Saving money while helping conserve energy was too good a deal for Christine Christensen to pass up.
Christensen’s business, Lafayette-based Broomfield Sheet Metal, is becoming the first to get a solar electric system installed free of charge by a local company looking to electrify the nascent solar power industry.
EyeOn Energy Ltd., a Boulder energy services company, is one of a half-dozen companies in Colorado using what is known as a third-party ownership model to help businesses big and small go solar and save cash long term.
EyeOn’s owner and founder, Alex Kramarchuk, an investment banker by trade, saw opportunity in solar after changes in policy and law created more federal and state financial incentives for the renewable energy.
“I was looking at doing solar in my own home, so I started looking into it. One thing led to another, and now I’m pursuing solar (as a business),” Kramarchuk said about founding EyeOn in March 2006.
EyeOn is in the process of installing Broomfield Sheet Metal’s system and has five more slated for completion by year’s end.
Under the third-party ownership system, a company like EyeOn installs and retains ownership of a solar-electric energy system. EyeOn can get financial rebates and incentives for installing the system.
The third party is responsible for maintaining the solar energy system and makes its money by selling the electricity to the business itself, usually on a 20-year, fixed-rate contract.
The business benefits from the fixed rate because it will pay in 2027 for power what it’s paying today. If Xcel Energy’s electric rates increased only at the rate of inflation, it would still be a 3 percent increase per year. Over 20 years, that adds up.
The business also gets to go green without paying for the system’s installation – which can cost tens of thousands of dollars – or trying to maintain it.
Blake Jones, president of Namaste Solar Electric Inc., has a similar third-party deal with Boulder Community Hospital.
“It’s a pay-for-performance type of situation, so however good of a job that third-party owner does of getting the system to crank out solar electricity – that’s how much they get paid,” Jones said.
It’s not clear what happens at the end of the contract – whether the business buys the system or extends the contract.
“We’re waiting till year 18 1/2 to figure out what we’re going to do beyond that,” Kramarchuk said.
Broomfield Sheet Metal, a 50-year-old business in a 5-year- old building, got a flier in the mail and thought it would be a good idea after inquiring with EyeOn. EyeOn is in the process of adding 100 solar panels to the building.
“It seemed like the ecologically correct thing to do,” said Christensen, who is a part owner of the company.
The goal at the end of the 20-year contract is for Broomfield Sheet Metal to have saved 35 percent on the cost of energy over regular electric, she said. The current cost of powering the 17,000-square-foot business is about $800 per month, she said.
“There’s minimal output from us, zero dollars, minimal inconvenience, and we get to help the environment,” Christensen said. “It just seemed like it was a no-brainer.”
Kramarchuk was inspired, and empowered, by a ballot initiative passed three years ago.
Amendment 37, passed by Colorado voters in 2004, established the first renewable-energy standards in the state. House Bill 1281, signed into law March 21, doubled those standards, calling for renewable energy to account for 20 percent of retail electricity sales by 2020.
HB 1281 says at least 4 percent of that renewable energy must come from solar sources, with half of those solar power systems installed on site.
Lynn Hirshman, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, said she likes what companies like EyeOn are doing.
“We rely too much on energy coming from outside the country, but even more than that, we have to look at the question of global warming,” Hirshman said. “And solar energy addresses both of those issues.”
Staff writer A.J. Miranda can be reached at 303-954-1381 or amiranda@denverpost.com.
One way to go solar
A third-party company (EyeOn Energy), a business (Broomfield Sheet Metal) and a local energy company (Xcel) sign a 20-year contract.
EyeOn’s investors pay for the installation of a solar energy system, which costs $50,000 or more.
EyeOn owns and maintains the system and sells electricity to the business. It also receives rebates from Xcel’s Solar Rewards program and receives federal tax incentives.
Broomfield Sheet Metal pays a lower, fixed rate for power.
