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2022 Year In Review

Highlights: The Most Batteries We Have Installed in a Year — Pandemic Recovery to Record Breaking Solar Installs for the 3rd Year in a Row  —  Community Service & Support — Education for Change — 1st Ever Sustainable Guide to the Sierra Foothills

Impact of 1 solar company (us!) + our amazing community by installing solar:

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Trees Planted

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Pounds of Coal we did not have to burn!

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Number of Smartphones charged with Clean Energy!

Using a handy tool created by the EPA we have converted KWh produced from 2004 – 2022 by almost all of our solar pv systems to show you some amazing facts about what adding solar power can do for our community.

Happy Holiday’s and Happy New Year and let’s continue our great work!

My resolution: Make sure all my homeowner friends know that solar policy could change April 2023 and they should really look into solar before the ROI shrinks. Solar can truly makes a difference for wallet and the planet!

Let’s dive a little deeper…

Since our last “Year in Review” in 2019, our respected and honored founder Ray Darby has officially passed the reigns to our now President and Owner, local born & raised Brian Gardner! Brian has taken over in spectacular fashion getting SEG through the some challenging times during COVID and helped SEG step into Best of Nevada County status in 2022 voted by you all in The Union newspaper! (Thank you!) —  Brian continues the legacy set down by Ray and you can read all about it in many publications and press in 2022 as well our company story video down below. 

 

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The Year Sustainable Energy Group was Born

Record Breaking Solar Installs in 2022:

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Increase in solar installations from 2019 to 2022!!

Community Service & Support from 2019 to 2022:

• Designed over 30 Solar Systems for Habitat for Humanity
• Created an at home educational program and contest for children during COVID called Beautiful World, Beautiful Future where we had a literary, artist, solar design and family energy prize. 
• Volunteered with the Grass Valley Energy Action Plan & Nevada County Energy Action Plan
• Active members of Nevada County Business Networking International (BNI), Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce, Nevada City Chamber of Commerce and Nevada County Contractors Association
• Sponsored the Resolve2Run for the Chicago 4-H Club
• Created the 1st ever Sustainable Guide to the Sierra Foothills, honoring over 60 local and sustainable businesses, schools, educators, contractors, restaurants, farms, ranchers and more.
• Wrote the famous “How Sustainable Are We” where SEG brought light to our local issues and challenges on Food, Water, Shelter, Energy, and more.
• Joined and became active in the local 60/40 Group whose mission is “the more one gives, the more one receives.”
• Active in Grass Valley’s local chapter of the Soroptimist where they are “helping women and girls live their dreams.” 

Education for Change —

2022 was a record year for our Energy & Ecology Newsletter where we saw our subscribers skyrocket past 2.5k. Subscribe below in the footer of this page. The newsletter is a strong tool highlighting topics like Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Living, Sustainable Development, Regenerative Farming, Permaculture, Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy and more. We fulfilled our goal to provide our community with information from local experts to empower their journey towards a sustainable future.

Real Practical information was given by:

• Sol Learning Center in Nevada City who notably showed the efficacy of building community support tiny homes where students learn and real, sustainable homes are built. 
• Bear Yuba Land Trust in Grass Valley teaching us about building floating islands to help with riparian health
• Briar Patch in Grass Valley talking about their continued efforts to push a zero waste stream with their pilot compostable bags
• KOrganics in North San Juan teaching us how to create life in our soil using ferments
• +more, click our “Local News” page for more. 

SEG Solar + Our Community over 18 years =

Saved greenhouse gas emissions from about:

This is equivalent to CO₂ emissions from:

This is equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions avoided by:

This is equivalent to carbon sequestered by:

 

What an amazing 2022!  Let’s go even further in 2023! We can’t do it without your help. If you refer a friend or family member and they get solar we will send you a check for $500!   Fill out the referral form here >> 

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Here are some key trends we feel will affect us in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California for Solar and Battery Backups in 2021. 

