Using federal and state grants, Lancaster Travel Plaza in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, added a solar panel farm to greatly reduce their energy bill. It will take six to seven years to recoup the cost of the equipment. After that, their electricity needs will be completely supported by the solar farm. Adding the solar farm took about four to five months. It involved applying for the grants, working with their electric company, getting approval from the town and installing the panels.
The total project was a $400,000 investment, with almost 30 percent of the cost subsidized by a federal grant and 10 percent to 15 percent covered by a state grant. Although the federal grant is no longer available, there is a tax credit option of roughly 30 percent still available. According to owner Anil Jivani, because the cost of solar panels and solar equipment has gone down in the last three or four years, it is still a good return-on-investment even if locations aren’t able to obtain a state grant.
Lancaster Travel Plaza used a local installer on the project and made sure the equipment was the best quality available. The company also secured a 25-year warranty on all of the equipment. As part of the installation warranty, if anything goes bad within 10 years, the company has to come out and fix it. Similarly, if they don’t get a certain level of input for 25 years, the manufacturer has to replace it. Jivani’s advice for other operators is to be sure your installers and manufacturer have a lot of experience and specifically have panels that have been in existence past the 25-year mark.
Lancaster’s panels were installed using ground mounting as they had the two acres that type of installation required, but Jivani said roof or canopy mounts work as well, especially because solar panels are getting smaller and smaller. The solar panels collect the energy during the day and the electric meter spins backwards, then at night their facility uses that energy collected during the day.
Jivani encourages other operators who install a solar panel farm to add monitoring at the individual panel level. They used a string method where 10 to 15 panels are on the same string, which offers better efficiency, but then they can’t monitor each panel. If one panel is failing, they may not even know for days and it can be time consuming to determine which panel is not working. He also advises other operators to protect their solar panels by putting a fence around them as people like to vandalize equipment. The fence should be high enough and far enough away that people can’t reach or throw things at the solar panels, and it should be plastered with warning signs about the high voltage.
Photo Credit: Anil Jivani/NATSO
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