I sat down with Lynn Hirshman from COSEIA to discuss solar rebates in Colorado.
SolarDave: Where do you promote the use of solar – I see that you had a conference not long ago in Ft. Collins (Colorado) – what took place there?
Lynn Hirshman: We talk about what is happening in solar energy now, where it is going in the future, we had people from California come and talk about what is happening out there, we had other people come out and talk about the other part of the solar spectrum because we don’t see ourselves in isolation we see ourselves as part of the much broader new energy economy. We had some women talk about their experiences as women in the field. We had people from the government because as you know we are administrating the Governor’s Energy Office residential solar rebate program that is just starting now.
SolarDave: What do you mean that you are administrating it? The one that rebates $4.50?
Lynn Hirshman: That is the one Xcel and Aquila(?) rebate program. And they were mandated to do that investor owned utilities. The problem has been getting the rebates out to the rest of the state (Colorado). Xcel has the bulk of the accounts but there is a huge parts of the state that are covered by rural electrics and municipal electrics most of which have not given rebates.
So this year the Governor’s Office started a pilot program – very small only $500,000 offering matchable grants to REA’s () munis and non profit organizations that would match the $25k grant give rebates for both PV and solar thermal – and there haven’t been solar thermal rebates for a long time to various parts of the state.
This is just ramping up just this week that the Governor’s Energy Office announced the partners in the grant. We have 22 partners all across the state in both PV and solar thermal and each one will give $50k worth of rebates to customers and this just a pilot running through the end of the summer but there is supposed to be money in next year’s budget to continue this program and expand it.
We are really excited about that and we are finally getting rebates out to parts of the state that have never seen them.
