The recession would seem to provide businesses with a ready and compelling excuse not to consider investing in something like solar power. But Cleveland-based Kalman & Pabst Photo Group looked at it another way: There are substantial federal and state tax incentives available for investing in the green technology, and they probably won't last forever.

K&P, a commercial photo studio whose clients include Progressive and Arhaus, recently hired Bold Alternatives, of Orange, to install 130-plus solar panels atop its building on Perkins near East 40th. The bill came to just over $200,000, says K&P co-owner Bob Pabst, but a 50-percent rebate from the state and 30-percent federal tax credit brought K&P's out-of-pocket cost down to about $40,000.

"There's a lot of people that can't do this," Pabst says, referring to the still-significant cost and the recession. "But we could." He and his partner, Jan Kalman, are committed to employing as many sustainable methods as possible. The 30.8 kW installation will cover 20-25 percent of the photo studio's monthly electricity use, on average.

Other companies that K&P talked to promised less than half as much, Pabst says. Bold Alternatives, however, offered new technology: microinverters. In a typical solar array, all the panels connect to one central inverter, which converts the energy from DC to AC. But the system Bold built for K&P has a microconverter for each panel, a setup that maximizes efficiency by switching on if even a sliver of the panel is illuminated.

Kimberly Dyer of Bold Alternatives says that the manufacturer, Enphase Energy of California, informed her that the K&P job is the largest such installation in Ohio.

Source: Kalman & Pabst Photo Group   
Writer: Frank W. Lewis