Milwaukee Alderman Tony Zielinski says city should help homeowners

Daily Reporter (Milwaukee), Nov 5, 2007 by Sean Ryan

Solar energy suffers from this predicament: The homeowners who most need the savings from it usually are the ones who can't afford the $15,000 or $20,000 needed to install the hardware.

The up-front cost is substantial, but solar panels will pay for themselves through lowered utility bills within about 20 years, and they last about 50 years.

To resolve the problem, Milwaukee Alderman Tony Zielinski is proposing the city borrow money, give it to homeowners to install solar panels, and then levy a special property tax on their houses to recoup the money.

"The money they would be saving through reduced energy costs would be approximately what they'd pay the city for the bonds," he said. "Once it's paid off, they've got reduced energy costs for the rest of the time."

Zielinski on Thursday announced the idea, based on a program proposed in Berkeley, Calif. He said he hopes to propose legislation for it this month.

Zielinski had no details about how much money the city would borrow.

Such a program would boost the business of companies that install solar-energy hardware.

H&H Solar Energy Services is becoming a larger and larger part of H&H Group's business, said marketing director Chris Collins. This year, the company hired two additional electricians to install panels. The Madison-based company has installed panels on about 15 houses in Milwaukee, thanks to encouragement from We Energies' Energy for Tomorrow program.

Collins said the company likes Zielinski's idea, as it would help low-income homeowners who have trouble paying utility bills.

"What's going to drive this are incentives, be they local or federal," Collins said.

There's also job-creation potential: H&H has two or three people on every installation crew, and it takes about two or three days to install panels on a home. Collins said employees need a lot of training both to make the panels last their full lifetime and to make them look good on a house.

"Can you imagine how many homeowners would apply for this feature," Zielinski said. "I think there would be a tremendous market in terms of job-training for people."

Compared with Europe, the United States is still in its infancy in using solar energy, and a city incentive program could help give the technology more credence, said Ken Leinbach, executive director of the Urban Ecology Center. The center used public grants to install solar panels on its roof, and it sells excess energy back to We Energies, he said.

"We're actually generating income every sunny day," he said. "Long- term, it's kind of a no-brainer that we have to start seriously investing in no-fossil-fuel power."