YEC enhancing renewable power efforts with new solar program

York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive is rolling out an array of efforts designed to take advan­tage of matur­ing solar tech­nolo­gies. The new pro­grams and ini­tia­tives will ben­e­fit mem­bers by pro­vid­ing them with renew­able ener­gy options to con­sid­er while ben­e­fit­ing the co-op by allow­ing it to expand its ener­gy port­fo­lio to a num­ber of alter­na­tives to coal‑, nuclear- and nat­ur­al gas-fueled pow­er sources.

The new pro­grams include:

Quality assurance

YEC will offer mem­bers solar instal­la­tion inspec­tions by cer­ti­fied per­son­nel to ensure qual­i­ty, func­tion­al­i­ty and safe­ty. This effort will ensure both the max­i­mum per­for­mance of the solar cells and peace of mind for mem­bers. There will be a small charge for this ser­vice.

Maintenance of systems

Look­ing ahead to 2015, YEC is con­sid­er­ing offer­ing solar array main­te­nance as a ser­vice to mem­bers as an option to ven­dor con­tracts. If inter­est­ed, please noti­fy us at the co-op.

Preferred vendors

It is in the best inter­ests of YEC’s mem­bers to ensure the best qual­i­ty pos­si­ble for prod­ucts and instal­la­tion, which is why YEC would devel­op an approval process for var­i­ous solar instal­la­tion com­pa­nies. The ben­e­fit to the mem­ber is qual­i­ty assur­ance plus ven­dors would com­mit to offer­ing dis­counts up to $1500, exclu­sive­ly for YEC’s mem­bers, on the pur­chase and instal­la­tion of solar equip­ment. We have four ven­dors offer­ing these dis­counts. They are: South­east Ener­gy Resources, LLC, Accel­er­ate Solar, ReNu Ener­gy Solu­tions and Sun­store Solar. Please con­tact us for more infor­ma­tion.

Community solar

YEC is work­ing now with sev­er­al large res­i­den­tial devel­op­ers on adding solar sys­tems as a neigh­bor­hood ameni­ty. The ben­e­fit for the devel­op­er is that the sys­tem could be built on avail­able “green space,” which are areas dif­fi­cult to build homes on but enjoy tax cred­its. The array could be deed­ed to the HOA (Home­own­ers Asso­ci­a­tion), which could be used as a mar­ket­ing tool for the devel­op­er. YEC would con­nect the sys­tem at the devel­op­er’s cost and the ener­gy could be used to off­set costs for sub­di­vi­sion light­ing, com­mu­ni­ty areas, etc.

Solar farm

YEC is con­sid­er­ing offer­ing par­tial own­er­ship in a poten­tial solar farm adja­cent to a YEC sub­sta­tion. Under this pro­posed pro­gram, the mem­ber would buy a por­tion of the farm and receive a like per­cent­age of the out­put toward their bill.

YEC would install and oper­ate the farm, with reg­u­lar main­te­nance cost spread among own­ers in a formula/ for­mat to be deter­mined. If you’re inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing solar capac­i­ty in the facil­i­ty, please noti­fy us at the co-op.

By Wal­ter All­read

For infor­ma­tion about all of YEC’s solar pro­grams present and future, the point per­son to con­tact is YEC Mem­ber Ser­vices Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don­na Des­saint. You can reach Don­na at (803) 818‑5213.
Relat­ed Top­ics:
Solar Ener­gy 
MySC­So­lar