The Sun Starts to Rise on Solar

As Washington ponders new steps, big firms get involved

Creator of all and giver of their sustenance . . .

The Egyptians, who recorded this prayer to their Sun God nearly 3,400 years ago, called him Ra; the Sumerians named him Utu; the Incas, Inti; and the Greeks, Helios or Apollo. Mankind has always worshiped the sun as the bringer of life and warmth, and still does so today. The idols are gone, but a growing group of scientists and environmentally concerned solar enthusiasts dreams of discovering an easy, efficient and economical method of harnessing the sun's clean energy to supplement increasingly costly and chancy fuels like oil, coal and natural gas.

On Wednesday, May 3, solar activists across the nation will begin to celebrate "Sun Day" to mark what some of them call the "dawn of the solar age." Their aim is to convince more politicians, financiers and manufacturers that sun power has a glowing future. The celebrations, financed by organizations as diverse as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Department of Energy and the United Auto Workers, will begin with songs of praise to the rising sun in Maine and include talks and solar-power demonstrations in just about every state. In a speech at Golden, Colo., on Sun Day, President Carter plans to make a major policy pitch for solar energy and announce new incentives for the industry.

Certainly incentives are needed if solar is to contribute any significant part of the nation's energy needs. No more than 40,000 U.S. buildings of all kinds have solar devices, compared with 2 million in Japan and 220,000 (one-fifth of all homes) in Israel. Demand for solar units, which rose after the President's energy message a year ago, is now slack; the industry is troubled by some charlatans and rogues; manufacturers and contractors are confused by new regulations; and buyers are bewildered by on-again, off-again tax credits. As a result, a number of small manufacturing companies are close to bankruptcy.

The idea of using the sun's energy is far from new. Archimedes is said to have focused the sun's rays with mirrors to set on fire an invading Roman fleet in 212 B.C. Over the past century, experimental solar units have been used to power everything from a printing press in France to a water-distilling plant in Chile. With today's advanced technology, the potential is enormous. The sunlight falling on earth could theoretically provide 100,000 times the total energy output of all existing power stations. At present there are three forms of active solar units:

Rooftop panels or collectors made of glass and copper pipe. Liquids in the pipes absorb the sun's heat, and are then circulated to a storage tank that feeds heat to household living areas and water supplies.

Photovoltaic cells made of silicon or cadmium sulfide, which can convert sunlight directly into electricity. Costs are very high, and existing installations are still only experimental.

Power towers or solar furnaces, which use huge expensive banks of computer-controlled mirrors to track the sun and focus its rays on large electricity-producing steam boilers.

For all the immediate problems, so many large companies are moving into solar power with an eye to the future that Congress is already worried about antitrust problems. Most of the firms are looking for better and less costly ways of collecting the sun's energy and storing it for rainy days or nighttime use, with one ultimate aim of exporting their technology to less developed countries. General Electric recently developed a tank that uses common salt to store for long periods heat collected by solar panels. Along with Owens-Illinois, G.E. is also working on advanced vacuum-tube rooftop solar collectors that double efficiency and cut costs in half. Exxon and Mobil are experimenting with photovoltaics, which they predict could be cost-effective by 1985. Martin Marietta and McDonnell Douglas, using aerospace technology, are now studying ways of building economical solar furnaces.

Advances are also coming from noncorporate R. and D.: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently demonstrated an experimental heat-storing ceiling tile made of concrete with a core of heat-retentive salts, which is capable of providing 75% to 80% of a house's heat. In Britain, Patscenter International, a well-respected research group, has discovered a still secret way of making photovoltaic panels at a fraction of the current price; panels to power a small family house, it says, would cost about $800.

And small companies are turning to solar at the marketing end. The New England Fuel Institute, an association of 1,300 independent fuel oil distributors, sells conventional rooftop solar panels to its home-owning customers and trains technicians to install and service solar units. Says President Charles Burkhardt: "We see that solar is coming, and we want to control as much of the market as we can." Solar Appliance Centers Inc. of New York City is now franchising its highly successful retail shops, which sell such products as solar-powered calculators ($40) and showers for camping ($26).

Financing big solar units for houses has been a problem, but increasing numbers of banks and mortgage lenders now offer solar loans. The New England Merchants National Bank of Boston recently introduced a maximum $10,000, low-interest Energy Saver's Loan, and the San Diego Federal Savings and Loan Association offers low down-payment mortgages for new houses that use some form of solar power. The Bank of America has made about 2,000 loans, totaling more than $3 million, on its solar financing program, almost all of them in California, where Governor Jerry Brown's ambitious program of state income tax credits and other incentives has kept demand among the highest in the nation.