1. 1. Making sure you have great Southern facing sun is no longer as important as it used to be. Homeowners that thought their roof was not facing the “right” direction can now consider solar where as before it may not have been the best idea.   Bottom line: Solar panels are less expensive and more efficient making it “ok” to put them on most sides of any roof.
   2. It really matters who your installers are as installations with batteries get a little more complicated. Before battery installs made up 5% of our installs now it seems like 80% of our installs are calling for batteries or generators. Good thing we have some of the smartest people in Nevada & Placer County designing our solar and backup systems. 
   3. A “one” battery installation will have enough output to power our typical medium sized well pumps in the Foothills. Many battery/inverter combos were not designed to power such a heavy load from a well pump and required two batteries to power the pump.  A new battery system is coming out in 2021 before the next round of PSPS’s and this battery will be able to power most of what we need with an inverter to match. This will be the best battery/inverter technology we have ever seen for residential solar.  Like apples to oranges to what we have now. 
   4. Charging EV vehicles at home is going to increase our home energy usage and in turn call for solar panel system expansions and inverter upgrades. Inverters that have built-in EV car charges will become more popular and the new normal in our region.
   5. We will witness residential batteries pushing energy back to the grid to help smooth the demand for energy when the sun goes down and our solar stops producing power.  If you have your own battery storage, you would do this for your own home, but in 2021, as more programs like SGIP come online, we will see home battery systems push energy back away from the home to help the stabilize the grid during peak demand.
   6. The battle for fair price, NEM will get hot! Net Energy Metering requires utilities like PG&E to pay the retail rate for electricity that your roof and ground mounted solar panels produce. This helps make solar a fair deal for homeowners and PG&E is trying hard to “adjust” it in their favor. Systems that get installed now will be grandfathered in for a certain amount of time, guaranteeing a shorter payback period for their solar installation. 
   7. Batteries will use less toxic materials to produce the same amount of energy.   This is probably the most welcome change we look forward to in energy storage technology. We are glad certain manufacturers are focusing on improving the environmental impacts of their batteries and we already know of improvements that will be released in 2021.

Innovation in energy technology, especially solar and batteries are at a break-neck pace while at the same time our need for electricity is also increasing rapidly. Only time can tell if we can make the changes we need fast enough, but at least in opinion we are on the right track, and train it’s moving fast. 

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How do solar panels really work? How do we harness energy from sunlight? What does Photovoltaic mean?

Listen to a humorous, for sure intelligent podcast where a Physicist and a Cartoonist explain the quantum physics of solar panels.

One comment they made at 30:45 is not exactly correct when they mentioned that we don’t use that much power at night so it’s ok that solar only produces during the day.  Actually we use a lot of energy once we all get home from work and often times that is after the sun sets. Hence the need for energy storage like batteries to make a complete solution when utilizing energy from the sun. Enjoy!~

Listen to the podcast here at IHeart Radio

Listen to the podcast on Spotify

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Attention Students, Families and Teachers!!

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Did you know we get better sun for solar energy than Florida?!

Part of our Solar Foundations Series aka Fun solar facts to know and share from SEG.

Solar irradiance often called solar resource is very important when it comes to planning a solar energy system for your home and business.

Because the Earth is round, the sun strikes the surface at different angles, ranging from 0° (just above the horizon) to 90° (directly overhead). When the sun’s rays are vertical, the Earth’s surface gets all the energy possible. The more slanted the sun’s rays are, the longer they travel through the atmosphere, becoming more scattered and diffuse.

In the summer the United States receives more hours of direct, high angle sunlight than in the winter. The summer days are longer and in places like the Southwest and parts of California very little sunlight is diffused by clouds, fog, pollution and other atmospheric and climate factors. 

If you take a deep look at the map above you will see we have a higher than normal solar resource in the Sierra Foohills even compared to the Sunshine State of Florida. 

When the sunlight is the best for solar energy, on highest and longest days of the summer, we have less, if any cloud cover.  Our dry summers account for that. Where as summers in the East and Midwest still receive rain when do do not. 

Therefore we have excellent solar resource aka solar irradiance in Nevada County and the surrounding area.

Lucky us!

This is what makes our solar proposals such a great deal  with short payback periods compared to other parts of the country. It’s because we get “better” sun!

Who gets the best sun for solar energy world wide?  See below!

Here is a little more food for thought to really see what is happening when it comes to solar irradiance. 

The post What is solar irradiance? Why does in matter in California? appeared first on Sustainable Energy Group.

In our continuing series of Sustainability in the News we hand-select a few well-written gems, pull out some quotes and give some comments on each. Enjoy! -Harry

• Most of these articles are from Green Tech Media, a trusted news source at our Grass Valley office.

#1. Hydropanels!

Off-grid solar technology that pulls water from the air is ramping up.   In the article BlackRock Leads $50M Investment Into Off-Grid Solar Technology That Generates Water, we learn about a new take on this technology that can create 12 bottles of water a day for 15 years.

Although the article has a funding tone, a few gems of knowledge about Hydropanels are dropped in.

Explaining what is a Source Hydropanel:

The 340-pound Source Hydropanel contains a small photovoltaic array to power the system. The heart of the technology, though, is a set of nanomaterials designed to suck trace amounts of moisture out of the air — even in desert environments like the company’s home base of Tempe, Arizona. The panels use the heat of the sun’s rays to evaporate the water from the absorption materials. The system condenses the water, adds minerals to enhance the flavor and pipes it out for consumption.

