Thanks for a great article on Solarize Bellevue last week.

As a Bellevue resident and high -schooler who is passionate about securing a clean energy future for my generation, I wanted to expand on some of the personal and financial reasons why people should go solar now.

The Washington state Renewable Energy Incentive helps pay homeowners like the Boleyn family $0.54 per kilowatt-hour of electricity that their system generates, a price that is determined by where the system components are manufactured, which in this case is right here in Washington State. That’s right, a kilowatt hour that would cost you or me about $0.08 through PSE now earns us $0.54, and it saves us the $.08 in the first place.

Also, while a typical solar array is $20-25,000, a federal tax incentive cuts the cost by 30 percent, bringing the price tag down to as low as $14,000. Furthermore, obviously, every kilowatt-hour of energy that your solar array produces means you don’t have to purchase it from the utility, but if your solar array produces more energy than you consume, especially during the summer, then this extra energy will be saved as “banked credits” that you can use later in the year when your system isn’t producing as much – known as “net metering.”

These three incentives–$0.54 per kWh, 30 percent tax credit, and net metering credits–means that paying off solar takes just 4-7 years to pay off the full price of installing solar. That also means that after those 4-7 years, all the energy your solar panels produce are completely free, with no strings attached.

Furthermore, the projected 4-7 years doesn’t even take into account the impact on property values: a Berkeley, Calif. study which examined 23,000 homes determined that solar adds $15,000 to your property value, which is already enough to make up for the $14,000 bottom cost.

Right now is the best time to go solar, while we still have all these incentives. The Washington state incentive ($0.54/kWh) is set to expire in June 2020, and the federal tax credit (30 percent of the cost of solar) will expire in December 2016. Going solar through Solarize Bellevue right now will let you profit the most and pay off solar in the quickest amount of time. Also, Solarize Bellevue saves you the hassle of choosing a contractor to install solar, and solar technology isn’t set to rapidly advance any time soon.

But, more than anything, this truly is a community venture. A&R Solar will donate a solar array to the new Kids Quest museum location, and an additional $2,000 will be donated to local non-profit causes for every 5 installations past 25.

So, given all the great reasons to run out and buy solar right now, why don’t you at least come to one of the free Solarize Bellevue workshops, to learn more about solar and answer all your questions? It’s commitment free, and you’ll definitely learn something. Visit greenwa.org for more information.

Pranay Mittal,

Eastside Energy Corps Lead Strategist, Interlake HS Class of 2017