Standard Solar

Standard Solar is one of Maryland’s first solar installation companies. Leland Bristol and Neville Williams started the company as LBA solar, installing photovoltaic panels in residential applications. Their first job was installing 2.6 KW on Mr. Bristol’s roof. As their market grew, the two formed Standard Solar in 2004, offering additional services of solar hot water and larger scale projects. They now employ 60 people and have installed over 400 systems.

The first step toward a complete solar energy system is having an employee visit the customer’s location. He or she calculates the optimum placement of the solar panels or heat collectors, and agrees with the customer on a plan. Then a crew comes, bolts the panels or collectors down (usually to a building’s roof), runs wires from the panels to an inverter (which converts DC to AC), and finally to the building’s electrical main box. In the case of a solar hot water system, the crew runs insulated pipes from the heat collectors to the building’s water heater tank, and may put in a pump to circulate the water. The company can also obtain and install backup batteries, with which a customer can go completely off the electric grid. A system that supplies all of a home’s electric needs can cost $20,000 to $30,000. Hot water systems usually cost less, but can vary widely depending on the demand to the system and the efficiency of pre-existing components.

Most customers pay for the high cost of solar energy installations by using home equity loans, and help from federal and state government subsidies. An additional service that Standard Solar offers – increasingly popular in the solar power industry – is a bridge loan. This allows qualifying customers to borrow up to $45,000 from the company’s financial backers, interest free for one year, to help pay for the installation costs. Because federal and state subsidies can take a long time to get approved, bridge loans can make it possible to buy a solar energy system and have it installed in a reasonable length of time.

Another trend in the way people are buying solar power is the “solar power purchase agreement” (SPPA). In an SPPA, private investors hire Standard Solar to install large (300 KW or more) solar power systems on the facilities of large consumers—for instance a Wal-Mart store. Wal-Mart uses electricity from the solar panels, in exchange for an agreement to pay the investor for their electricity at a fixed price for 15 to 20 years. Wal-Mart gains by having a fixed utility bill, and does the planet good by using a more sustainable source of energy. The investor gains access to tax credits and other clean energy rewards similar to the kind homeowners can receive when investing in Solar Energy.

For more information on Standard Solar, see their website. And to help you go solar, check out state and federal financial incentives for homeowners.