A home installation of two Hydropanels in the U.S. costs between $5,500 and $6,500 for both equipment and installation labor, according to the company website. That system promises 12 bottles of “delicious water” per day for an operating life of 15 years, yielding a price of less than $0.15 per bottle.

Sure this technology might not be as necessary in our region as we have access to water, but in other regions, this is a groundbreaking, lifechanging concept.

#2.US Solar Plants Now Expected to Run for More Than 30 Years: Berkeley Lab

There are some really great quotes about utility scale large solar energy projects in this article.

Big solar plants are getting cheaper to run and expectations for their useful operational lives keep getting longer, according to a new survey of U.S. solar industry professionals. … By the end of 2019, a cumulative total of 76 gigawatts of solar had been installed in the United States …!

For these larger solar projects they will not leave the same solar panels in operation as long as we would at a home. But even in large scale circumstances…

The assumed useful life of projects now averages 32.5 years, up from 21.5 years in 2007, according to a canvass of solar project developers, sponsors, asset owners and consultants conducted by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The cost for these plants has gone down significantly!

Berkeley Lab finds that the levelized cost of energy of U.S. utility-scale PV projects declined from an average of $305 per megawatt-hour for projects built in 2007-2009 to $51/MWh for projects built in 2019.

Check out more by reading the article here -> 

#3. The 4 Things PG&E Must Do to Survive and Thrive Post-Bankruptcy

A pretty deep look into what is on the horizon with our energy and PG&E. Read the article here.

One blinding underlining idea is that purchasing energy from PG&E is not going to get cheaper. They are going to have to pick up the slack from years of neglect and do a lot of work to get ready for fires and avoiding PSPS’s (power shutoffs).

Making sure yourself, and all your friends and family get solar at their homes and businesses before the tax credits expire in 1.4 years is what we should all be thinking about after reading this article.

PG&E faces a long and difficult road ahead. … It’s struggling to find cost-effective ways to protect millions of customers from fire-prevention blackouts that may need to continue for years. … And all of this must happen without excessively raising customer rates if it’s to avoid political and customer backlash.

Many more long-term challenges await PG&E, such as adapting to large portions of its customer base being served by community-choice aggregators, or its natural gas network being rendered obsolete by the state’s mandated target of zero carbon by 2045. But first, PG&E must deliver on every utility’s core responsibilities, said Isaac Maze-Rothstein, grid edge analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables — “the pillars of safe, affordable and reliable” service.

“They need to not cause any more fires,” Maze-Rothstein said, adding, “they need an alternative to almost all PSPS events” (which stands for “public-safety power shutoffs”) to avoid subjecting millions of residents to multiday blackouts in the name of fire prevention.

 

#4. Second Life uses for Lithium Batteries from Electric Vehicles are ramping up.

At some point when a car battery in an electric vehicle does not have enough juice to run efficiently it will need to be used somewhere else. Some say, incorrectly, that they will all go straight to the landfill. That is just not the case, especially when these batteries still hold value after they are used in these vehicles.

Check out the article Second Life: Carmakers and Storage Startups Get Serious About Reusing Batteries

Podcasts from the Energy Gang:

#1. Have you heard of fugitive methane gas emissions at natural gas extraction sites? No? 

Well it might be time to hear why Natural Gas is not that “natural.” Not to mention fracking and it’s tainted history of contaminating ground water and surrounding bodies of water. Earthquakes anyone? Here is another reason why solar is simply a cleaner alternative.

According to researchers, methane leakage across oil and gas operations in the U.S. are 60 percent higher than government estimates. Put another way, the methane leakage from oil and gas has the same warming effect over a 20-year time period as all America’s coal capacity in 2015.

Natural gas has been vital to lowering power-sector carbon emissions. Are methane leaks reversing that progress?

Check out the podcast on fugitive methane gas here -> 

#2. A 90% Clean Grid Can Be Achieved Quickly. What’s Holding It Back?

They are estimating a possibility of a 90% clean grid in 15 years. Their must be more to that, right?

Most decarbonization proposals play out over 30 years, aiming toward 2050. But a new roadmap from researchers at UC Berkeley and the policy firm Energy Innovation shows the grid can get to a level of 90% clean in just 15 years’ time.

Dig in and listen what the energy gang thinks is possible here -> 

The post Sustainable Energy and Ecology in the News appeared first on Sustainable Energy Group.

Part of SEG’s Sustainability in Media Series, where we share good media about sustainable energy and living to help our community learn and thrive during interesting times. 

