Homeowners Will Soon Have More Energy Rebates

Chances are if you own a home in New Hampshire you’ve got an old and possibly inefficient fossil-fuel based boiler, furnace, or hot water heater.
This April, pending the Governor and Executive Council’s approval, homeowners can get rebates for replacing those dinosaurs with more efficient models.
Eric Steltzer with the Office of Energy and Planning says the more efficient the replacement, the more rebate homeowners can receive.
1:36 For the electric utilities and fossil fuel heated systems it’s going to vary between 100 dollars to to 1000 dollars depending on the system as well as the energy efficiency level of the system.
For example, homeowners will get one-thousand dollars back if replacing an oil boiler with one that’s 90-percent efficient.
They’ll get only half that rebate for replacing an oil boiler with one that’s 85 percent efficient.
Steltzer estimates that more than 27-hundred appliances will be replaced, culminating in a big energy savings…about 10 million B-T-U’s.
That savings is one of the reasons the department decided to give rebates on heating systems rather than appliances such as refrigerators.
Also, there’s an economic benefit.
312 :47 with home heating systems you’re really needing to have a service technician that’s putting in these systems since you’re getting extra economic incentive there by putting these service contractors into work.
Solar hot water systems are also on the list for a 750-dollar rebate.
That may not seem like much, given that these systems can cost around 75-hundred dollars.
But Stelzer says additional federal and state rebates may make the systems affordable.
314 3:13 when you take all the rebates in combination aggregate them such as the 30-percent federal tax credits available, the possible additional rebates that the Public Utilities Commission are going to offer, in addition to this appliance rebate program of 750 dollars, that it would be a rebate of upwards around 50-percent of the cost of the system.
The Public Utilities Commission is in the process of developing a rebate for solar hot water systems.
But Sustainable Energy Division Director Jack Ruderman says since July of last year, homeowners have been able to take advantage of a rebate of up to six-thousand dollars for installing renewable energy systems.
329 2:53 we’ve seen much stronger demand than we anticipated, my guess was our first year we would do somewhere between 75 and 100 systems, and we’ve had the program up and running now for about seven months and we’re up to about 240 applications, so it’s a pretty strong response.
The majority of applications are for solar photovoltaic systems, 34 are for small wind turbines.
Money for those rebates –about four and a half million dollars - came from the state’s renewable energy fund, which gets money from the state’s utilities.
To qualify for the renewable energy rebate, individual systems can’t generate more than five kilowatts.
But combined, Ruderman says the rebate has generated a little more than half a megawatt of power from solar and wind systems.
330 1:46 it’s not a huge number but on the other hand, when you combine it with the commercial scale renewables that are being installed in NH and with some of the actual renewable generating facilities that are being developed, all together it’s starting to make a dent.
A dent… not only in the amount of fossil fuel New Hampshire uses, but in the amount of greenhouse gas emitted.
The state has also awarded 18 million dollars in grants from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative fund.
Just under a million dollars of that will go to an on-line project designed to help consumers navigate the maze of energy rebates out there.
New England Carbon Challenge hopes to launch the site in April.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.