Any business can take the 30% tax credit and 100% first-year depreciation and get a 5-7 year payback.
Need to have sufficient income to soak up the credits, but credits can feed forward 20 years.
Can get loan for install (since effective payback rate is 10%, low interest loan is still zero-cost).

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Thrift Store USA, the largest private installation by a business, in Hampton Roads.

"In January 2016 we started looking at ways we could cut our energy usage and therefore save money and help the environment. We started by replacing every light bulb inside and outside our store with LED bulbs. This added up to over 550 bulbs. This simple step cut our electricity usage by 30% and made our store even brighter!

Most businesses would be happy to cut their electrical usage by 30% but we knew we could do more for the environment. We started to look at Solar and saw how much cheaper it has gotten. After receiving 8 bids from various companies we chose Convert Solar of Virginia Beach. They were able to install a system that will cover over 90% of our electrical usage for well under $1.80 per watt. Just a few years ago it would have cost $3 -$4 per watt. We expect the payback period to be just over 5 years.  With low interest financing, much lower power bill, tax credit and depreciation this project is cash flow positive in the first few months."

The system consists of the following:

• 128.3 KW
• 385 SunEdison Mono 335W Solar Panels
• 8 14.4KW Solar Edge 3 Phase Inverters
• 193 Solar Edge 700W Power Optimizers