WHY USE SOLAR POWER In the wake of higher and higher costs per kw/hour being charged by utility companies, homeowners throughout the world are embracing a variety of proven fossil fuel alternatives whose time has come including solar power. For some, the motivation is to restrict their carbon footprint, but for most, the motivation is dollars and cents! Utility companies are raising rates constantly. They have aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced and someone has to pay for it. Utility companies are, first and foremost a business! They need to make a profit and the more they make, the greater the return to shareholders. It s all about return on investment! So why is it that many homeowners do not apply the same rationale to their thought process when investigating the pros and cons of the variety of solar systems currently on the market? We know that solar power is good for the planet! Although that is a noble sentiment in itself, most people investigate spending their hard earned dollars to save money! Saving money means more dollars left in your pocket. We want to pat ourselves on the back for doing our part for nature but we can t forget to pat our wallets as well! The IMC SolAir ACDC12B MINI SPLIT TRUE HYBRID SOLAR AIR CONDITIONING & HOT WATER HEATING IMC S.L. is a Costa Rican corporation with Head Office in Playa Flamingo, Guanacaste and Service Office in Playa Conchal. We are the exclusive distributor in Costa Rica and Panama for energy saving Hotspot Hybrid Solar Air Conditioning, Heat Recovery Water Heating and Pool Heating products. We stock a full inventory of products and parts at all times. Our dealers, service and installation people are centered in strategic locations throughout the country to provide optimum service to our clients at all times.
The ACDC12B is a 1 ton mini split hybrid solar air conditioner that will cool a space of 700 750 square feet depending on ceiling height. It is the only stand alone Hybrid Solar Air Conditioner on the market and it is the only mini split solar A/C product ever ACDC12B IDU (Indoor Unit) approved by the California Energy Commission. The system installs exactly the same as a standard mini split air conditioner and connects to 3 x 300 watt tier 1 solar panels which can be roof or ground mounted. It does not operate using storage batteries and it does not require the installation of an expensive net metering PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel System to work! When the sun is shining, the ACDC12B draws its energy from the sun using a maximum of 3 amps of power from the grid. When the sun is not shining, the system uses a maximum of 12 amps of power. The net result is an ultra high Seer 21 Air Conditioning System that cools your home or office for pennies a day, saving up to 80% of the electricity normally required to run a standard air conditioner! 2
The ACDC12B differs from standard AC air conditioners in another important area. With a high efficiency A/C unit, there is only an off or an on position. If it is running, it is drawing full power, no matter what the fan setting. Not so with the ACDC12B! At times in the day when peak energy is not required, it automatically dials down its energy consumption to provide only the energy required. During the evening, you continue to save because of the eco friendly Seer 21 rating of the system! The ACDC12B is certified in the USA by the AHRI (reference 7201808), Energy Star, the ETL and is the only hybrid solar A/C system certified by the California Energy Commission! All internal components are built to withstand sea salt air conditions and carry a two year guarantee on the system parts and three years on the compressor twice the coverage length of any other air conditioning product on the Costa Rican market! In short, it is bulletproof! An IMC ACDC12B Hybrid Solar Air Conditioning System works no matter the weather! Sunny, rain, cloudy, evening or daytime, these units switch back and forth seamlessly between the sun and the electrical grid as their energy source. The result is an electrical energy savings of up to 80% of your home s monthly A/C electrical bill! Add in a Solar Hot Water Heat Recovery Unit and the savings are even more dramatic up to 90%! And all at less than 40% of the cost of installing a PV Solar Panel Energy System with or without net metering. 3
THE MATH A typical 3 bedroom 3000 square foot home utilizing 5 ACDC12B Units and a Hot Water Recovery System that gives you 90 gallons of hot water per day can cost as little as $31,000 installed! And, if you want to switch over to Solar A/C by replacing individual A/C units as they expire, you can do the installation over a period of time! The entire system can pay for itself in as little as 3 to 4 years or less! Over a 20 year useful life expectancy, assuming a $700.00 monthly electrical bill, your profit money in your pocket would be approximately (20 years x $630.00 (90% of $700/month) x 12 months) = $151,200 on your initial $31,000 investment! That s a 488% total return (divided by 20 years) = 24.4% per year return on your initial investment! At the end of 10 years, your solar panels will only be operating at about 50% effectiveness and should be replaced. 5 ACDC12B units and a Hot Water Heat Return Unit uses a maximum total of 16 solar panels or about 512 square feet of roof space! You can replace the 16 units of an IMC Solar A/C Hot Water system at a cost of about $5000 and be back to maximum efficiency with your solar panels for the balance of the useful life of your system! Adding $5,000 in replacement panels to your initial $31,000 capital outlay would reduce your Return On Investment per year to only 21% but when you consider that the average Dow Jones Industrial Average Yearly Gain for the past 8 years is 3.6% and the Average Yearly Gain over the past 7 years is less than 2% per year, you can make the case that investing in reducing your electricity bill is the single best revenue generator you can find! And there is no Capital Gains Tax! 4
PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR PANEL SYSTEMS OWNING YOUR OWN ELECTRICAL UTILITY In southern climates, monthly electricity bills can be high under normal conditions and absolutely staggering if a property has a dual purpose such as being a rental property. The two culprits that eat up the greatest (up to 90%) of a southern home's electric bills are air conditioning and hot water. After those heavyweights, we are left with appliances, lights, electronics and pool heating. So let s take a look at the pros and cons of a Photovoltaic Solar Panel System. Who benefits and what exactly are the benefits and the negatives. One client we know in San Diego, California cut his electricity bill from $1900 per month to $100 by selling his PhotoVoltaic Solar generated electricity back to the utility company. All it took was 240 solar panels mounted on his roof and close to $100,000 invested! And the roof needed to be re-engineered to safely accommodate the extra weight! So he benefits! But who else benefits as a result of that agreement? Let s go back to that selling solar energy back to the utility company part. It s called net metering and it refers to a private agreement between a utility company and a homeowner, wherein electricity produced by a homeowner s solar system earns a credit from the electrical utility. The homeowner s photovoltaic solar panel system connects to the utility provider s power grid and pumps all that electricity back into the electric utility s grid, causing the homeowner s electricity meter to run backwards. This is the system that has just been approved in Costa Rica and is currently in effect in the U.S.A., Canada and Europe. 5
Yes, net metering will drastically reduce a homeowner s electrical usage bills. However net metering is not a government mandated right! Even if the government mandates that electrical utility companies allow private connection, it is still just an agreement between the electricity utility and the homeowner. We know the homeowner benefits from net metering through reduced electrical bills. How does the electrical utility benefit? Picture an electrical utility company with an aging infrastructure that cannot fulfill total demand during peak periods. Brownouts are an ongoing problem. As a public company, they have shareholders on one side wanting bigger dividends and customers on the other side wanting an upgraded infrastructure and better service. A homeowner spends $75 100,000 to build a PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel electricity generating facility. The electrical utility purchases electricity at 50 on the dollar which seems to be the North American standard rate. The homeowner consumes the same amount of usage each month with the same inefficient air conditioners and appliances and continues to pay the same exorbitant kw/hour price to the utility company. In summary, the homeowner continues to use $1000 per month of electricity at the utility company s current price and offsets that bill by giving the electrical utility twice the volume of electricity to settle accounts! The utility sells the remaining 50% of the energy for $1000 to another user! That is the reality of net metering! It is a scenario that occurs every day across North America, Europe and other countries! Everyone is still connected to the grid. When brownouts occur, everyone has no power! PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR NET METERING SUMMARY THE MATH According to Convergance Energy in the U.S., an average home in the southern U.S., not used as a rental property, will pay approximately $20,000 per 1,000 square foot for a PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel System that can provide net metering for the homeowner. In Latin America, the import duty is reduced for solar products but taxes are still there. Shipping and additional electrical capacity for rental properties could take the cost figure to as high as $25,000 per 1,000 square feet for a Tier 1 Solar Panel System with a top quality invertor. There are always cheaper products available, but the old adage you get what you pay for definitely applies in the solar business. A 3,000 square foot home with pool using 3700 kwh/month would cost $75 80,000 installed or more, plus line costs 6
to hook up to the electrical utility power grid. And then there is potential reengineering of the roof! If you do not use net metering, you could have the added cost of batteries, backup generator with fuel and a lot more maintenance! And unless you are completely off grid, you will still be hooked up to the grid for backup power! PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel Systems typically carry a manufacturer s warranty of 20-25 years. PV panel modules typically do not die when they get old; however, their output and efficiency begins to diminish after 7 8 years! After 10 12 years, output can drop by 50-80% depending upon the quality of solar panel installed. The warranty on a good quality inverter is usually 5 years. You need to budget for ongoing maintenance costs plus you should include the cost of installing energy efficient air conditioners to the overall cost if you are looking for a real breakdown point where cost of system is paid back by electricity savings. For comparison purposes, let s use $80,000 as the all in cost of your new PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel utility including new air conditioners and maintenance! If your utility bill savings are $700 per month, it will take you 9 1/2 years minimum to effectively breakeven! As an investor, that s almost 10 years of 0% return on investment! You will have made the utility company very happy they will have made a profit of $80,000 by reselling the second half of your discounted solar electricity and you will be left with a PhotoVoltaic Solar Panel System that could be functioning at 50% efficiency or less! That means at the end of 10 years you could begin paying as much as $350 of that original $700 saved back to the utility company each month! Plus the utility company will continue to get subsidized low cost energy from you to resell at full price to another user! Now the payback time period shifts. The real payback period could be much more than 10 years. A 3,000 square foot two story house using 3700 kw hours of electricity per month would require about 2100 square feet of roof area. The average area of 1 side of a 3000 square foot two story house is about 750 square feet. 2100 square feet is about the size of 3 roofs! It represents about 65 4 x 8 solar panels. Replacing them after 10 years to maintain peak efficiency would cost about ($300 x 65) $19,500. Now your true cost is about $100,000 and your payback breakeven point just shot up to 14 ¼ years! 7
With a useful life expectancy of say 20 years, your total savings over that 20 year period would be (20 years x $700 month x 12 months) $168,000! Your hard cost would be $100,000. Your savings money in your pocket is about $68,000. That s 3.4% PER YEAR about the same as the stock market s performance for the past 8 years! IMC SolAir Hybrid Air Conditioning, Solar Hot Water Heating and Solar Pool Heating products are just good business. We are at your service! 8