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GR3: The Great Grafton Greening Project |
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Many thanks for all the help and participation at Friday night's presentation. We barely had to lift a finger to set-up and clean-up, which was a blessing given our level of exhaustion. Dan and I were overwhelmed with the positive atmosphere and level of interest in the group! We've been asked a couple of times to re-visit the financial rebates available right now or soon to be available. With these rebates/credits, it is possible to bring the cost of an installation down to almost nothing and in at least 1 case, actually nothing. The payback times for systems can now be measured in years, instead of decades. - HB1628, Money from the Public Utilities Commission: $3/ watt up to $6000 or 50% of system costs, whichever is less.
- Federal Tax Credit (yes, off your bottom line tax liability): 30% of the total cost of installation up to $2000 (Caveat: system must supply a minimum of 50% of your power consumption.)
- NHEC customers only: $3/ watt up to $5000
That said, we are offering to the Grafton and surrounding area a Group Buy program for solar (PV) installations:
- all materials at cost (shipping costs to be split over the entire group)
- site assessments at no-cost (this is to give you a site specific idea of what labor and materials would cost you and will take a couple of hours)
- "Cookie-cutter" design time at no charge
- coordination of any shared resources (if you have a backhoe and would like to volunteer to trench for the group, there are certain aspects of these types of projects that we don't want you to pay us to do. They are not specific to a solar installation
- assistance with any related paperwork
One person asked what we get out of this, as a business. We will be charging for any on-site installation time, which in some cases will be minimal. Our Master Electrician, Peter Hadlock, will be charging you to do the work with the utility companies. But more importantly, the size of the group purchase will be large enough to give us leverage to go straight to manufacturers and develop relationships with them.
We will be getting the experience we need to put our knowledge into action. For example, we need to know exactly how long it takes us to do a site assessment. We need to know how long it takes to complete all the wiring, when we know the specific products inside and out. Dan and Peter and I also need to refine our process and learn how to work together efficiently.
We hope that you will give us feedback and help us refine our process and be references for us locally.
Here is the timeline:
July 1: Site assessments completion and local individuals stated intentions to us.
July 15: Money for materials to us for purchasing
August 15: Installation work starts
November 20: All mount work complete
December 31: All financial paperwork and grid hookups complete
We must adhere to these timelines in order to get people's Federal Tax Credits back, as they currently expire on 31-December-2008. If people do not meet these timelines, we cannot guarantee installation completion by the end of the year, nor can we guarantee inclusion in the group buy that we are trying to orchestrate.
Thank you all so much again. We were really honored by all the interest and positive feedback. |
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Welcome to Northeast Renewables, LLC! |
Who are we?
In the non-existentialist sense, we are off-gridders. While we enjoy our lifestyle, we feel that it is not financially feasible or practical for the average US citizen, so we take our off-grid experiments and evaluate them for ease of use, practicality and especially efficiency. We are particularly interested in technologies which are effective in the northern reaches of our country. Those technologies which pass the critical-eye test will be represented here on our website. Of course, we are always looking for suggestions- so email us at
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What are we doing?
We are bridging the gap between the average consumer and what we call the “hard-core environmentalists”. Being off-gridders ourselves, we have met all walks of the smallest-environmental-footprint population and while admirable and truly a great test of the limits of self-sustainable technologies, we find it somewhat impractical for the average consumer. We feel that the answer to the energy crunch that the world has been experiencing is to create a balance between the use of fossil fuels and the use of the energy which exists around us every day in the sun, the wind, even the trees and the water. Without this harmony, we will see energy prices continue to rise without a ceiling. |
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