Who has installed solar?

[konapoppy]

This is tangentially related to all of our conversations on climate change.

Has anyone who has installed solar care to share their experiences? What do you recommend to others looking to do it?

[pixy0stix]

*raises hand* I've done it twice now. One was through a lease-to-own company, and one we bought outright with a loan through our city utility.

I'd have multiple companies come out and give you a bid. Make sure each company is licensed to perform work in your area. Start looking into all the rebates/financing options you have available to you, including through your utilities. (A lot of this is standard for any big job you'll do to your house.)

[mrshandy]

Me! Your experience really varies by state. We're coming on our one year anniversary of the solar panels being turned on. I'm in VA and we're still on the grid and our solar panels basically can only produce our power. We're never going to get credit if our solar panels overproduce. I need to crunch the numbers but they've been really great. Right now I see that our bill is an average of $23 compared to our previous average $183. We paid for them in cash around $16K after the 26% tax rebate. So maybe 8ish years we'll have made our money back.

I recommend getting a few quotes. The first company we looked at wanted to put panels on the entire house and it was going to cost a lot more. But after talking to the second company they said they never put panels on the back of the house where we live because you're not getting the most bang for your buck and paying double the money. That made a lot of sense. The first company wants to sell you a ton of them and it will get all of your power. But we can get 2/3rds of our power for a much more reasonable price.

Our panels have been overproducing what we thought after we removed a small tree in the front of our yard that was apparently giving them some shade.

Overall I'm happy with our investment. The front of our house gets a ton of sun so it's nice to put that sun. Imagine if the majority of the houses in the US had solar panels it would make such a difference. Of course power companies are experts in buying off state legislators to make solar panels more difficult in many states. It's ridiculous.

[just]

We've had them 6 years in MA which is a pretty supportive state. We haven't paid an electricity bill in 5.5 years, and we charge our electric car off it too. SRECs are a nice (not-guaranteed) bonus. MA also supports very low interest rate loans, so ours are at 1.25%

[msmerymac]

There are a lot of companies that are a bit scammy in the states with solar incentives. Especially now that workers are scarce and may not be experienced in installation. I used to have a law firm client that worked with a lot of people who had their credit pulled without permission, signatures used to forge documents, damaged roofs, etc. If you're leasing, the solar company gets the tax incentives, so if you can purchase/finance it would be better from that sense. And just check as many reviews as possible.

[macmars45]

We just had them installed December 2020 and went with a small locally owned company. The installation took longer as it was a smaller team. The company owner is also licensed & experienced in installing EV chargers so we had him do that as well. We paid all costs up front using the money from the sale of our previous house. We pay basically nothing for our electricity every month and produce 3-4x what we need to power our house and charge our car.
It took a while to get our reimbursement from state and federal incentives.

We're in central eastern WA state.

ETA: we will eventually get a battery as well so we can keep some of our excess electricity. It's in our 5 year plan.

[eddy]

We would love too as we have friends who a year out are paying nothing for electricity and have paid off the loan.

We live in a wonderfully shaded area, so our quote was insanely expensive. Hopefully with time it will become more advantageous to invest that money. Or there will be better incentives.

We only pay $100 a month for electricity and we were quoted 18K after all of the incentives. It just did not make financial sense at this point especially because we would at least have to borrow some of that money.

[sonrisa]

We don't but hope to in the future. Part of our motivation is keeping power during blackouts so we'll also get a battery (otherwise, when the grid goes down, so does your power - even with solar panels).

[pixy0stix]

Sept 9, 2021 10:20:45 GMT -5 sonrisa said:

We don't but hope to in the future. Part of our motivation is keeping power during blackouts so we'll also get a battery (otherwise, when the grid goes down, so does your power - even with solar panels).

This is another consideration - how stable your grid is. If it goes down during weather events (or otherwise) I would definitely invest in a battery wall.

[suburbanzookeeper]

We've had our panels (Southern California) for nine years! We own ours outright and are fully paid off. I would get at least 3+ quotes and make sure they're showing you the rebates and what not as apples to apples quotes. We had a lot of variety in the six quotes we did get.

[Mushe]

We did! I let my husband convince me to get a smaller system than I wanted, and it doesn’t cover all our needs, even in winter. Wah wah. The good part of that is that it was pretty inexpensive, and we paid for it quickly.

We went with a smaller company, and they busted their butts to get the approval of our PITA HOA.

[Velar Fricative]

I have to explore this. Several years ago, we were told we couldn’t have it installed on our house but the technology has changed. But I’m not sure if being an attached rowhouse matters and what feasible options there would be for us.

[AAM2012]

We are currently getting quotes so this is timely.

Does anyone have Tesla solar panels? They are the cheapest but am wondering if there’re any downsides like from a customer service or warranty perspective?

[picaflora]

Ours 'went live' in March 2020, so we've had them about 1.5 years. We're in VA like mrshandy, so we have the restrictions as to the size we could install. (I think it's limited to no more than 10% of our yearly average power bill at the time of install). Any overages go as a credit on our bill, but I don't think it's a one for one credit. Up until June we were producing enough/had credits so that we were only paying our connection/distribution fee for being grid-tied. We rarely lose power, so battery storage isn't important for us at this point. If the rules change, I wouldn't be opposed to adding on more panels.

Our roof wasn't well situated, but we had lots of room in the backyard (and no HOA). So a ground mount system was the best for us. It isn't the prettiest thing ever, but also isn't the worst. Our next door neighbor has a stand alone garage on that side of the yard, so I don't feel like we're 'blocking' anyone either. Now we have less grass to mow, and I put a pollinator garden in front of it to take up more room.

In June our bill increased to roughly $20 a month. I haven't dug in to see why we started burning through our credit backlog, but I have some guesses. H has been WFH more and it's been a hot summer. He roasts, and I think he cranks the a/c down. I also had a job with a longer drive (but not outrageous) for awhile, and the parking wasn't in a deck. I also ran a bunch of work errands. That meant having to charge the electric car more. Usually H drives it, and it's parked in a deck downtown. That shields it from getting too hot/cold and seems to keep any battery drain more stable. Now I fully WFH, so I'm looking for options to heat/cool just my space as I don't use the whole house. I don't want a mini-split, so it might just be space heaters and a portable a/c unit. I need to test to see if the electric load really would be less or not.

[themoneytree]

Sept 9, 2021 19:58:15 GMT -5 AAM2012 said:

We are currently getting quotes so this is timely.

Does anyone have Tesla solar panels? They are the cheapest but am wondering if there’re any downsides like from a customer service or warranty perspective?

We are getting a quote for Tesla solar panels and battery. We get way too many power outages here.

[mpc]

We bought ours through a local solar co-op. Basically they got a certain number of families to sign up, then the coop negotiated with various providers for a "group" rate and ultimately selected one that everyone in the co-op used. So installation took probably 6 months because this one small company had to get through the whole list, but I didn't mind.

We don't cover 100% of our electric used. That was our goal, but we bought in 2019 and sized the system based on what we knew then - now we are working from home 100% of the time which I'm sure has increased our bill, even just being home and running the AC all day.

[konapoppy]

Thanks, all! This is super helpful.

[fumbalina]

I did not trust the predicted coverage and increased the panels. But it still is not enough. It helps some but not as much as promised. I suppose I could add more panels but have not decided to yet.

Of course, we have had a truly brutal winter AND summer so it may help more than I see.