By DANA KLOSNER-WEHNER
That's the idea behind the first 100 percent solar-powered government office on Long Island.
On a recent sunny day in Lido Beach, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray cut the ribbon on the house, which a team of students from the New York Institute of Technology built for the 2007 Solar Decathlon, an international competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Murray was joined by Town Hempstead Council members Angie Cullin, Dorothy Goosby and Gary Hudes, as well as Dr. Edward Guiliano, the NYIT president.
The house is the cornerstone of a new energy park run by the town's Department of Conservation and Waterways in Lido Beach, Murray said. The home will be a working office as well as a showcase where people can learn about the advantages of solar power.
There will also be a shellfish nursery powered by the wind and sun, and Hempstead is soon to get the first hydrogen fueling station on Long Island. The station is funded by a $1 million grant from the New York State Energy Research Development Agency. It's likely to be completed by February. And the solar park includes a 40-acre nature preserve.
] "We will have the office serve as a classroom while simultaneously being a full government facility," said Murray, a Republican from Levittown. "It is possible for a real home to be run completely on solar energy. We have to be able to educate our residents."
Murray said that 1,200 homes on Long Island are solar-powered, adding that "we hope to end up with 1,200 homes in the Town of Hempstead."
The supervisor said the town is pursuing a number of renewable energy technologies, and said that solar technology has come far in recent years. "If you had solar panels 20 years ago, you might have trouble on a cloudy day with electricity," she said. "The panels that we're looking at in this solar home are very good at" collecting energy.
Hempstead Town Hall, where the supervisor has her office, also has solar panels. "America's largest township is fast becoming its greenest," she said. Along with saving on electric bills, homeowners and businesses that install photovoltaic (solar-electric) systems are eligible for cash rebates from the Long Island Power Authority, as well as federal and state tax incentives.
Through its Solar Pioneer Program, LIPA offers residential and commercial customers cash rebates of $3.50 per watt up to a maximum of 10,000 watts, or a total of $35,000, said Ed Dumas, a LIPA spokesman. (For non-profits, the rate is $4.50, capped at $45,000.) Although equipment and installation costs vary according to the needs of the site, a simple residential installation might average $7.60 per watt as an example, so LIPA would pay back nearly half that amount.
Federal tax incentives of 30 percent are capped at $2,000, and a state tax incentive of 25 percent is capped at $5,000, said Tara Schneider, a town biologist.
These figures apply to residential solar installations. Tax incentives for commercial installations differ, according to Dan Sabia, vice president of Built Well Solar Corp., a Wantagh-based company that sponsored the NYIT decathlon house's solar panel installation.
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