Plantronics Solar Photovoltaic Installation

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Hmmmn, this one is hard to publish. Is there some secret code that says I cut and pasted a big chunnk ?

The largest solar power system in Santa Cruz County sits atop the roof of Plantronics Inc., the headset company based in Santa Cruz.

The 262 kilowatt system is four and a half times larger than the previous largest, a 57 kilowatt system installed by West Marine in 2003. Construction finished last week on the massive Plantronics project and the system will start capturing the sun’s rays June 5….

And getting a hold of that many solar, or photovoltaic, panels was not easy, he said. Solar Technologies bought the panels from Schott Solar, a German company with offices in Rockland.”There’s a worldwide shortage of photovoltaic products,” Denault (the designer) said. “It was like a major international intrigue to get all the panels together for this project.”

As big as it is, the system will only provide about 20 percent of Plantronics’ energy needs….

The project cost more than $2 million, but with all the rebates available from the state, the company only had to pay about 25 percent of that, Denault said. And with the money it will save in PG&E bills, Plantronics will pay off the system in about five years, Denault said….

Ron Swenson, owner of ElectroRoof, said “Plantronics was very visionary to do a project like this, and we were glad to provide a solution.”

This article tells us a number of interesting things about the alternative energy market:

1. Even with today’s oil prices, unsubsidized solar would take 20 years to pay off - not yet a rational business move.
2. And this is in sunny Santa Cruz, California - where the economics of solar power should be at their strongest.
3. However, interest is strong enough to make it difficult to obtain enough panels for a large project.
4. Still, today’s adopters are “visionaries.”

We can then extrapolate a few other nuggets:

1. Given that solar power is a silicon technology, it will get cheaper in future iterations.
2. The strong demand is likely to result in new investments, which will increase capacity and also lower prices.
3. Oil prices are likely to continue rising for several years if only because it takes that long to develop alternate technologies.

If oil rises to $100 (42 percent from current levels) and solar power costs are cut in half over the next five years (both of which seem to us to be within the range of reasonable expectations) the payback on solar power systems will be 7 years without subsidies. At least in places like Santa Cruz. And that kind of potential is what keeps venture capital dollars flowing.

I am still working on finding the base numbers to truly understand the economics of solar power, but this analysis is interesting. You non-believers, nuke choir members, have to ask yourselves, "Why are the otherwise intelligent folk at Plantronics wasting their money on this non nuke boondoogle ?"

Now I'm supposed to remember the whole html phrase for inserting a tag, bother! back in a minute....