Largest solar panel in Tri-Cities set to save business owner money

While being envi­ron­men­tally friendly has long been a lib­eral thing, more and more con­ser­v­a­tives are join­ing in because solar power and other alter­na­tive energy  projects save them money. When con­sid­er­ing a solar power system, remember that the first step is to reduce your demand or be energy effi­cient — build­ing a sys­tem that meets those reduced demand needs will make the sys­tem more cost-efficient and will help edu­cate the owner on where their power demands can be reduced.

Largest solar panel in Tri-Cities set to save busi­ness owner money­Largest solar panel in Tri-Cities set to save busi­ness owner… Added: May 17, 2011Between his fram­ing busi­ness and his art gallery, Dick Nel­son spends roughly $6,000 a year on elec­tric­ity. How­ever, by the end of 2011, he could make money. more1 Rat­ings | 34 Video Views­Post a Com­ment or Rate this Video» View More Videos By NATE MORABITO Pub­lished: May 17, 2011» 5 Com­ments | Post a Com­men­tJOHN­SON CITY, TN –Between his fram­ing busi­ness and his art gallery, Dick Nel­son spends roughly $6,000 a year on elec­tric­ity. How­ever, by the end of 2011, he could make money.“My goal is for at the end of the year for the power board to send me a check,” Nel­son said.If and when that hap­pens, he’ll have the 63 solar pan­els on his roof to thank. After last year’s oil spill in the gulf, Nel­son started think­ing about solar energy.“I believe in being a good stew­ard of the envi­ron­ment,” Nel­son said. “Theres no dan­ger in min­ing solar energy. A lot of peo­ple for­get there were 11 peo­ple killed in the oil spill.“A Ten­nessee Solar Insti­tute stim­u­lus grant and fed­eral tax credit paid for two-thirds of the project. Nel­son paid for the rest.“It will take about five years to pay for itself,” Nel­son said. “It just kind of makes sense. 93 mil­lion miles away, we have this burn­ing star of our sun and it’s pro­duc­ing more elec­tric­ity every sec­ond than we can pos­si­bly use.”The down­town busi­ness owner is now cre­at­ing energy for the Ten­nessee Val­ley Author­ity. In return, the TVA is sell­ing him elec­tric­ity at a dis­counted rate.Nelson is just the lat­est to join in on the solar craze. 14 oth­ers are also par­tic­i­pat­ing in the same pro­gram through the John­son City Power Board.“13 of those cus­tomers are res­i­den­tial cus­tomers and two are com­mer­cial cus­tomers,” John­son City Power Board Chief Pub­lic Rela­tions Offi­cer Robert White said. “We have five more con­tracts pend­ing. Its a pro­gram that con­tin­ues to grow. We actu­ally have sev­eral of those par­tic­i­pants right now who actu­ally are able to gen­er­ate some cred­its on their account. Theyre actu­ally gen­er­at­ing more elec­tric­ity than theyre using.“LightWave Solar Elec­tric installed Nelson’s solar power sys­tem. Although it’s the largest the company’s installed in the region, it’s not the first.

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