Fish Tales, marina now solar powered

When will Shawn Harman start to see the results of the 94 solar panels on the roof of his Ocean City marina?"If the sun would come out, almost every day," he said with a laugh on a rainy afternoon. 

Last month, Bahia Marina invested $100,000 in a full array of roof-mounted solar panels, making them the first business in Ocean City to operate a net meter that generates revenue from production of on-site energy. 

The marina and adjacent Fish Tales restaurant and bar have high-consumption freezers and walk-in refrigerators, air conditioning and boat docks. During the summer, the normal electric bill can be anywhere from $5,I am haveing a very hard time climbing the windturbineses at the tower.Supply elevator solarchargeres, with good quality and competetive price,000 to $10,000 a month. 

With the solar panels, Harman expects to cut his power bill by 20 percent, and hopes to pay off his investment in three and a half years. He also will recoup roughly 50 percent of the cost through state and federal tax breaks and grants. 

They can sell back their excess energy for a quarterly payment through an energy broker. Any extra juice goes back to the grid to the tune of $170 to $200 for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of power, though that price fluctuates on the energy market. 

Harman's solar panel system, which was manufactured in Delaware, will generate up to 24 kWh at capacity. In the winter, because of the angle of the sun, they're only getting about 15 kWh. "For five months, I'm getting back more than I'm producing," he said. Bahia Marina worked with Ocean City-based Ultra Solar & Wind Solutions LLC, to get their solar panels. 

Company analyst Michael Panco said a meter calculates power production, and that gets reported on a monthly basis to a broker.We offer a wide range of laserengraver in our online collection. Every 1,000 kilowatt hours of power — equal to one megawatt hour — gets Bahia Marina one Solar Renewable Energy Credit or SREC. 

He compared the SREC to a chip in a casino, and every state has different values for these chips. In some states, you can't sell back electricity. Maryland does allow for it. Income from that comes quarterly from an SREC aggregator called Sol Systems, according to Panco. 

Panco said his company deals with business owners and property owners to analyze their electric bill, and shows them what their real estate could harness for them, in a 25-year cash flow projection. 

"These businesses have tremendous electrical usage here in Ocean City," he said. Businesses benefit from a 30-percent federal tax break on the cost of the installation. 

"You might have a sticker shock," Panco said. "But he's saving a couple thousand dollars a year. Plus he's going to produce energy, sell that, and get paid for it. By the end of year one, he should have recovered a lot back." 

One of the reasons Harman is excited for the project is that he wants to run an environmentally friendly operation."We walk the walk on the green thing, we don't talk the talk," he said. 

Denver is getting greener. No, they aren't improving their landscaping and planting more trees and shrubs. Instead, more and more solar panels are popping up on buildings and homes around the town. Greenbox Self Storage is one of the newest businesses sporting solar panels. The facility recently opened in downtown Denver and is the first sustainable self storage facility in the downtown area. It is the first LEED-certified self storage building in Denver and the first newly constructed storage building built downtown in over a decade. 

There is a big demand for storage in downtown Denver. Over the past decade, the downtown residential population grew 85 percent.Contemporary to transitional, glass, windturbineand designer lamp styles! There are now over 17,000 residents. Additionally, there are over 44,000 college students at the Auraria campus which has increased the need for self storage. 

The facility installed 234 solar panels which will support the 747 units in the facility. Greenbox Self Storage also used energy efficient insulation in their building and even used recycled materials during the building process. 

The solar panels will generate over 76,000 kilowatt hours annually. Greenbox estimates that the storage panels will eliminate over 180,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. This breaks down to a savings of 20 pounds of emissions per month per self storage unit.