Friday, November 14, 2008

Rent solar panels in your state

At the first of the year, I registered to have solar power put on my home by a company called The Citizenre Corporation. They are an energy company that is dedicated to modernizing our energy infrastructure and increasing our energy supplies here in the US. I signed up for this because I believe we are too dependent upon foreign oil, oil and natural gas prices keep rising, and I would rather see my hard earned money stay right here in the U.S. Also Solar Power is excellent for the environment as well! If you are interested and want to check it out - read the steps below.

Go to the website here: http://renu.citizenre.com/ to set up a free account and enter in your home address and answer the home energy use questions. This will help them to profile your location, your homes use, and then provide some statistics for you to review. http://renu.citizenre.com/

By Creating an account, you are not committing to using their service. You are just selecting the type of plan that you would be interested in and the term that you would like to use their solar panels for. Once you create an account, they will generate a power consumption model for your address that you can review. Take a look at it and see how much power is generated in your area, and how much you use. This will help you to see the power that you can sell at certain types of the day, and the power that you will use.

Reading the chart and knowing exactly what you have consumed and when it was consumed will have significant value to you. Homeowners are more likely to conserve more energy when they can easily monitor their consumption. So not only will the chart help give you the ability to save money, but it will also help you to get into the habit of conserving energy.

The next thing to do is to go down into the "Contract Status History" of your account and read the FRA Terms & Conditions PDF they give you. If you read this, it will clearly state the agreement that you are interested in entering into, what type of thing the CitizenRENu group covers, the terms of the contract and how it works with your local energy provider.

The coolest thing is that the CitizenRENu company will pay for the city assessment, the code and ordinance work, and will also try to find qualified solar panel installers to come out to your house and do an installation. Your only cost is to provide a $500 dollar deposit for the term or the agreement that you enter into. So lets say that you want to have Solar Power on your home for 25 years - then you get the $500 dollars back at the end of the 25 year term. You can also transfer the panels to a new home if you move, so do not worry about that. I do want to make it clear though that you will still also get an energy bill from your local service provider. Just because you install these panels does not mean that you will not still get an energy bill. By installing these panels, they help you to drive down your energy costs because you are actually using the panels and selling energy back to the power company.

Another small fee that you will notice in your bill will also be a line fee from your energy company. Since you are trying to do something good for the planet and drive down your costs - the energy company will actually charge you about $5.00 a month for the use of their lines. They are still buying energy from you, but charging you at the same time to put it into the grid.

Regardless though, this company is doing the right thing, and they are defiantly worth checking out. I did, and I am really glad that I am helping to utilize solar power in my area. I still use grid power, but eventually I would love to be oil independent in my home!

The only problem right now is that this company is still trying to get funding and they are very overwhelmed with orders, so it is taking a while to get orders out. Also, there is a shortage or no qualified solar panel installers in certain states.

I do want to make it clear though that you will still get an energy bill from your local service provider. You pay to CitizenrÄ“ what you would normally pay to your existing electricity supplier during the lease term, but you lock in the rate at the beginning of each term, so even if your electric company raises its rates during the same period, you’re not affected. Just because you install these panels does not mean that you will not get an energy bill.

By installing these panels, they help you to drive down your energy costs because you are actually using the panels and selling energy back to the power company.
The power company will also charge you a fee for the use of their lines even though you are putting power into the grid for others to use.

The Citizenre REnU lease terms run in one, five and thirty year increments.


CitizenREnU - http://renu.citizenre.com/
NABCEP - http://www.nabcep.org/
Find Solar Professional in your area - http://www.findsolar.com/

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing valuable information. Nice post. I enjoyed reading this post.
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Harness Solar Power - Project Blog

Welcome to the Harness Solar Power Project Blog. I created this blog to help teach people about solar power, solar panels, solar electricity, and how easy solar power is to use. I set out to show you how you can start using solar power in your everyday lives. Take a look through the posts to start learning about solar power projects you can easily do around your home to start harnessing the sun's ability to create electricity.