Thining about solar ? a few things I've learned
 

There are pros on this board who are gonna scoff at this because they already know, but this is what I've learned about my solar install.. If I were to get a do over I may go a different route, or not... If I got this wrong I'm sure they will chime in - bearing in mind some of the issues I mention are specific to my install !

For info I leased a system - zero down, about $200/mo for 20+y - guaranteed production # and rate increase protection vs ever climbing utility costs - 24 panels, battery, 10 circuits covered by battery. We sized it for 130% of my needs because I'm adding an EV + moving heater/water heater from natural gas to electric....when they break (not now, too $$ to throw away a working system)

Things I learned

- You kinda need a battery with solar - well you don't "need" it but without one you are simply putting your power back on the grid and playing a credit/debit game. There is no way for your house to use that solar power "directly" from a panel. As things stand, the power I make is flowing to fill my battery (for me) and then to power the grid (where I get a credit). At night I still get my power from the grid (cheaper) and overall we settle with the utility once a year. That part is a bit of a ripoff but I'll get to that. As far as I know the battery is used for times where power is cut, I am not sure it's used to power the house in "normal" situations - need to find out. Also the battery only charges from my solar, never from the grid, so in winter it's not at 100% and would not bail me out quite as much as it might in summer. Were the power to fail in summer I'm confident based on numbers that I would have juice for days on end, refilling during the sunny day (I make 45-52kwh - consume about 20-25)

- Solar production varies, a lot: a summer august day I make 52 kwh in a day. Yesterday in january, 1 kwh ! The day before, peanuts. Cloudy days still produce something like 30% of a sunny day, +/-, but really cloudy/rainy not so much. Winter is a killer with shorter days and clouds, not doing much. Also daylight savings time removes an hour (it's a joke people!!! ;-)

-The utility companies are ass$%@#s. I can see the need to reconcile at some point if you owe them. But rather than keep a rolling tally of your credit, they insist on paying you off at a certain date. If that date is december 31st, they will pay out your solar power credit for pennies on the $, much less than what they charge you of course, but then that zeroes out the deal... since you're not generating squat in winter you now likely will owe them for some power Jan-feb-march again instead of comfortably living off your credits that you earned last summer. That is a big D-move.

Overall, for me, with a leased installation, I paid nothing out of pocket at all, and I am paying somewhat less on average than I was paying the utility company each month - but not a ton less until I get rid of gas appliances completely.. maybe 10% tops. It will get better when the furnace goes electric. The benefits are 1) a more predictable bill, 2) the free battery backup (esp in summer), and 3) I produce more so I probably will charge the car for free overall, and may see more savings when the water heater or furnace eventually go electric. Heads up: It's NOT a substantial reduction in cost, more of an insurance policy and free smugness during occasional outages ;-)

If I were to do this again (pros may agree or disagree), I would possibly buy my system, maybe a smaller one, eat the costs with some tax credits and then be out of any contracts (but also lose support and warranty eventually).
But mostly, I think I would go another route... I would BUY a Powerwall (of any brand), set it up to charge at night when the power is cheap, and give back when the power is expensive if that is doable and economical vs the cost of the powerwall and its' 10y life span - is it ???. Or at least have it as a backup instead of a generator like I had before... I'm more interested in the backup notion than the production...

Just sharing for those thinking about it... If any of that is incorrect I'm sure experts will chime in.

good post. I am curious of your thoughts on the quality of the installation and components themselves.

I drove past an Amish home/farm this am. I noticed that they had just had solar panels installed on the roof of their house.
The panels seem to be getting real popular here lately.

I am not qualified to comment on the quality of the components. I can only say the battery system is very sensitive to crappy wiring, my house is 2/3 modern and 1/3 1960s wiring, and too much of a load on that old circuit like a portable electric heater will sometimes pop a fuse on the battery connected circuit. It likes good clean power and my house has lots of quirks (I wanna say shared neutrals but I don't know what I am talking about) . The system looks nice and professional, like the enterprise's warp core.

Install quality however is very good - thorough roof inspection prior, it's pissing rain in Cali right now and not a leak since last may's install. Looks decent from above...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1672852985.jpg

Awesome post. Some of this I knew.

We have a solar developer sniffing around wanting to put panels on the section we live on and own 1/2 of. I’m playing along for now but will want a payout when they sell it to another developer (this is the game). My land is the key to making this project work.

