Even though, especially in winter, the sun can disappear for days from the Northeast Ohio sky, property-owning businesses here are finding they can save money by bringing solar-generated electricity onto their properties.
At Progressive Corp.’s Campus 2 office complex in Mayfield Village, a vast solar-panel array is saving the company 20% on the electric bill at the complex, which includes four, four-story office buildings and a parking garage. The Progressive array, which is visible from Interstate 271, is made up of 4,186 photovoltaic solar panels covering 8.4 acres. It produces 2.3 gigawatts of electricity a year, equal to the energy use of about 250 homes.
At the Shaker West professional building on Shaker Boulevard in Cleveland, a much smaller rooftop array has reduced building owner MAN Holdings LLC’s electric bill by 25%.
“I think a lot of people still have the misconception that we may not have enough sun,” said Nicole Stika, vice president of energy services at the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “But it’s really feasible here in Northeast Ohio.”
GCP assisted MAN Holdings through its installation at 11811 Shaker Blvd., helping it find financing for $467,000 in building improvements to the 56-year-old building that are expected to reduce the property’s energy consumption by 42%. While the rooftop solar array consumed most of the cost of the improvements, MAN Holdings also upgraded the building’s insulation and window glazing and switched over to LED lighting.
Stika said that about 80% of the buildings that GCP performs energy audits on can save money with a solar array. She acknowledges, though, that most businesses aren’t ready to swallow the upfront and financing costs for a return on investment that can take as much as a decade to pay off.
“Maybe less than 10% are going ahead at this time,” she said. “But they are working it into their budgets, and we are seeing now more than ever companies planning for solar sooner than they ever were.”
The growth in commercial solar installations slowed by 10% for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2021, according to research sponsored by the Solar Energy Industries Association. Overall, solar energy installations had been growing by an average of 42% annually since 2000, according to SEIA data. The pandemic and supply chain snags were behind the decline.
Still, many in the business of designing and installing solar-panel arrays are seeing growth.
“Business these days is really good, improving; we’re seeing a lot of interest now,” said Al Frasz, commercial business manager at YellowLite Inc., a Cleveland firm that designs and installs solar power systems. “The economics are working better, the cost (of installing solar panels) has come down, and the other thing that’s happening is, natural gas prices are creeping up and so electric rates, which have been stable, are starting to creep up again.”
Frasz, who has been in the industry for 13 years, working on more than 300 commercial solar projects, said that businesses …….