Before you go straight to the article (link below), here are some points that I feel are re-affirmed by this concise, to-the-point interpretation. 

1. Solar is cheaper than coal (and better for the environment)
2. Regardless of how cheap solar is becoming and how much utility companies are installing, utility companies like PG&E still raise prices yearly by about 5%. With fire risks that is not going to change. Therefore, owning (not leasing) solar for you home is the best way get all the benefits.
3. We only have 1.5 years left of the solar tax credit and it may not get renewed because of these dropping costs.
4. We will need to combine other energy sources and storage (batteries) with solar to help deliver power when we need it most, at night.
5. Solar should not be political, it’s an economical, environmental and simply a morally better energy solution than carbon based fuels.
6. Solar creates local good paying jobs.
7. Solar produces clean energy for at least 25+ years.
8. We must de-carbonize our country and industries as soon as possible. Understanding that burning trees, drilling oil and fracking gas is not the solution.

Check out the Forbes article by Enrique Dans.

www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2020/05/21/what-the-post-pandemic-world-needs-is-a-solar-energy-revolution

Not able to read the full article?

Here are some quotes:

“In reasonably sunny places, it (solar) is by far the cheapest form that we humans have managed to invent for generating electricity.”

At the time, “solar plants routinely win power auctions with bids that reach 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, a price that is no longer cheaper than a coal plant: it’s cheaper than coal itself.”

In conclusion

” Those who … continue to rely on the old way of generating energy using fossil fuels will surely be missing out on the most transformative technology we have seen in a long time.”

Please let us know your thoughts on social media or email us at info@seg.energy.

The post Commentary on why the Post-Pandemic World Needs Is A Solar Energy Revolution appeared first on Sustainable Energy Group.

Another way of seeing and doing things to benefit our community and ourselves.

Question: What are your highest living expenses?

Statistics show it’s bills for housing at #1, then transportation, food, healthcare, personal insurance/pensions and before that, taxes.

If we want to live a more sustainable life, many experts recommend to look at where you can spend less. While other experts would also say spending that money locally is just as important.

Let’s examine that idea closer by looking at of some of our big expenses like energy for our homes and transportation.

First, where do we get our energy?

In our homes : PG&E

For our vehicles : Gas Stations (unless you have an electric or plugin hybrid car)

So with that said, what happens when we pay PG&E?  Also, what sort of investment is that for our community?

A portion of our bills to PG&E does pay employees working in our community, but where else does the rest of the money go?  Where do all those profits go after paying our local workers?  A simple answer, mostly outside of town.

What happens when utility companies fail and go bankrupt?  Who bails them out?  – Our taxes?

Bottom line: When we pay PG&E, a large portion of what we pay, leaves our community. 

On the reverse side, what happens when you install solar with a locally based company (like us), and not an out of town large corporation like Sunrun, Vivint, Tesla/Solar City.

1. With a local company, the solar & backup power installation completely supports the salaries of our local people and their families.

FYI: All of our employees live locally in Nevada County, and local jobs create local wealth. which in turn supports other local jobs and businesses.  Money leaving our community is not spent in our community.

After solar and battery installation is complete, who then do you pay?

1. Aside from a $10 monthly fee to have utility power when needed, you essentially stop paying PG&E.
2. You are no longer on the losing ride of the 5% increase in your energy bill every year with PG&E.
3. If you get batteries you also become independent of PG&E power shutoffs. You become completely in control of your energy.
4. After 5-7 years once your system has paid itself off, every year from then on, your energy is essentially free! All the monthly bills you used to pay to PG&E, go directly in your own pocket, and stay in our community when you buy locally!
5. You put your taxes back in your bank account through state and federal solar and battery tax credits and rebates… which are expiring fast.

In the end, a few points become clear:

Solar is simply a good investment for ourselves and our community in so many ways. Especially now with all the tax credits and rebates.

Solar plus backup power, like batteries, also adds the benefit of personal resiliency & security when the power is shutoff.

If you charge your car with your home solar energy, you removed some of the largest bills you have, your energy bill for your home and the cost of your transportation.

Let’s also not forget, solar energy is clean, renewable energy.

Therefore if we change what we pay for in terms of energy, we are doing so much to help our community, our families, our planet and ourselves.

What is slowing you down from getting solar or battery backup? Let’s figure out the best way forward.  

Call us right now at 530-273-4422.  We are ready to help.

Sustainable Energy Group is your locally owned, locally based (Grass Valley, CA) and locally run solar and backup power company for over 16 years and counting!  By supporting us, we support you. Thank you!

The post A Clear Way to Benefit Ourselves and Our Community, Right Now appeared first on Sustainable Energy Group.