Rochester man puts solar panels on home to show waste
Rochester man erects solar panels as testament to government waste
Installing solar panels: The cost: Jeff Punton describes adding solar panels behind his 19th Ward home
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Jeff Punton stands with the solar panels he had installed in his backyard at his Weldon Street home in Rochester. / SHAWN DOWD / staff photographer
By the numbers
$42,480total project cost.
$29,504
combined value ofsubsidies and tax credits.
$12,976
Punton’s investment.
15,000
approximate kilowatt hours generated so far by solar panels, as of July 1.
18.6 cents
average residential retail cost of electricity per kilowatt hour, May 2013.
$2,790
approximate value of electricity generated by solar panels, to date.
The 20 solar panels Jeffrey Punton installed in the backyard of his Weldon Street home won’t ever generate enough electricity to cover their cost. Which is the whole point.
He means them as a cautionary tale, one that Punton said cost him $13,000 and received another $29,500 in state and federal subsidies and tax credits.
He installed the panels in 2009, and they work: he has generated about 15,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in four years, saving several hundred dollars a year on his energy bill.
That’s a lot of savings, but barely enough to recoup his initial investment over several decades, and not enough to cover the public money involved. It’s that public money that chafes him, evidence of governmental intrusion in the marketplace.
It’s a message that runs counter to the prevailing trend, especially in Monroe County. Greece recently lured a solar manufacturer from California, a coup local and state officials are touting as part of the region’s future.
Punton doesn’t buy it — at least on the consumer scale. And spending $13,000 of his own money on a project he predicted would fail doesn’t bother him.
He considers the $29,500 the government gave him a foolish investment — throwing good money after bad — and misses no opportunity to point it out.
“It’s a billboard to talk
about it to people as they come by,” he said. “It’s disappointing how little people know about the economics of it. ... I don’t think it’s a smart investment to pay someone three times what they’re putting in.”
About $17,000 of the money for Punton’s panels came directly from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
In an email, a NYSERDA spokeswoman did not address Punton’s financial concerns but said solar power “plays an important part in New York state’s diversified renewable energy portfolio, which was created to reduce electricity use from fossil fuels and increase the amount of electricity from renewable sources.”
Punton, 60, works as a certified public accountant and has lived in the 19th Ward since his days as a University of Rochester chemistry student in the 1970s. He’s a libertarian and self-taught tinkerer with a half-dozen projects contributing to the disarray in his yard at the corner of Weldon and Custer streets.
He means them as a cautionary tale, one that Punton said cost him $13,000 and received another $29,500 in state and federal subsidies and tax credits.
He installed the panels in 2009, and they work: he has generated about 15,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in four years, saving several hundred dollars a year on his energy bill.
That’s a lot of savings, but barely enough to recoup his initial investment over several decades, and not enough to cover the public money involved. It’s that public money that chafes him, evidence of governmental intrusion in the marketplace.
It’s a message that runs counter to the prevailing trend, especially in Monroe County. Greece recently lured a solar manufacturer from California, a coup local and state officials are touting as part of the region’s future.
Punton doesn’t buy it — at least on the consumer scale. And spending $13,000 of his own money on a project he predicted would fail doesn’t bother him.
He considers the $29,500 the government gave him a foolish investment — throwing good money after bad — and misses no opportunity to point it out.
“It’s a billboard to talk
about it to people as they come by,” he said. “It’s disappointing how little people know about the economics of it. ... I don’t think it’s a smart investment to pay someone three times what they’re putting in.”About $17,000 of the money for Punton’s panels came directly from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
In an email
, a NYSERDA spokeswoman did not address Punton’s financial concerns but said solar power “plays an important part in New York state’s diversified renewable energy portfolio, which was created to reduce electricity use from fossil fuels and increase the amount of electricity from renewable sources.”Punton, 60, works as a certified public accountant and has lived in the 19th Ward since his days as a University of Rochester chemistry student in the 1970s. He’s a libertarian and self-taught tinkerer with a half-dozen projects contributing to the disarray in his yard at the corner of Weldon and Custer streets.
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