Excellent post and excellent timing; I need a new roof and am considering going solar.

The way I hope the industry is heading...
Instead of shingles AND solar panels, why not combine both into a ~rubberized coating that absorbs heat and charges a battery bank?
Repairs would be simple; just reapply some more coating.
Same sort of technology for cars.
Cars could charge in the parking lot without ANY infrastructure.
Lots of real estate on f/r hoods and roof.

they make solar shingles too... Not sure it's affordable though. I wanted a new roof and I wanted metal, but thankfully that old roof was still go enough for now.

One statement in OP stands out to me- 'The utility co's are a##holes'

That is what the solar co's become when you sign on.

We are in the middle of an install as we speak. Agree w/ your conclusion that solar without batteries is much less beneficial to the homeowner IF you live an an area that does you pay you for what you put back on the grid (like I do). Some areas pay the homeowners individually for what they put back on the grid, so solar without batteries might make sense there.

Downside is my house sits south on the front so the panels make my house ugly.

I'm repeating myself here a few times over, since I've commented on other threads.
I got solar installed, going online in June of 2016. I haven't paid an electric bill since last year. That was the first year we've run the house (3.2K s.f. - all electric except for the two propane tankless water heaters) along with my wife's EV for a full year. I paid $288 at true up time.
My system is 25 panels generating a high of around 52+ kWh/day(up to 1.3 mWh/month) at peak in summer and about 6 to 7K kWh/mo. at the low during winter. I paid $29K for the system and got the 30% tax credit at the end of the year, so end cost was around $19K. The system generates 110% of my average useage over a three year peiod before installation. If I had to do it over, I'd have had a few more panels installed.
SDG&E has some of the highest - maybe the highest - rates in the country. They just announced another hefty increase. In prior years, I'd sell back about 3 mWh to them for the huge amount of $100 credit at 2 to 4 cents per kWh. I decided to use that up by charging my wife's EV. My siystem paid for itself around last year - so over a period of about six years.
My main satisfaction is that I'm preventing myself from getting screwed by the utility and gas companies.
Of course the Utiiity and the State are coniving to make healthy cuts into the advantages solar owners have. The state is plotting to initiate a mileage tax on vehicles, & the utility is coniving to have solar customers pay a fee for using the grid system.

Marv, same conclusions for me. I decided to use all my credits too, hence the EV purchase and replacing furnace/ waterheater ASAP. The pay off (true up) is a rip off. You go ta good deal though, my system was gonna be closer to $60k out of pocket if I wanted to buy (big chunk being the battery)

Nick. Is a ground installation possible at your site?

Wow! That's a chunk. A friend had a power wall installed for zero cost to him. It was through some kind of grant program for old people (I'm 80 now) with some kind of health problem(s). They were on the creative side in his case. It was facilitated by one of the local solar installers. So I'm going to look into that. You pay out of pocket (he paid $26K) at the time of installation and get paid back at tax time. I'm hoping I can take advantage of that, but I'll need a larger storage than he has.

I would assume you have no plans to sell anytime soon.

I've known more than one person whose leased system became a problem when prospective buyers didn't want it (or if they did want solar, didn't want to lease and found the buyout option unpalatable). Given the seller's market at the time, they were able to work things out, but we're quickly moving toward (or in many areas, have already moved to) a buyer's market which will likely make it harder for sellers to negotiate on that front.

Like so many other things, it seems the choices when deciding whether or not to move to solar are more complicated than they should be.

_

I paid for mine because a lease arrangement just wasn't attractive in my mind. Plus, I was of the impressison the installers got the tax credit, so out of picket was attactive to me. I don't know at this point how true that is. The transfer of the lease at sale was a small factor too, although I'd probably be dead by that time.

When you lease the rebates go directly to the company you are leasing from.
When you lease and you want to sell your house you may have problems, if the new owner does not want to take the lease over.
We purchased our solar outright.
We did not want it mounted on the roof of our house.
We built a 3 car carport and mounted the panels it.
We also put a whole house propane generator in at the same time.
We got tax credits for everything. Carport, generator and solar.
We have horses, are on a well for water and have some septic that needs to be pumped.
The battery backup would not power everything we would have to choose what we wanted to work when the power went out.
We went with the propane generator because if the power goes out in the summer, I wanted to be able to use everything including A/C and my shop.
2 years ago when we had the big fires it was very smokey. You could not open your windows from the smoke and ash.
We ran the A/C for 3 months straight day and night our biggest bill was for $13.00.
We also have the carport set up for electric charging station if we want to go electric.

