Understanding Options in Commercial Green Energy

May 17, 2010
By Craig Axelrod

Owners of industrial, commercial, office, and apartment buildings can always enjoy a few ways to reduce overhead or operating expenses. While millions are considering "indoor" options such as automated lighting and equipment systems, CFL (compact fluorescent light bulbs) wherever possible, and more efficient heating or cooling systems, there are others who have already made the leap to a solar heating system.

What is this? While it sounds like a modern version of passive solar heating, it is actually a commercial green energy that can create a majority of a building's hot water supplies through the heat from the sun. While there are active and passive systems, some with tubes and some with flat panels, the most common explanation of them is a panel or coil of metal or plastic which water passes through and is heated via radiant or solar energy.

Sounds complicated? Actually it isn't all that complex or difficult to utilize, and it is so effective that many organizations and government agencies are offering landlords and property owners a whole menu of financial rewards for doing so. This demonstrates the actual viability of a solar heating system for a large-scale operation because these bonuses are intended to offset installation and purchase costs and make the systems pay for themselves in as little as two to five years.

The first thing to know, however, is that commercial green energy tends to be something for the professionals, and though you might read that people have built their own solar heating system, when you are talking about the domestic water supply for twenty or forty apartments, it will require knowledge and skill to design the system.

It is also important to know that the technologies behind any commercial green energy have come quite far in only a short period of time, but this doesn't mean that they are able to replace standard electrical, propane, or utility supplies. Instead, using something like a green hot water heating system will dramatically reduce the operating expenses associated with the standard system.

Let's just consider what this might mean, financially. If you know that your costs for hot water heating add up to sixty dollars per unit, per month you are already laying out that set amount of cash. Now, if you decided to have a solar heating system installed on the rooftop of the building, you would be able to finance the purchase, receive a utility rebate, and enjoy a handful of federal, state and local tax rebates. These would include immediate tax incentives, and also the option to use accelerated depreciation on the equipment. This could mean that you are paying out that same sixty dollars per unit, per month with the exception that it is going mostly to the equipment and not the utility provider.

After a two to five year period you would have paid off the entire cost of the system, and would then enjoy dramatically reduced monthly expenses, and nearly free hot water heating supplies from that point on!