Solar power installations can offset electrical costs and create awareness of environmental issues, but the renewable energy does even more for real estate developers and landlords – it entices tenants, according to a local real estate executive.
"We’re an owner developer. The reason we do this is to attract tenants," Ernie Agresti, vice president of Cumming Properties, told developers, solar energy experts and property owners gathered at this morning’s NAIOP program on sun-generated power.
When a building’s solar installation creates more power than is being used at the location, the owner of that system can sell, or assign, the excess credits to another user. So a landlord can essentially transfer energy credits to a tenant, automatically reducing electricity costs, said Carter Wall, executive director of the Renewable Energy Generation Division of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
However, landlords aren’t required to transfer the savings. One solar installation on a building in Chelsea that houses perishable foods, a 199-kilowatt rooftop system is saving the owner $30,000 in energy costs in the first year, said Adam Braillard, co-founder of Prince Lobel Renewables, the renewable energy branch of law firm Prince Lobel Glovsky & Tye. The 30-year cumulative savings projected for the Chelsea installation is estimated at $1.475 million, and the system offsets the on-site electrical usage by 60 percent.
Another project, with 95 kilowatts of solar power produced, saved the owner of a 270,000-square-foot building on Millbrook Road in Worcester $5,000 the first year. By the 10th year, it will see a cumulative savings of $60,000, Braillard said.
The two projects combined are eliminating 13.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of about 30 million vehicle miles not driven.
Wall of the Clean Energy Center said the state has seen hundreds of millions of dollars worth of solar installations in the last three years, and the number of installers in Massachusetts has jumped form 50 to 200 since 2008.
The timeline for a solar project to go from signing a contract through design, permitting and installation is between four months and five months, according to Jared Connell, project developer for Borrego Solar, a creator of solar systems. Design usually runs from four weeks to six weeks to complete. The building and electrical permits needed for rooftop solar arrays are "pretty simple," Connell said.
Many times solar arrays can be pre-fabricated in a warehouse and just need to be driven to a site and assembled, taking only a matter of days. Then the system needs to be inspected, and as long as all goes well, it will be fully operational, he said.
