River Cities Business Journal: Real Estate

News West

BULLHEAD CITY - Keith DeLorenzo stands in his backyard on a windy Friday afternoon, listening to the hum of his 40-foot wind turbine.

“That's the sound of money,” he tells a friend. “She's cracking.”

DeLorenzo says it takes a wind of six miles per hour to get the turbine going, but once it's spinning, even a two mile an hour wind can sustain it. With the winds in Bullhead City, DeLorenzo says the turbine can operate nearly all year.

DeLorenzo might be doing it for the environment, but he says the turbine is also a financial investment - along with his solar panel, he gets back about $100 a month in energy savings. You can't get that kind of interest back from a bank, he adds.

Since December, his meter shows a surplus of almost 940 kilowatts, and his electricity bill has been cut by two-thirds. When his utility company, Mohave Electric Cooperative, goes to net metering, the surplus will then be applied against his power bill.

DeLorenzo has been interested in green energy for awhile, but the price for the technology was too high. Now with greater return on the money, it's easier for the average citizen to get involved, he says.

“And we need to get involved because if we don't do this, our utilities are going to be as much as we pay at the gas pumps,” he said. “They're using the same kind of non-renewable energy.

“We need to be dealing with it because we have a lot of it in Bullhead City. We're in an ideal place for both wind and solar technologies.”

DeLorenzo bought the turbine for $23,000 and got a rebate from Mohave Electric for $11,200. He applied the rebate money toward the cost of a $10,000 wind turbine, and got another $3,000 from state and federal tax credits.

Some of his neighbors got interested, but then the city passed an ordinance that required ownership of at least one acre of land before a turbine could be installed. DeLorenzo says many of his neighbors have three-fourths of an acre and it would be easier for more people to install the technology if the city relaxed its ordinance.

His neighbors were supportive of his plans, and one recently bought a wind turbine for himself, but DeLorenzo says some people still have their misconceptions. Green technology is too expensive, they claim, and turbines kill birds while blades can fly off to cause damage.

None of it is true, he says.

Scott Travis of Catchin' Wind and Sun says customers can go green for as little as $300 for a solar charging system or, for about $1,000, a battery-charging wind system. It isn't expensive to get started, but he says customers should be aware of the false promises of salesmen. The biggest misconception is the technology will power their entire home and they'll make money off the power company for the surplus watts. Others, however, shy away when they see the price tag and are afraid of the initial investment without thinking of its recovery.

And while some say Bullhead City has been slow to catch up with the rest of the nation in green energy, DeLorenzo says the trend is picking up.

The city is encouraging green technology, said spokesperson Steve Johnson, and recently took the “fast track” to come up with the ordinance to apply to wind turbines. Bullhead City also launched a drop-off recycling program.

Mohave County's administration building, built in 2005, is also an energy-efficient facility. The county's administration building recently earned an Energy Star award for efficiency, and for the past few years any new buildings have had energy-efficient designs.

But helping the environment, or lowering energy costs, is often done on a smaller scale.

Whether they're smaller fuel-efficient models or hybrid cars, which run on a combination of gasoline and electricity, more drivers are either scaling down or making gas mileage an important factor in their purchase decision.

Tony Jalving bought his Toyota Prius two years ago and, back then, he mostly got reactions of, “whatever,” but now with rising gas prices, people are more curious.

Jalving researched the model and found it was a good car, but he bought it mostly to save fuel. And it doesn't hurt, he added, to reduce emissions either.

Now he saves about $80 a month on gas and can't imagine having to “feed a gas hog.” When he purchased the Prius in 2006, he also got a $3,000 tax break.