As costs go down, solar power increases in Arkansas

RUSSELLVILLE — In the shadow of factories and white plumes of air from the Nuclear One power plant, 30 solar panels sit atop Joshua’s Fine Jewelry in downtown Russellville.

Chris George is finally living out an 18-year-old dream. The owner of Joshua’s Fine Jewelry wanted to power the store on renewable energy, but for 18 years it didn’t make sense.

“It was just too expensive. I was just never going to pay it off,” said George, 57, whose ambition was to make his store “as green as we could be.”

Solar panels were manufactured by far fewer entities in 1999 and materials were more expensive, so installing the panels simply wasn’t economical.

By 2015, things had changed. Solar prices had gone way down, many energy experts said, and installations went way up. It also was about the time utilities in Arkansas began installing or announcing plans for largescale solar projects.

With declining prices in solar, wind and natural gas, the nation’s electricity sector is changing.

Since 2015, utilities have announced six solar projects built in Arkansas, the first ever for the state. The projects aren’t just taking off for utilities, either. It’s happening on a much smaller scale, too, with Arkansas homeowners and business owners installing solar panels.

So earlier this year, George took another look at solar, figuring out the cost of installation and the potential savings. He’d have to pay about $16,000 — after a $7,700 federal solar tax credit — and the panels would save him

a few hundred dollars right off the bat. He’d have to pay off the panels on which he would nearly break even for the first few years, but once they were paid off he’d get to keep the savings.

George did the same thing for his home, estimating that after five to six years he’d be left with no electricity payments at all, and came to a conclusion

“Anybody that doesn’t do this is foolish.”

OUTPACING COAL

President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to remove regulations affecting coal production and power, announcing earlier this month that the administration would end the Clean Power Plan, which required states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and targeted coal plants in the process.

Even with the administration’s decision, the costs of natural gas and non-hydropower renewable energies have sunk and their consumption has risen. Accordingly, utilities are using less coal power.

Natural gas has always been a competitor with coal but now has outpaced coal consumption and production in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2017 Energy Outlook, to become the greatest producer of energy at just more than 27 quadrillion British thermal units produced in 2016.

The Energy Information Administration forecasts wind and solar, which produced about 7 quadrillion Btu in 2016, to match coal production and surpass coal in consumption by 2040. Coal produced about 15 quadrillion

Btu in 2016 and is projected to produce about 12.5 quadrillion in 2040.

For utility-scale solar, the median price per watt of alternating current dropped from about $6.50 10 years ago to $2.20 in 2016, according to the Utility-Scale Solar 2016 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report defines a utility-scale project as being 5 megawatts or greater.

Operation and maintenance costs have decreased from $19.30 per megawatt hour in 2011 to $8.20, and the megawatts of added utility-scale solar generation in 2016 (10,636 megawatts) were more than twice what they were in 2015 (4,149 megawatts).

The number of smaller solar installations at homes and businesses has grown by hundreds of thousands each year since 2013, according to the Berkeley lab’s Tracking the Sun 10 report released earlier this year.

For those nonutility projects, the median price of installing solar has fallen twothirds since 2000 (from $12 per watt of direct current to $4) and the size of the projects has more than doubled since 2000 (from 2.9 kilowatts to 6.2 kilowatts)

Incentives for solar are contributing to installation of it, experts said.

Some states offer tax incentives for installing renewable energy. Arkansas doesn’t, but the federal government offers a 30 percent tax credit for solar, which effectively knocks off 30 percent of a project’s cost. The amount of the tax credit is scheduled to decrease in the coming years.

Renewable energy also has come from states that have standards and goals for the amount or proportion of electricity generated in the state by renewables. Arkansas does not have a standard for either, but neighboring Texas and Missouri do.

Seeing an opportunity, more businesses have opened or expanded to include solar, which has helped drive costs down further.

Fewer companies manufactured panels before, said Seal Energy Solutions co-founder Josh Davenport, but manufacturing of solar and wind technology has risen domestically — including in Arkansas — so parts don’t need to be shipped as far.

Employment in solar power also has changed. The industry employs more people in the U.S. than fossil fuels, nuclear and wind combined, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Solar employs 373,807 people, according to the department’s 2017 U.S. Energy and Jobs Report. Wind employs 101,738 people, nuclear employs 68,176 and fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, oil/petroleum and advanced gas) employs 187,117.

‘A BETTER WORLD’

Chris George said he is “pretty pleased” with the solar panels on his Russellville jewelry store.

They are a way to make a difference that doesn’t require much beyond installation, he said.

“We want to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren than what we had,” he said.

Nathan George, the son of Chris George who is also a Russellville city councilman, said he’s also exploring how to convert the city to more solar power.

In August, the city’s electricity costs were about $40,000. Solar panels, Nathan George said, could be a way for the city, much larger than a single store on West Main Street, to save money, too.