The power is theirs

Aaron J. Latham / Staff The energy produced by Gary Ross' solar panels is stored in these batteries, which then power his home in far northeast Tucson. FOR MORE INFORMATION * You can learn more about solar power and home design at two events sponsored by the Solar Institute. Tucson Innovative Home Tour: Oct. 25-26 - see how others are doing it. Cost $10 Next Generation Home Course: Nov. 8 - learn how from the experts. Cost $20 ($10 off with home-tour ticket purchase) Information: 792-6579 or www.solarinstitute.org * For information about Tucson Electric Power's SunShare program, which pays up to $2,000 per kilowatt to customers who install TEP approved solar systems visit www.greenwatts.com Jim Davis / Staff Barbara Rose is building this home to be energy efficient. The solar panel, right, creates one kilowatt of power per hour.

Blackouts are out, security is in for those who grow their own electricity

Most of the folks who live "off-grid," not connected to the power supply, have always been pretty far out there geographically - and often considered pretty "out there" philosophically.

Forgive them, then, for being a bit smug after cascading power failures hit the West and East coasts in 2001 and 2003, respectively. When you generate your own power in your own back yard, the failure of the electric grid has no sting.

"When that deal happened in New York, that just reminds you of how nice it is not to have to worry about it," said Jim Herbig, who lives southeast of Three Points, beyond the reach of the electrical utilities. He's happy he's prepared for the day when the blackouts hit Arizona. "I think we're gonna have more and more problems," Herbig said.

For many reasons, it takes a crisis to stimulate interest in alternative forms of energy. Following the rolling brownouts in California in the summer of 2001, a run on solar energy systems in that state produced a shortage of some components nationwide, said Jim Arwood, solar coordinator for the Arizona Department of Commerce.

The previous solar-energy boomlet began in the late '70s during the Carter administration after the Arab Oil Embargo spawned a drive to lower our dependence on imported oil.

Nearly 30 years after that drive began, solar energy is still used mostly where the grid doesn't reach. Many of the 500,000 homes worldwide that generate power from solar cells are located in Third World villages. Some of the largest Arizona solar-powered facilities are in remote corners of Indian reservations.

Arwood estimates that more than 2,000 Arizona families live off grid. They range from a small home with photovoltaic panels capable of generating 600 watts to a home near Prescott with its own recording studio and a solar array capable of producing 11 kilowatts. The average air-conditioned home in the Arizona desert needs about 4 kilowatts of energy on the hottest day of the year.

Like those Third World villagers, Herbig had no choice in the matter. He enjoys knowing that he's saving fossil fuels and generating energy from a clean source, but that wasn't his motivation. There was no power source on the horizon of his 56-acre homestead. He built a well-insulated and porch-shaded 3,000-square-foot home, installed a propane tank for heating and cooking and erected solar panels on his roof for all his electrical needs.

He and his wife, Debbie Haas, are "out there" geographically, but average in every other sense. "I've got a regular house with all the normal appliances," Herbig said. And thanks to advances in energy efficiency by appliance manufacturers, Herbig didn't have to skimp. "We've got a 21-cubic-foot refrigerator just like real people use," Herbig said. "It keeps my beer cool and my fish frozen."

Unlike Herbig and Haas, Gary and Marti Ross had a choice when they started building their home in 1986, in the far northeast corner of Tucson. Gary, who studied alternative energy systems while getting a master's in engineering at the University of Arizona, said he could have hooked up to TEP, for the $10,000 to $15,000 cost of extending the power line to the end of his dirt road.

He and Marti decided to put that money, and a bit more, into an array of photovoltaic panels in the back yard, hooked up to a battery cache and a backup generator that ran on gasoline.

The Rosses knew the system they built, capable of generating 1.5 kilowatts of energy on a sunny day, wouldn't supply the average home, so Instead of building smaller, they built smarter.

Their 3,200-square-foot rammed-earth home was aligned to absorb heat into the thick walls in winter, and shaded to keep the walls cool in summer with minimal help from ceiling fans and evaporative coolers. The lights were low-wattage fluorescents. Refrigerators were notoriously inefficient in those days, so the Rosses bought a heavily-insulated model that traded space for power.

