From left, Charles Burgamy and Wayne Beggs of Triangle Energy Concepts pose with Colquitt County resident Bill Elliott, who has installed solar cells at his farm.

Bill Elliott’s electrical meter runs backwards at times due to a solar energy system he installed on his Colquitt County farm.

“I’m just amazed. This is the future,” he said of the system he learned about 14 weeks ago and is now using to actually generate electricity at his home and property on Tallokas Road.

Elliott, a retired banker and developer of 20 Fred’s stores, including the one in Moultrie, has teamed up with Triangle Energy Concepts, a marketing arm of Hannah Solar, the Atlanta-based company that designs and installs the equipment. Elliott has been involved in three installations with a fourth in the works. He first heard about the firms at a local Rotary Club meeting where he met Triangle representatives Charles Burgamy and Wayne Beggs.

 “Alll of this stuff has amazed me. If I was going to be part of it I had to have it myselfl. I needed to show it to someone,” Elliott said.

 His is not the first solar installation in Colquitt County, but it is the first to have a GPS tracking system that follows the sun all day, providing for most electrical needs, depending on the intensity of the sunlight and the amount of power being used. During a recent thunderstorm Elliott’s neighbors had no electricity while he was still in the light.

Elliott said he has received many phone calls about the 12 solar panels on the edge of his property that are visible from Tallokas Road. Another 22 panels are mounted on the roof of a barn behind his house. Individual cells within each panel generate an electrical current that is sent to a converter next to his Colquitt EMC electrical meter on the outside of his house and produces an AC current.

The excess killowatts generated push the EMC meter backwards. Elliot says the system should produce 1,150 kilowatts per month, or about $125 per month in electricity.

“I believe in it. I’m controlliing my future costs,” Elliott said. “Solar energy is coming and we’re in the first stages of it.”

Through Triangle Elliott is trying to sell businesses and farmers on the Hannah system. He first saw the Hannah system in use at the American Peanut Growers coop facilties in Donalsonville. The drying sheds there now feature the state’s largest roof-mounted solar system. The association’s 87 peanut producers’ effort for sustainable energy includes a contract with Georgia Power in which the power company purchases the power generated at the peanut processing plant. according to Charles Burgamy of Triangle.

“Solar is coming,” Elliott said. That energy can be harvested and appliied to uses as varied as running a factory to heating and cooling a home.

He, Burgamy and Beggs agree that tax incentives make the system a viable energy source for smaller commercial businesses, farmers and other property owners. The whole idea is to get away from reliance on foreign oil, said Beggs.

A recent University of Tennessee report commissioned by the Solar Industry Association states that solar is on the path to becoming a mainstream source of energy in the U.S.

The federal government now gives a 30 percent tax credit and the state of Georgia gives 35 percent deductions for solar energy installation. Georgia’s solar tax credits make businesses eligible for up to $500,000 to offset the cost of installation and homeowners can receive up to $10,500 in credits. The credits must be taken over four years.

 That means a $32,000 investment can cost $3,400 after incentives and depreciation. The system also adds to a property’s value. According to Elliott, a system would pay for itself in three and a half years, and generate free use for the next 25 years, the length of the system’s warranty,

“People are skeptical, but solar power works and is making sense for homeowners and businesses,” Beggs said.

Elliott noted that in May solar energy accounted for 10 percent of electricity in Germany, where there are now over one million solar systems.

“Europe is way ahead of us,” he said.

Currently Hannah is involved in the installation of a solar farm in Mitchell County and at a facility iin Valdosta. the largest gound-mounted installation in Georgia.

 Elliott said his job is to educate bankers and accountants about the vialbility of solar systems,.