In houses as far apart as Maine and Hawaii, rooftop solar panels are sprouting as the ultimate in status symbols. The units are often unattractive (one California city now insists that they somehow be screened), and can cost from $7,000 to $12,000 to heat an eight-room house. Solar is also being used by industry. Anheuser-Busch employs sun heat for some beer pasteurization, Campbell's Soup to heat water to wash its cans, Tropicana to steam-process its orange juice. Solar energy provides heat or hot water or both in a visitors' center at Mount Rushmore, S. Dak., Disney World's office block in Orlando, an Atlanta public school, and urban cooperatives in Lower Manhattan.

Many householders simply doubt that expensive solar units will cut fuel bills enough to pay back costs quickly. If they now use oil or gas, their worries are probably justified, although solar will become increasingly attractive as the price of fossil fuels continues to rise. A computer study for TIME by the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that the savings for a single-family 1,500-sq.-ft. electrically heated house depend on local weather conditions, the size of solar tax credits (some 30 states grant them) and the local prices of competing fuels:

o In Fort Wayne, Ind., electricity is so cheap that a typical solar unit would take 15 years to return its original cost.

o In Pittsburgh, electricity is expensive enough that the costs would be covered in about nine years.

o In Trenton, N.J., even higher electricity costs and large state tax credits for installing solar units cut the payback period to only six years.

Most buyers of home solar units say that they are pleased. John Bales, a banker in Aberdeen, Miss., only regrets not buying more rooftop panels, which cost him $1,500 in a special deal and cut fuel bills by 40%. Richard Davis, a college teacher in Bar Harbor, Me., reports that his $1,700 system "heated 1,700 sq. ft. during the winter months." He spent only $150 on wood for his fireplace.

But not all solar users are content. Retired Air Force Major Furman Davis bought a $1,232 solar water-heating system for his Tampa house. But the installation company did not give him an instruction sheet, forgot to tell him to either drain the system before cold weather or use antifreeze--and did not even install a drain valve. "Come the first freeze," says Davis, "the thing blew out."

False claims by manufacturers can also be a problem. One Florida company promised that its solar swimming-pool panels would lift temperatures by 5DEG to 10DEG F., but tests by state authorities showed that the increase was closer to one-third of 1DEG. Jimmy Carter must carry some of the blame; his initial enthusiasm for solar persuaded many Americans to buy when there was little or no federal or state regulation of the industry. Result: con men, get-rich-quick artists and unqualified people were often able to sell and install inadequate units that lacked proper warranties and back-up servicing.

To curb such abuses, the Federal Government and some of the largest solar manufacturers and retailers have rushed to draw up rules governing advertising claims, technical specifications and equipment and warranty standards. In some cases, these contradicted new or existing state guidelines and caused immense confusion. This has helped raise costs. Now quite a few smaller solar-unit makers are caught in a squeeze. In the current issue of the San Diego Yellow Pages, 40% of the firms that advertised in 1977 do not appear.

Would-be buyers are delaying purchases because President Carter in his National Energy Plan a year ago promised solar income tax credits of up to $2,150 for units that cost $10,000, but credits will not be forthcoming until Congress passes the entire package. A bill that would create federal loan guarantees for solar purchases is also being pushed by the "solar coalition" of 29 Senators and 67 Representatives. Companies are holding off buying solar units until it becomes clear when they will receive the promised 10% solar investment tax credit, which is also part of the energy bill. Says one solar salesman in Boston: "The bureaucracy is fiddling while the industry burns."

A year ago, Carter set a target of 2.5 million solar-heated homes in the U.S. by 1985. The Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents 900 manufacturers, retailers, installers and researchers, confidently expects to triple that. Last month the President's Council on Environmental Quality suggested that solar could provide 25% of the nation's energy by the year 2000--but only if additional incentives were created and development greatly accelerated.

Such a grand target is less than realistic. The sun is only one of many alternative energy sources that should be encouraged, and it is unlikely to provide much more than 2% or 3% of U.S. needs by 1990. Even this lower target would still mean a huge saving in imported oil and many more jobs for Americans. To achieve it the Government must soon make some solar policy decisions. Merely deciding on the incentives, whatever they are, will give the industry a lift. The fairly modest provisions in the National Energy Plan alone would spur solar growth. The biggest obstacle to increased demand is confusion over exactly what the federal policies will be on tax credits, loan guarantees and regulation, and when they will take effect. Carter, who must still decide whether or not to solar-heat the White House, has the opportunity at least to clarify his policy stand in his Sun Day speech.

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