Bernie

It is true, the leasing complicates a sale somewhat if you plan on moving soon. That said here in Cali given PG&E's "less than stellar" reputation and incompetence (constant outages, causing fires, blowing people up with gas leaks) I would think a large % of people would be happy to be paying them nothing (or very little) and take over the attractive lease.

I could be wrong but I think it's more a positive than a negative in this case, as my rate is guaranteed and lower than current PGE costs, and that gap will increase as PGE is charging way more each year and my increases to the solar co are actually capped < inflation.

Worst case, it's easy enough to buy it out before selling if it's a problem. The system is 4% of the house value, at least that was my thinking... I should mention that cost includes guaranteed production (or panel replacement), free repairs, and a new battery after 10 years.. not insignificant.

It is just another thing you have to deal with in the negotiation of selling your house.
If they plan on remodeling and it involves the solar and you own it outright, they could do whatever they want. if it's leased, they have to with the leasing company.
I live in Calif. and have PG&E like you do.
Right now all the Calif. utility companies are pushing to raise Electric rates and lower homeowner solar buy back rates.
The people that have it now will have their rates grandfathered in.
We added 6 panels this year. You have a true up at the end of the year, and we wanted it to balance out.

Bernie

I will add for information puposes, anyone getting solar should decide on how much or if they want extra generating capacity. If you currently have solar and want more capacity, whatever you add on has to become a separate system under whatever rules govern at the time. So you end up with two systems, the original under the regulations at the time it was installed and the new one under the rules in effect at the time it is installed. I asked an installer about that & was disappointed I couldn't just add onto mine.

It would be nice to be able to charge a battery from the grid at night. I wonder if an installer could do that or if it's some regulatory thing. My 12KW solar/ 10KWH battery is config'd to operate the battery on 4 circuits (kitchen and MBR) at night, down to 25% charge, then switch to grid. By morning, the battery is 25% so I am reliant on grid until the sun comes up. If it rains, it's grid or nothing. I'm not able to change the battery mode of operation, only the installer (Sunlux) can do this. In the past I've had the battery operated as back-up only. The full charge is available at any time, but how long would you wait to use it? Another option is to sell battery power during peak (expensive) time. I haven't done this.

That's true. Weird, huh? Maybe at that point go on your own. For instance, buy a plug-in system and schedule it to charge batteries at night and dedicate it to a particular load.

Our system has been working for about 2 1/2 years. Our meter records energy drawn from the grid and energy fed into the grid. Our contract with the utility has a connection fee of about $11/month and if we produce more than we use, they cut a check at the chosen anniversary date ( end of April).
Last spring our bill for the year (usage) was about $100. We use electric baseboard heat, electric water heater and range. The system cost us about $18, k and I figure our payback at around 10 years.
I have been very happy with it.
No batteries. We have a generator wired into the house in case of power interruption.

Best
Les

Several family members are in the solar distribution business providing panels, batteries, and hardware to installers across the country. As a result I had 5.6kw panels installed at deep discount prices. My elect. usage is relatively low and this system should cover my usage annually with little or no excess. Since the install in November we have experienced a lot of weather so we are nowhere near typical generation but as these storms move out I expect to essentially cover my typical usage over time.

A few thoughts:

Right now panels are dirt cheap but that may change depending on the China situation who supplies 90% of the materials to build them.

Batteries are expensive currently but with recent innovations things should get less expensive soon. Wait 2 years and I expect prices to drop in a big way.

Utilities are adjusting the fair market rate for net metering so we may get pinged with really low returns on any excess residential generation.

If you live in an area with a lot of sun or have high energy costs from the utility, I think solar can make a lot of sense if purchased wisely. If you live in an area with fewer than than 50% sunny days like Seattle or Portland, it would be a tougher sell as a LOT more panels are needed to reach parity.

My mother leased a solar system for her home.
It was, without a doubt, the dumbest move
I have ever seen anyone make.

It was a 25 year lease.
She was in her 80's and passed away a few
years after signing the contract.
The cost for the lease did not quite pay for itself in energy savings.
Her electricity bill was still high, mostly because
of all the fees and charges unrelated to actual electricity usage.
But the salesman told her that even electricity
costs rise in the coming years, it will start to pay
for itself and eventually will save her money.
If she lived to be 100 maybe.
And if the solar panels don't start getting weaker as they age.
See, there's no guaranty of output in the contract.

