Green Homes/Solar Tour This Weekend + TVA Program Now Available

Photo of the Month: October 2012

LightWave Solar recently participated in the Rob Bironas Charity Golf Tournament at Vanderbilt Legends Club in Franklin, Tenn. Tennessee Titans players Rob Bironas and Sen'Derrick Marks cruised around in style on our solar powered golf cart. Click here to see more pictures.

Middle TN Green Homes Tour on Oct 6-7

Please join us for the 2nd Annual Middle Tennessee Green Homes Tour benefiting the US Green Building Council and Cumberland River Compact. The tour will be on Saturday, October 6 from 10am-6pm and on Sunday, October 7 from 12pm-6pm.

The tour features 12 homes across Middle Tennessee that demonstrate green building design and sustainable living practices including water and energy efficiency, renewable energy production, eco-friendly building materials, organic gardening and farming, beekeeping, native and edible landscapes, electric vehicles (EVs) and much more.

Solar energy will be featured at several of the homes, and homeowners and solar experts will be available to answer your solar questions. LightWave Solar will be on-site at these two locations:

Steve Johnson Residence

301 Battle Road

Antioch, TN 37013

Dodd Galbreath Residence

801 Lealand Court
Nashville, TN 37204

Tour costs $15 per person or $25 per couple. Tickets include a tour to all 12 outstanding green homes plus access to numerous free educational seminars. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door of any home with cash or check. For more details, please visit the tour website: www.greenhomestourmidtn.org. We hope to see you there!

Solar Tour at Gray Fossil Site on Oct 6

Join LightWave Solar in the Tri-Cities area to learn about solar energy and energy efficiency. Event will include presentations from energy experts, including LightWave Solar and Johnson City Power Board, lots of Q&A and a tour of a working solar electric system at the Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site.

Saturday, October 6 from 1 to 4 p.m.

1212 Suncrest Drive

Gray, Tennessee 37615

The tour and workshop is free and open to the public! Please RSVP to Alexis at aclose@lightwavesolar.com or 423-737-0151.

New TVA Solar Incentive Program Now Available

On October 1, TVA released the Participation Agreement for Green Power Providers, their new solar incentive program. Local distributors are accepting new applications. Here are program details:

Green Power Providers will keep the $0.12 solar premium for projects with Participation Agreements executed by December 31, 2012. However, TVA will stop accepting Participation Agreements on December 1, 2012 and resume acceptance in January.
TVA expects premium rates for agreements signed in 2013 to be $.09.
Green Power Providers will continue to offer the $1,000 installation rebate.
The maximum system size allowed is 50 kW, although projects above 10 kW cannot generate over 100% of the consumption on the billing meter. Consumption is based on the previous 12 months of electric bills.

For more info on the Green Power Providers program, please click here.

LightWave Solar facilitates the Green Power Providers application for our customers. Contact us to get started.

JP Plumlee Earns NABCEP PV Technical Sales Certification

Congratulations to LightWave Solar's JP Plumlee for earning the NABCEP PV Technical Sales Certification! NABCEP is the gold standard for third-party solar certification. JP's certificate means he passed a rigorous exam and meets quality training and experience requirements. We already knew JP was a great asset to LightWave Solar, but now potential customers, colleagues and other solar professionals will know too.

Click here to learn more about the NABCEP PV Technical Sales Certification.

The U.S. Solar Market Insight: 2nd Quarter 2012 Report

GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association recently released the U.S. Solar Market Insight: 2nd Quarter 2012 report. The report finds that U.S. solar achieved its second-best quarter in history, having installed 742 megawatts of solar power, and the best quarter on record for the utility market segment.

Here are the report's key findings:

Photovoltaics (PV):

PV installations totaled 742 megawatts in Q2 2012, up 45 percent over Q1 2012 and 116 percent over Q2 2011
The residential market remained relatively flat in Q2, while the non-residential market shrank 33 percent on a quarterly basis
Q2 2012 was the largest quarter ever for utility PV installations, as more than 20 projects were completed, totaling 447 megawatts
There is now a cumulative 5,161 megawatts of PV capacity spread amongst nearly 248,000 individual systems operating in the U.S. as of the end of Q2
GTM Research forecasts that 3.2 gigawatts of PV will be installed in the U.S. in 2012, up 71 percent over 2011
Tennessee ranks 12th among states for solar capacity in Q2 2012