Sun Powers Itasca Reliable Insurance Agency

by Margaret A. Haapoja

Entering Grand Rapids on Highway 169 east, it’s hard to miss the large solar collector adjoining Ace Hardware’s parking lot. It helps supply electricity to Itasca Reliable Insurance Agency’s new office building. When he decided to construct a new facility, owner David Lick wanted to incorporate as many energy-saving features as possible. “My intent was to build as sustainably as possible, to do as many things environmentally correct as we could, and we still missed a few,” he says.

With a background in chemistry and biology, Lick is a staunch environmentalist, past-president of the Itasca County Lake Associations (ICOLA) and one of the founders of the Itasca Water Legacy Partnership, an organization working to ensure the health of the county’s water resources. Having already installed a solar system at his home on Wabana Lake in 2006 with a friend’s help, he was somewhat familiar with the technology which he says has improved dramatically since then.

Lick’s residential solar collector is a 12-panel array, and each panel generates 175 watts while the 18-panel array at the office generates 205 watts per panel for at most 23 kwh a day. The system generates direct current (DC,) and an inverter converts the DC to alternating current (AC,) which is what most appliances use.

“At home, where I have a little more control over the amount of electricity that is used, I would say my collector generates—over a year’s time—about half of our electricity,” says Lick. The collector outside the office building generated 21 kilowatt hours of electricity on January 27th, a particularly sunny day. “In the winter, when the AC is not on and there is full sun, we are running about 90% of our electrical gadgets,” Lick says. “Any time I’m generating more than I’m using at home or at the office, the excess will go back into the grid, and the power company reimburses me by subtracting from my monthly bill.”

Incentives offered by the federal government and the state department of commerce dictated the size of the commercial solar collector Lick installed. To qualify for rebates, individuals must install a collector the size stipulated by the agency offering the rebate. Beginning in 2009, there is also a 30% income tax credit with no upper limit for either commercial or residential installations. David Danielson, operations manager at Conservation Technologies in Duluth, where Lick purchased his system, says cost usually determines the size customers order. “Most of our clients will supplement about half of their electric consumption with solar,” Danielson says, “so the best way to do this is to look at pre-existing utility bills for your building.”

The initial cost of Itasca Reliable’s collector was $32,000, but after deducting rebates and credits, the net cost was $14,000-$15,000, according to Lick. He estimates the payback for the system will be approximately 10 or 11 years. Danielson says the average payback on their systems is 20 years, and the panels come with a 20-year warranty. Danielson has panels that are 35 years old and still working well.

Lick installed each of his collectors on a pole rather than on a building so he has the option of adding a tracker. This device would cost $4,000-$5,000, but it would increase the efficiency of the solar collector nearly 30% by moving the panels in sync with the sun’s path across the sky. “Right now neither of them tracks,” says Lick, “but at the equinox I manipulate the angle because the more perpendicular the sun’s rays hit the collector, the more it generates.” It is also important to position the collector in an unobstructed area where it will not be shaded by anything, including tree branches, says Lick.

The panels generate very little on a cloudy day and not at all at night. According to Danielson, solar systems are more efficient on the cold, clear days of winter because there are fewer atmospheric particulates in the air, so more of the sun’s energy strikes the surface. On the other hand, we have long sun hour days in the summer so production in July is much higher than it is in January with winter’s shorter days.

Conservation Technologies has seen an enormous increase in interest over the past year, and Danielson says 75% of his customers are residential. The only other commercial systems his company has installed on the Range are the St. Louis County Annex Building in Hibbing and 1st National Bank in Chisholm. Pictures of all the company’s projects are on their website at www.conservtech.com.

Solar energy isn’t the only cost-saving measure Lick incorporated into the new office building. They put Styrofoam under the basement slab and double-insulated the rim joists (those right above the concrete blocks) to keep the cold out. He wrapped insulation around the 50-gallon hot water heater, and says he wishes they had installed a tankless hot water heater. They chose the most energy-efficient windows they could find, and he would like to add window shades to keep the heat inside.

Outside the structure, Lick wanted to gather as much water from the impervious surfaces as he could, so they installed three rain gardens to absorb run-off. Bonnie Hinniker, owner of Sunshine Gardens in Pine River, Mary Blickenderfer, lakeshore landscaping expert with the University of Minnesota Extension Service and Andy Arens of the Soil & Water Conservation District consulted on the project. Lick is investigating the use of rain barrels to collect water for irrigation this summer.

Like many of us, Lick remembers the days when his dad hollered at him to turn off the lights. “We’ve got to get back to that mindset,” he says. “The strongest message I try to get across is to conserve what you use. It’s still important to turn the lights off, to insulate water heaters, to turn off appliances, to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. We’ve got to get with the program!”

QUESTION: WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU MADE IN ORDER TO LIVE "GREENER" AND INVEST IN THE FUTURE OF THIS EARTH?

SOURCES:

David Lick, Owner
Itasca Reliable Insurance Agency
1121 E US Hwy 169
Grand Rapids, MN 55744
Telephone: 218-326-8518
Fax: 218-326-9557
davidl@itascareliableinsurance.com

David Danielson, Operations Manager
Conservation Technologies
4804 Oneota Street
Duluth, MN 55807
218-722-9303 Ext. 20
www.conservtech.com