FREEPORT, Maine — Maine Beer Co. plans to get about half its power from the sun this year from an installation on the leading edge of Freeport’s plan to encourage more solar power.
Outside the craft brewery, two large mounted panels track the sun throughout the day. Last week, installers put on the final panel on the southwest-facing roof of the brewery.
“Ideally we’d like to someday get to 100 percent producing our own power, and we’re certainly taking a step toward it,” said Jeremy Lindberg, the company’s facilities manager.
The about $200,000, 50-kilowatt project is ahead of another batch of solar installations to come later this year for businesses and homes in Freeport. The group Solarize Freeport expects about 39 other projects to be installed later this year.
Those solar projects and Maine Beer Co.’s would be equal to about 22 percent of the total solar capacity installed in Maine last year, according to figures from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Open PV project.
Part of that effort, Lindberg said, will be helped by Maine Beer Co.’s realization that the boundary qualifying businesses for a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to help fund renewable energy projects cut right through its property.
“The boundaries have been redrawn, and that’s why there has been a big push for the Solarize Freeport [group],” Lindberg said.
That effort is being led by the Pittsfield-based Insource Renewables and the North Yarmouth-based Assured Solar Energy, which installed the Maine Beer Co. solar array.
Vaughan Woodruff, owner of Insource, said construction has started on about five of the systems contracted through Solarize Freeport, which is the first such collective purchasing effort in the state, done on a model started in Portland, Oregon.
The projects under contract range from residential to commercial installations, totaling about 333 kilowatts of capacity.
Woodruff said a group in Brunswick plans to propose a similar program and other communities have inquired about it, with an eye toward 2016 when federal tax credits for solar projects are set to drop from 30 percent to 10 percent of a project’s value.
“The next year is going to be a total seller’s market,” Woodruff said.
Maine Beer Co. has so far financed the project itself, but will get the higher federal tax credit and is still awaiting a grant from the federal Rural Energy for America Program, which can cover up to 25 percent of a total project cost with a pool of about $280 million available for rural small businesses or agricultural operations.
The company participates in the state’s net metering program, earning credits on its power bill for the times that it’s generating more power than it is using.
A bill to expand Maine’s net metering program was proposed in the Legislature earlier this year, but power companies, environmental groups and state officials opted to amend that bill, which would direct power regulators to take a closer look at how to set up a system for compensating homes or businesses generating their own power.
Woodruff said a major concern for the solar industry is energy regulators’ ability to revisit the current net metering program once the total capacity qualifying for net metering reaches 1 percent of the annual power consumed.
The solar industry in Maine has been criticized by national groups for allowing investigations into alternative ways for compensating renewable generators, which Woodruff said is to “try and make sure that we’re not left holding nothing,” when it comes to state incentives.
Lindberg, at Maine Beer Co., said the company has not yet received its first power bill since installing the system, but he expects there will be low-production times when the building is generating more power than it’s using.
“On a nice sunny day, if we’re not brewing, then the meter would probably be ticking backwards,” Lindberg said.
He said the company plans to continue purchasing renewable energy credits equal to the difference between the power it uses and what it generates from the new solar panels.