Guadalajara
Reporter, Saturday, July 23 2011
By Sean Godfrey
John
Wester took the plunge into green investments recently when he bought a solar
panel grid-tied
electrical system for his Raquet Club home.
In
the 1920s, at the age of five, Arizona native
John Wester was lowered into a Sonora mine
shaft with his family to hide from Mexico’s Cristero War violence.
Days
later they hitched a ride in a train caboose back to Nogales. Wester spent 23 years in the U.S.
Navy, fought two wars, and has buried two loving wives at Lakeside,
where he has resided since 1995. In the Raquet Club home he built 14 years ago,
he survived the 2007 mudslide that sent a perimeter wall, casita, lawn and a
chunk of his foundation sliding down the mountain, and a car careening through
a neighbor’s bedroom.
Last
February, the 88-year-old retired engineer and former aircraft carrier fighter
pilot decided to invest 11,000 dollars in a solar-panel grid-tied electrical
system.
J.J.
Vollmer, a Lakeside resident for 17 years, who spent World War II studying at
the University of Mexico (now the UNAM), has also recently had a solar-panel
powersystem installed on her roof.
Why
would late-age expatriate retirees enjoying the Mexican sunshine after eventful
lives invest a big chunk of cash in new technology at this stage of life?
The
investment makes sense, they both say.
Wester
said the estimated five-year return on his money is only one of the reasons he
decided to purchase the 1,800-watt solar-panel system. “The price of the home
will probably go up more than the initial investment” if it is sold, he said.
“It would also sell a lot quicker with a solar-panel system installed.”
The
peso-dollar exchange rate also made him decide to do the deal. “When I first
came down here, the rate was 8 pesos to the dollar.” Now it’s about 11.5 pesos
per dollar.
And
then there’s the green factor. “I’m a little bit green, so I’m doing something
about it,” said Wester. His goal is to get off the Federal Electricity
Commission (CFE) highest (DAC) rate, which was driving his electrical bill up
as high as 4,000 pesos per two-month billing period. He’s presently only using
some 410 kilowatts per month, but expects it will be six to eight months before
he’s finally off the DAC rate, due to the way the CFE averages out usage over
six billing periods to gage a user’s rate.
He
didn’t put in a solar hot water heater because he doesn’t use much gas — about
three tanks per year — and because the price of “gas isn’t going up 12 percent
per year,” like it has with electricity during the past four years.
J.J.
Vollmer, 85, and a retired school teacher who lived her life all along the east
coast of the United States, said she started saving money the minute her solar
power system was hooked up to the grid.
“I
had been consistently running in the extra-high rates but now my electric bill
has been reduced to almost nothing,” she said. The straw that broke the camel’s
back was in January when the CFE began charging her 25 percent more for falling
into the higher “non subsidized” bracket. She now pays about 25 dollars
per two-month billing period.
J.J.
Vollmer also purchased a solar panel electrical system this year as an
investment in her Lakeside home and to
substantially lower her electric bill.
Vollmer also factored in a long-term payback in
that “my house is worth that much more from the get-go.”
She’s
been “nashing at the bit for years” to make use of solar, wind and water power
to “get off the gas and oil hook.” She said she’d love to have an
electric-powered car. “I would love it to be arranged so that a solar
panel could be put on the roof of my car.”
Solar
panel electric systems are seeing a boom at Lakeside.
Both of the two major sales and installation operations there, E2 Energias and
eSUN, are working overtime to satisfy demand and hiring more staff. Much of
this increase comes from the steady double-digit increase in electricity rates
over the last eight years, as Mexico’s
federal government reduces its subsidies of oil to the CFE and subsidies to end
users.
Current
electricity prices in Mexico
are three to four times the national average found in the United States and Canada.
Also
in play is the low rate of return of most investments. With bonds and stock
market returns extremely low over the last four years, a 10,000-15,000-dollar
investment in a fixed product that returns your money in about four to six
years, gives you a 12-14 percent rate of return as of the first year and
continues saving you money for 25 years or more is more than just tempting.
And
Mexico
is one of the world’s most perfect sunny places for solar energy. According to
one report, Chapala receives a daily average
of 5.8 hours of direct sunlight. That’s a lot of kilowatts.
A
photovoltaic (PV) system interconnected with the CFE will increase your home’s
value. In a report this past April from Berkeley National Laboratory, a look at
2,000 homes with a PV system (out of 72,000 total homes) that sold in
California, showed strong evidence that homes with PV systems sold for a
premium over those without. The average premium for homes with a PV system
among a large number of different home models of both for new and existing
homes was 17,000 dollars.
Both
eSun and E2 Energias have men at the helm with more than 10 years of experience
in the solar energy business and are representatives for high-tech solar system
component suppliers. They both offer quotes for your home’s needs based on your
electric bill and a look at your property. They also handle the necessary net
metering contract with the CFE and can get you a new digital bi-directional
meter (at a cost) if the CFE cannot provide it.