Oh and here's the BEST part:
She, or her estate, is liable for the entire 25 year lease.
All of it. All $41,100 worth of payments, despite the fact
that it's probably a $15k system.
After she passed, we had to keep paying for it.
The criminals at the solar company said to just
have the people who now own her house
assume the lease.
But she left the house to a friend in her will,
and her friend was not stupid enough to assume the lease.
They said no way.

So we had to keep paying for the lease,
until the probate and estate was officially closed
and all assets were distributed to the trust.

Now the lawyers can fight it out,
and we have been in contact with the assistant DA
concerning elder abuse charges against
the solar company.
No, it won't fly but may be enough to get
the crooks to tear up the lease to avoid
all that really nasty publicity that we will
be pushing on every outlet available.

signing a solar system lease that does not
contain a reasonable escape clause and does not
IN REALITY pay for itself
(Despite what the salesman says and
what many lessees pretend to believe) is a really, really bad move.
Especially if it involves sunrun.
A REALLY bad move.

Do you think you have any recourse with this? Was she targeted due to her age? I can see this industry being ripe for scam artists or at least very pushy sales people.

They are all over our neighborhood and a house 5 down from me just installed it. No way it makes sense. They have knocked on my door several times. I talked to someone at our utility and did their on line calculation tool which used our google earth images of the house and usage to see if it would make sense. The answer came back no. Our winter days are short and usually pretty cloudy.

the sell power to the corpRATS DEALS REALLY SUCK
local FPL deal is about 10% of the price they charge plus fees

my idea is to just size the solar out put to match the a/c draw in the daylight
with out batterys or any storage to start with

has anyone else tryed that way ?

Solar is certainly not for everyone.
It only makes sense if your electric bill is sky high, you live in a year-round sunny State, you don't have trees blocking the sun, your roof has 15 years left, you don't plan on moving soon, you do it before before the tax rebates end and before the new net metering law to tax the sun takes place (March in CA). And then it only makes sense to own and not lease. When you let a solar company put a system on your roof at no cost you're basically giving them free rent on top of your house to make money for themselves.

in my area SDG&E has raised their electricity costs and more than doubled natural gas costs. They have a three tiered charging sutructure for electric. Last I remember, the first tier was mid 20 cents/kWh, second tier was mid 30 cents/kWh, & third tier was low 40 cents/kWh. Last year they lowered the top of tier 1 by about 130 kWh. rather than obviously raise tier rates a lot. New rates went into effect this year. I tried to find the new tier rates 7 wasn't too successful. I did find a rate chart for residential with the first two tier rates, but I'm not sure about accruacy. But the first tier rate was listed as 45 cents/kWh, 7 the second tier rate was listed as 57 cents/kWh. I didn't see a rate for the third tier. I know they more than doubled the rate for natural gas, and I'm assumiing they use a lot for gneration, so an increase can be expected. Maybe their wholesale rate for electricity has risen from two to four cents to four to six cents.

Love some of the experts here to chime in…

Right here, dude. It's still a false economy without the gov't. subsidies and it's barely a good deal with them. We might save $150-300/yr and that's mostly because of the new a/c we installed after we went solar. If it can't survive in Phoenix without the subsidies, it's a false economy everywhere else.

^ the reason it works for me is because we get reamed by Pacific Gas and Electric in N CA. In summer my electric was $400 a month because of the AC. Now it's $10.49. Solar isn't a viable choice if your not getting screwed by the supplier

After a dozen of solar companies came out to farm, Sunrun came with a EE. He told us we where not a candidate for solar house and shop facing east and west some how my Moronic Brother signed up a lease for my 90yr Dad with sunrun panels on roof of house and shop, Just seems criminal, panels have been up less than a week? I'm pissed off @ sunrun!! Is this Legal?

I spoke to my lawyer about it and said he sees this all the time.
The contract is legal and proving that they took
unfair advantage of an elderly person is tough,
especially when they have more lawyers.
You basically have to prove mental incompetence on
the part of the lessee at the time of signing and that
the lessor knew about the vulnerability and took advantage of it.
Another angle is if the sales snake provides
details that are not accurate in the sales pitch.
Hard to prove without recordings, and they are careful
of what they put into writing.

