Wednesday, October 07, 2009 at 1:20:35 PM - by Nate Lew

On Fenwick Island, Delaware, just north of Ocean City Maryland, roughly 360 people live in isolation. But the isolation isn’t technical; that is, the inhabitants aren’t Luddites, and to prove that Stephen Vickers, the owner of the Seaside Country Store recently signed a contract to install 110 solar panels.

The store is almost typical of a country store, offering homemade jams and jellies, unique gifts, freshly made fudge, even sauces and salsas, and Vickers – who could expand his line of offerings if electricity prices in the area weren’t so high ($35,000 in 2008) – expects to save about $13,000 per year.

Harbeson, Delaware-based Flexera, which offers solar electricity, solar hot water and wind energy design and installation, as well as solar lighting and energy-efficient appliance sales, is going to put the panels up and handle all the paperwork for the various state and federal rebates available to solar owners.

Flexera, with more than 50 renewable energy projects under its belt, most of them solar-based, recently hosted Democratic Senator Tom Carper at its headquarters/R&D facility in Harbeson, where Flexera Vice President Ben Farr had an opportunity to express his frustration with SB 85, which promotes renewable energy but fails to define interconnection rules.

The Seaside Country Store is along Route #1, and the addition of solar panels here means that tourists and travelers can now see numerous examples of renewable energy, from solar panels to windmills, all along their route from Rehoboth to Fenwick Island – a recent development that Farr views more favorably than SB 85.
“The technology is coming to life,” Farr notes. “It’s no longer abstract.”

Not only will the panels reduce Vickers electricity bill, by reducing the amount of electricity he needs to buy from Delaware Electric Cooperative, Inc., but it will reduce the size of the store’s carbon footprint. The 28,000 kilowatt hours of electricity produced per year will, in effect, prevent about 24 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted by fossil-fuel burning generation plants from which the cooperative buys its power.

The Seaside Country Store is the first business on Fenwick Island to install solar panels, but not the first in the area. Just outside the town boundaries, Nantucket's Restaurant sports 48 solar panels installed in July. However, the store is the first to use panels comprised of cylindrical tubes that capture light across the spectrum.

At $173,000, Vicker’s project isn’t cheap, but he estimates that 80 percent of the costs will be offset by state ($1.75 per watt capped at $8,750) and federal credits (30 percent of system costs, with no cap, as a tax credit or rebate), providing a potential payoff date for Vickers a mere five years in the future.