"I lived at the Safeway," said Marti of her daily shopping trips to refill it. "The freezer wouldn't hold a half gallon of ice cream."

Marti was careful not to run the vacuum cleaner while doing laundry, and found the panels usually powered all their needs. When they didn't, the generator kicked in, though Marti tired of hauling gasoline to fill it when Gary was out of town. Fortunately, the couple had two sons, Michael, now 27, and Eric, 20, to do the heavy lifting.

About seven years after the home was completed, the electric company came calling. Power had arrived right next door and they were offering to hook the Rosses up for free.

The decision to tie-in to the grid allowed the Rosses to upsize the refrigerator, add a small pool to the back yard and get rid of the generator. But they kept the solar panels and their bank of batteries. If the power grid goes down, they're still self-sufficient, and their average monthly electric bill is only about $50 because they're still generating most of their own power.

Some of their conservation urgency vanished when they hooked up to TEP, said Marti. "Our boys were very energy conscious. They grew up watching their power use," said Marti. Daughter Kimmy, 17, who grew up on-grid, is much less scrupulous about turning off lights and stereo systems when she leaves, Marti said.

The Rosses' home was a model of solar living when it was built. "We hosted tours for about five years," said Marti. What irks them a bit now is that it's still touted as a model.

"I thought by now there'd be hundreds of solar homes in the area," said Gary. "Especially here in Arizona with the sun we have," said Marti, "it just makes sense."

"Part of it's the money and part of it is fear of the unknown," said Gary. "I knew this stuff so if something went wrong, I could fix it."

That fear factor is lessened when solar panels are tied into the electric grid. You don't have to go without power while you're repairing your system.

Federal law requires utility companies to allow hookups and many state laws, including Arizona's, further encourage the practice. In 2001, the Arizona Corporation Commission required the utilities it regulates to generate a percentage of their power from renewable resources, more than half from solar power. If its customers generate it for them, it counts toward that goal.

That's why, in the Tucson area, TEP will pay $2,000 for each photovoltaic system that it certifies capable of generating a kilowatt of power that is tied in to TEP lines . Add an additional credit of up to $1,000 on your state income tax and you've covered half the cost of a 1kW system, said Arwood.

Grid-tied systems make it possible for homeowners to build solar electric systems that don't have to meet the energy demands of the hottest hours each summer. They also supply redundancy. If the grid fails, you've still got power; if your solar system is kaput, you've got the good old electric company. And on those days when the sun is allowing your photovoltaic cells to generate more power than you can use, you can sell your excess power back to the utility company. Your meter actually runs backwards.

Not everybody hooks up to the grid when the electric company comes calling. Rancher Bill McDonald and his wife, Mary, decided they were living quite well with solar panels alone.

McDonald is a fourth-generation rancher whose family's ranch, 30 miles east of Douglas, was built in 1907. When he took over the property, he was happy to keep it that way. "I was mainly living off kerosene lamps and occasionally would crank up the generator when things got out of hand and I needed to vacuum the floor."

Then he got married. "Mary knew what she was getting into, but she expected me to make the situation better," he said.

McDonald put in a system of photovoltaic panels 23 years ago, added to it over the years and currently has the capacity to generate about 5 kilowatts of power when the sun is shining. He stores the power in 16 batteries. A few years back, when the Sulphur Springs Electric Cooperative offered him a deal on extending power to the property, he and Mary talked it over and decided to just add some more solar cells. They'd grown accustomed to budgeting their power usage.

"You have to take a little more personal responsibility for what you use, have a tighter budget. It's not the best setup for people who are used to turning on lights and leaving them on. We have no AC; right now we don't have a cooler because we're remodeling. There were times this summer when we had some second thoughts," McDonald said.

Summer is the tough time for power generators in the Southwest. There is more demand on the systems big and small. And solar panels are a bit less efficient in high heat.

