The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | FEBRUARY 2016 35 BUSINESS OPERATIONS "We do primarily residential solar," LeBoeuf said. "I wanted to be able to provide a solar energy product for the customer that has been with us, buying their home heating oil with us, who's been coming to us for their plumbing services—the residential customer that knows us, that trusts us. Those are the customers that I wanted to do business with—and we have." The company has signed up several new residential accounts as well, he said. Installations tend to be for generation of electricity rather than for domestic hot water and space heating, LeBoeuf said. "The financial benefit for residential customers on the solar ther- mal the past several years has not really been there," LeBoeuf said, because of the comparative advantage of installing a high-efficiency natural gas, on-demand water heater, for example. But LeBoeuf said, "I do see that changing. The price of doing solar thermal is coming down" in part because Massachusetts is going to be incentivizing customers to install solar thermal, he said. In the meantime, "most of our [solar] business has revolved around the solar PV [photovoltaic] product to provide electricity for homes," LeBoeuf said. "A lot of that is driven by state incen- tives. The state has instituted a solar loan program to allow more residential customers to own their own solar array rather than do a leased product. That's going to help a lot more consumers enjoy the benefits of solar." LeBoeuf added that he wasn't counting on such incentives to last indefinitely. "Those are lessening as the industry gets a better foothold," he said. While solar is "not a huge piece of our business," LeBoeuf said, "it's still an important piece. It's a product that I get excited about and it's continued to grow for us." The installation crew isn't "out every day doing installations," he said, but it "stays busy." Overall, Falmouth Energy's solar business is trending upward. "It's a long sales cycle with solar," LeBoeuf noted. "We definitely have a lot of installations in the pipeline." The company has learned some practical lessons since it began in the solar business. Attending a solar energy exposition early on helped Falmouth Energy identify vendors offering products "we wanted to work with," LeBoeuf said. "There are lots of vendors out there that you can get your solar panels from, your racking and the other products you need for your installations," LeBoeuf said, but buying direct from manufacturers could be problematic, he reported. "We found that the best way for us is dealing with local electrical wholesalers," LeBoeuf said. "That's where we found the best service as well as access to product." Before learning that lesson, he said, "we were getting stuff shipped in from across the country or the Mid Atlantic [and] we'd get 48 panels and one would be broken. Then you're fighting with the shipper. We found that to be a hassle." Availability of product was an issue up until about a year ago, LeBoeuf said. When it started, Falmouth Energy was ordering a Japanese brand of solar panels, but after the tsunami in 2011 and the resulting Fukushima nuclear accident, panels from that manu- facturer were in such demand in Japan that Falmouth Energy had to switch suppliers. Today the company is using panels made by LG Solar, part of LG Electronics, Seoul, South Korea. "Over the past year we've been able to have a steady supply of the LG panels that we like," LeBoeuf said. Arden Steiner, a principal of Affordable Fuels, a fuel oil dealer in Middleburg, Pa., is a partner in a company called Rayviance, which markets a solar-powered system by that name. Bucknell University last year installed four Rayviance units at a science building on its campus in Lewisburg, Pa. The building's heating and hot water are provided by a natural-gas powered steam boiler that needs approximately 400 gallons of "makeup" water per day—new water introduced to the system, Steiner said. The Rayviance units work to boost the temperature of the new water so that when it is introduced to the steam boiler "it's not coming in at ground temperature," which ranges from 58° to 70° depending on the time of year, Steiner said. The solar units can pre-heat the Bucknell University last year installed four Rayviance units at a science building on its campus in Lewisburg, Pa.