If you’re looking towards downtown Louisville from just a few miles off, a layer of brown smog lingers above the peaks of the skyline. It may seem that Metro Louisville is immune from the pollution of a metropolis like Los Angeles or New York City, but take a good look up in the hot summer, breathe deep, and realize that smog might be something this medium-sized city should do something about. With low utility rates in this region, there’s little economic incentive to care about our air and the brown tinge it’s taken on over the years. However, there are a number of individuals in the city who are thinking beyond fossil fuels and the air pollution they create, towards a brighter, cleaner future with solar energy.
This past October, many of these individuals came together for the fifth annual Louisville Solar Tour. The Louisville Solar Tour is part of a national effort to showcase the solar structures in each participating city. A good number of the structures on the Louisville tour are found in the Highlands area, where a walk along the side streets will afford a few views of solar-paneled roofs.
Tim Darst owns a solar home in the Highlands and also helped organize the 2011 Louisville tour. Darst had been interested in solar technology for some time, but was not keen on the upfront cost that comes with buying the large photovoltaic panels. “I realized I was one of those people,” Darst said, “someone waiting for the price to come down without buying.” This kind of thinking, he explained, suppresses demand, and manufacturers respond by producing less solar panels, so much that they remain out of comfortable economic reach. Darst and many others on the Louisville Solar tour can and do call themselves “early adopters,” or people who invest in solar technology despite its current high cost. Early adopters help bring the cost down, over time, making solar panels more affordable for others.
“We have really cheap electricity here [in Kentucky], which makes the payback slower,” Darst said. What makes many of these people invest in solar energy is not necessarily any economic payback. Rather, their decision is an environmental one. Most of Kentucky’s energy comes from coal, which is mined in the eastern and western parts of the state. Coal is a fossil fuel, and when it burns, it releases greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change. Coal mining techniques, such as mountaintop removal strip mining, also pollute our state’s land and water. The negative effect coal energy has on the environment is coupled with its effects on human health. Air pollution is linked with asthma and an increased number of asthma attacks on ozone alert days, days on which weather conditions are prime to create negative health effects.
The Louisville Solar Tour is an opportunity for these early adopters and fellow community members to discuss the why and how of solar energy. The tour, is most simply, a place for people to tell their story.
Before buying solar panels, Darst focused on reducing the energy consumption in his home. He began by checking his electricity meter. He used 770 kilowatt hours (kWh) per month, less than the national average of 890 kWh per month, and even less than the Kentucky average of over 1,000 kWh per month. Darst began by switching to Energy Star appliances and compact fluorescent light bulbs, which both require less electricity for the same performance. He turned off his air conditioner on cooler days, and installed fans and awnings to help regulate the air temperature in his home. Through conservation alone, Darst reduced his energy bill by 70 percent. And with the solar panels, Darst was able to reduce his energy bill by a total of 90 percent. He would have needed five times as many panels to produce enough energy for his home before conservation. “I think you have to do that first,” Darst said.
While Darst still pays an electric bill, albeit a small one, there are other homes on the tour that produce all the energy they consume, and then some. The electric company pays them. One solar homeowner in Germantown, Dr. Donald Feeney, Jr., sells excess power back to into the grid as renewable energy credits. Because of the great amount of energy his panels produce, Feeney has plans to purchase a Nissan Leaf, an electric car that he will charge from his home.
Other homes on the tour exhibit the creative uses of solar power. Several homes have solar hot water heaters, yet another way to harness the sun’s free energy. Because natural gas is more expensive than electricity, solar hot water heaters take less time to pay back the upfront cost in energy savings.
One home on the tour features passive solar heating. Cindy and David Brown-Kinloch added a row of south-facing clerestory windows to the top of their shotgun home near downtown Louisville. This time of year, sunlight enters the windows and warms a brick wall, which releases heat into the home.
Louisville is one of three cities in Kentucky to host a Solar Tour this year. Berea and Frankfort are also the setting for solar homes and businesses. With far fewer sunny days per year than California or Texas, Kentucky wouldn’t seem to be a likely candidate for solar power. However, individuals in the Louisville Highlands and across the state are pushing Kentucky towards renewable energy, a hard push away from coal power.
“Kentucky has the same amount of sunlight as Germany, but yet Germany is the leader in solar,” Darst said. Both Kentucky and Germany have access to coal, but Germany has moved away from coal power and towards renewable energy in recent years, while Kentucky remains hard fixed. One reason Germany has successfully implemented more solar technology is their use of a feed-in tariff. In Kentucky, if your solar panels are harvesting more energy than you’re using, the power company will buy your energy for how much coal costs, 7 cents per hour. In Germany, they pay you for what your solar energy is worth on the market, which is much greater than the price for coal power. Solar panels became lucrative in Germany, and were thus in higher demand. This demand helped lower the price, and fueled the market for solar energy. Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance (KSEA) is currently working on designing a feed-in tariff for Kentucky.
Though by no means a sunshine state, Kentucky is a reasonable candidate for solar energy. Building solar-powered homes in urban areas is more challenging, as large south facing walls that are unobstructed by trees or other homes are hard to find. Kentucky, rather, has great amounts of open rural land, which is better suited for solar panels. And the de-centralized nature of rural communities also lends itself to solar energy, which doesn’t have to be transported, but is created on-site.
Kentucky is still in early transition towards renewable energy, and those on the Louisville Solar Tour are leading that transition. Still, the technology may still be out of economic reach for many. “Even if you don’t get solar panels, you could do all the other stuff,” Darst said. And once that market is built, Darst sees a thriving economy surrounding renewables, with reliable jobs for manufacturing and installation. By capturing the free and clean energy of the sun, Darst and others in the Highlands area are good to their hood, and yours, too.
–Caroline Stephens
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