Daniel Snyder, a Tucson photographer who operates a business designing photovoltaic systems, says there are two ways to approach going solar. You can adjust your power needs to a small system or just buy a system big enough to live however you want. The system at his own house, near the Herbigs southeast of Three Points, is a small one and during the monsoon the combination of hot and cloudy creates some minor problems. "My girlfriend couldn't iron her clothes for work when we had a couple cloudy days in a row in August," he said.

He also can't run air conditioning on the power he generates.

But he has designed systems that will power air conditioners and all the other modern conveniences through a week of cloudy weather.

"It just takes money," he said.

Money is still the big impediment to going solar. If you want a system that gives you the excess capacity needed for biggest use under most adverse conditions, it'll cost you. It would take 20 years of $300 a month electric bills to recoup the cost of the $60,000 system Snyder installed for a family in Sonoita.

If you tie your system into the electric utility, you can avoid the expense of meeting your peak demand. But despite highly publicized efforts to market tie-ins at subdivisions such as Civano and Armory Park del Sol, TEP has only 24 true "net-metering" customers who represent 33 kW of capacity. Through Aug. 15, those customers had sold TEP 1,030 kilowatt-hours of power in 2003, said TEP spokesman Joe Salkowski.

Not one of those customers has recorded a month in which they generated more power than they used, Salkowski said.

"Saving money is not the best reason to get into solar power," said Salkowski. "You do it if you want to save the environment, be less of a burden on the system," he said.

That's all the motivation Barbara Rose needs. Rose is building four solar-powered bungalows on a 20-acre plot she's named "Dancing Rocks," nestled beneath the northern end of the Tucson Mountains on the edge of Marana.

Availability of utilities is not a factor. Across Silverbell Road from Dancing Rocks sits Continental Ranch and its sea of manufactured and conventionally built homes with plenty of power lines.

Rose plans to tie in two of the rammed-earth homes she is building to the grid, allowing them to swap power with TEP. Owners of the other two will be on their own, with no backup power source.

For Rose, generating power from the sun is part of a lifestyle that encourages conservation of all resources. A practicing permaculturist famous for her water-harvesting skills, Rose has diverted roof runoff into cisterns and slowed the wash runoff to a trickle on her hilly property. While neighbors wells have dropped in a decade of drought and development nearby, Rose's water table has actually risen 18 feet.

Her bungalows will not use water to flush the composting toilets and the "gray" water from the kitchen sink and the washing machine will be diverted to the yard. Though they will be hooked up to Rose's well, her home buyers will be encouraged to budget their water use to what is captured from their own roofs.

Rose applies the same exacting principles to energy use, beginning with the materials used in building the homes. She used locally made materials whenever possible to save the energy cost of transporting them. Saving energy to Rose is a lifestyle, not a simple choice of technology.

The houses she is building are small - less than 1,000 square feet - and their walls are 2 feet thick, rammed earth or straw bale. The roofs are insulated. They will be cooled with a single evaporative cooler. The idea is to first lower the need for power and then supply that need with a renewable source.

Each Dancing Rocks bungalow has a 1-kilowatt photovoltaic panel on a tracking motor that follows the sun's path through the day and through the seasons.

It should be enough for the Dancing Rocks lifestyle, which is outlined in an "owner's manual" Rose is supplying to everyone who buys one. Clothes dryers, for example, are not compatible with the development's philosophy. Clotheslines are. "It's not for everybody," said Rose, but she's had no trouble finding buyers who share her philosophy.

"What I do on this property is harvest water, build soil and plant trees. This project is an extension of that; it's what seems appropriate on this place," Rose said.

Solar proponents predict that the next big surge in its use will come not from the true believers like Rose, nor from people concerned about blackouts. "People are going to see that it just makes sense," said Paul Huddy, director of the Tucson Solar Institute, which has recently helped 10 solar customers tie-in to the grid through a federal program.

"The efficiencies have improved a great deal and the prices have come down considerably," said Arwood.

And the fact that builders are now including solar options in new subdivisions is an indication that the idea is no longer as "out there" as it once was.

* Contact reporter Tom Beal at 573-4158 or tombeal@azstarnet.com.