Marylanders exhaust solar, geothermal grants

[jpak]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/bal-te.md.solar26jul26,0,3415136.story

Electricity prices were going up, environmentalism was in, and solar power companies were proliferating. But last year Maryland residents still didn't take the state up on all the financial incentives it offered for installing "green" power systems in their homes.

This year, however, Maryland residents flooded the state program with applications for grants to build solar and geothermal systems to help defray utility costs. Within a few weeks, more than $590,000 - all of the money available for the fiscal year that began this month - had been doled out.

State officials say the turnaround in demand was prompted by an increase in the grant amounts approved by the General Assembly during the winter session. Lawmakers raised grant amounts for systems that convert sunlight into electricity to as much as $10,000, up from $3,000, and tripled the amount residents could get for geothermal systems, which rely on the Earth's temperature to provide heating and cooling. Those grants are now as much as $3,000.

"In prior years, there wasn't enough of an incentive to enable people to justify the investment," said Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration. "When the new grant window opened, we got flooded with applicants in a way that's never happened before."

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[bluesmail]

1. Here in California we have a choice of PGE or PGE.

This is the last year for incentives that PGE pays out. I am going Solar. And as much as it's going to cost me, I am relieved that I will no onger be paying a monopolistic bully each month.

[dkf]

2. True energy independence is the way to go.

Good for you.

[kestrel91316]

3. You could live in LA and have DWP. They are city-owned

and an operated. An old-fashioned PUBLIC utility.