jryago at earthlink.net>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 4:06 AM
Subject: RE: Horror Stories in time for Halloween [RE-wrenches]


> I was doing commercial and institutional solar thermal DHW systems in
> the very early 1970's including YMCA's, hospitals, car washes, hotels,
> and military installations.  There were only a few of us but we did
> very good work and our solar businesses were profitable.
>
> Then sometime around 1978, Jimmy Carter went on TV and announced there
> would be a 25% fed solar tax credit.  Almost every solar dealer I knew
> then went out of business because it took almost two years to pass the
> legislation and nobody would buy a solar system now as they wanted the
> tax rebate and it was not retro-active.
>
> Then, I believe it was sometime in 1980 when the legislation was
> finally ironed out, two months later there were so many solar
> "installers" you could find them advertising on every local radio
> station, in every phone book, and using mass market phone
> solicitation, promising these $4000 to $6000 solar hot water heaters
> (which had about $300 in parts) would save the homeowner thousands of
> dollars in taxes.
>
> Those of you old timers out there know we spent the next 10 years
> either removing these trash systems or having to fix them at a loss to
> avoid the bad publicity for our industry.
>
> I have posted on this board before, that solar tax credits are a two
> edged sword, and they always bring un-qualified installers into the
> market because the incentive for both the homeowner and the installer
> is to do the minimum to qualify for a tax credit or utility rebate,
> not to install a quality system.
>
> I saw this ruin the solar thermal industry in the early 1980's and it
> never fully recovered, I really hate to see it do the same to the
> solar pv industry.
>
> I agree that other utilities benefit from their own tax breaks,
> depletion allowances, and mister taxpayer paying for god knows what
> that only benefits big oil, gas, and nuclear, but that's just it,
> these kinds of tax breaks do not cause unqualified suppliers to enter
> their market does it?  If there is not a better way for a state or
> federal government to help our industry then this, then I would just
> as soon not have these "benefits".  We are better then this, we need
> to stop acting like that guy on the corner with his hand out.
>
> Jeff Yago
>
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