Solar panels create legal heat for owners

Solar panels create legal heat for owners

Mar 14 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Neighbors who think they are ugly taking action

As solar-power devices appear on more roofs around the nation, they are generating more than just hot water or electricity: Some are creating controversy from neighbors who think they're ugly.

In Florida, as many as 50 homeowners' associations a year try to keep residents from putting solar panels on their rooftops, despite a state law that forbids them from imposing such restrictions, say attorneys for the solar industry.

In Arizona, installers of solar equipment say they have met with dozens of homeowners' associations in recent years to mediate concerns that the panels detract from a community's aesthetics. Even though Arizona law expressly prohibits such associations from making it difficult for homeowners to use solar power, installers say many residents opt to drop their plans to avoid going to court.

"I think that the tactic of many associations is to just make it hard for the homeowner, and it's a shame," says Kelly Dancer, director of Heliocol Solar Pool Heating, an installation company in Tempe, Ariz.

Hank Speak has fought his neighbors for six years to keep his solar power.

The 71-year-old retiree in the Phoenix suburb of Avondale, Ariz., installed a row of solar panels in 1997 to heat his swimming pool in the winter.

He picked panels that match his roof tile and placed them on the home's backside, facing a greenbelt.

Nonetheless, his homeowners' association hit him with a lawsuit and fines that eventually totaled about $100,000, arguing that the panels were unsightly and violated the community's covenants.

Speak prevailed last year when a state judge ruled that the association's restrictions conflicted with state law advocating solar power; an appeals court upheld the decision.

Similar run-ins have flared in dozens of Sunbelt cities, from Florida to California.

Although highly touted in the 1970s, solar-generated electricity didn't start taking off until the 1990s, when the cost of the systems began dropping sharply thanks to new technology and state and federal tax incentives for using it.

Now, production of solar energy in the U.S. by all sources has jumped more than tenfold since 1993, to about 300 megawatts, or enough to power about 300,000 homes, according to estimates by industry officials.

More growth is likely, as traditional energy sources become pricier and more erratic and government officials, in the Sunbelt and elsewhere, call for use of alternative energy.

Yet the sight of the flat, rectangular panels in different colors popping up on rooftops is creating a stir in some neighborhoods.

In California, where the nation's solar movement has gained the most ground, as many as 20 communities have enacted laws making it harder to install the systems.

Even a company that sells solar energy systems got into hot water after it installed solar panels on its own roof. The company, Akeena Solar, in the Silicon Valley town of Los Gatos, Calif., was told by local officials last year to erect a fence to hide the panels after a city inspector reported being able to see them from the street, a violation of municipal code.

But Akeena officials said the cost of building such a screen would offset their solar power savings, adding they already had gone to great lengths to conceal the blue-colored panels atop their 3,400- square-foot headquarters.

Town officials defend their action, saying they are trying to protect the architectural integrity of the upscale community, where Victorian homes press up against the Santa Cruz Mountains.