IMO it all stinks but when portions of an industry are in bed with the
power companies and are generous contributors to
political campaigns, the odds are against the consumer.

What they don't want is a lot of negative publicity
to scare away future customers.

No unfortunately. HOA.

Marv, utilities are required by law to provide accurate and complete rate information to the public. Doesn't mean it's easy to find on their site, but one thing utilities really don't want to do is run afoul of the PUC.

Edit: Here's the link to current SDG&E electric & gas rates:

https://www.sdge.com/rates-and-regulations/current-and-effective-tariffs

Rate sheets ('tariff' in CA, apparently) are regulatory documents and not really written in consumer-friendly language. I can help decipher some of them if you have a specific question.

Solid observations, Greg. And deschodt also touches on a couple more gems, like quality of siting/installation (especially re: water intrusion & wind damage), and properly sizing your system -- not just for your use, but generation vs storage (get enough battery).

One observation I'd add is that a savvy shopper will research the various time-of-use (TOU) rates offered by their utility. Knowing rates is important, but what's really important is to understand when the peak, off-peak, winter, summer, etc. rates shift over and how those overlay your daily solar production and your patterns of use. This will help you figure out how much storage you need and when, for example, you might want to run equipment like pool pumps that don't necessarily need to be on a daily schedule like AC. The switchover points between rates are designed not to help consumers but to help the utility smooth out (remove the peaks and valleys) of energy demand by disincentivizing use during peak times.

Also, several of you have mentioned using batteries to draw electricity from the grid at night using off-peak rates and either supplementing solar during the day or selling back the excess to the utility at on-peak times. This is essentially energy arbitrage, and IMHO conceptually, potentially a good idea. The customer gets a smaller bill and the utility benefits from extra storage capacity on its system that customers pay for.

Technically possible, and works for the benefit of a single customer but scaling up that opportunity isn't likely to be broadly implemented though. The utility needs to be able to monitor and, more importantly, predict how much of this stored energy will be released back to the grid at any given moment. This is incredibly difficult and complex. From a system perspective, residential rooftop solar is incredibly complex and inefficient; adding residential storage into that mix would make the monitoring and predicting the combined inflow/outflow of energy an order of magnitude more troublesome. Again, from a systems perspective, large-scale installations on commercial properties (like those giant distribution warehouses) are far more efficient and allow every customer -- not just owners of single-family residences -- to benefit.

Can you explain why it is inefficient? It seems having extra generating capacity during the day when use is at its peak would tend to level the peaks and valleys of generator demand and aid efficiency of the system.

After starting all this and reading replies, I made an excel spreadsheet of my bills, before and after. Before being just PG&E, after being a combo of residual PGE bill (gas and access to the grid) + the solar company bill. The year this kicked in, my PGE bill went like 500-450-420 to 90-41-19-28 - LOL.... But I also pay the solar co !

This year is my first being on solar and the system only came on mid June, so halfway thru the year. Even so my yearly bill went something like this:
2018: $2200
2019: $3200
2020: $3400
2021: $3500
2022 - half solar $3100 - (3400 minus $300+ of credits still on my account to be paid off or applying to 2023, no clue when my true up is, guessing june)

So not a huge savings yet - 10% - but half a year only and still relying on natural gas for heater and water heater, and you know how expensive gas went this year, it's been 90% of my PGE bills.

If I switch over to all electrical over time I think I will see more savings, gas was killer this year. I also missed out on solid April-June production months (making way more than I use) and at least partial generation Jan-March (making 50 to 80% of usage).

Finally I'll repeat that I did not do this so much for the savings but a) to be able to use my A/C in summer whenever, guilt free - which we certainly did b) to get a battery backup, which has already been good 2 or 3 times for small outages. Added bonus is a predictable bill, say low 200s ea month vs big fluctuations from $160-$500

This all started for me a few years back when PGE cut power to us for over a week when they started that fire in Sonoma county with downed powerlines. One day is fine, one week is not acceptable. With solar panels recharging our battery 100% during summer days, we'd have been fine with the grid down indefinitely. Also I see PGE rates going upwards fast, and we do get a lot of sun and no trees interfering. That said points above about leasing are valid and I wish I would have bought the system, it was simply too expensive for me to do so at that size...

Lots of interesting stuff in this thread, folks!

We're not currently looking at solar, but it's been in the back of my wife's mind for a while. I don't think it's very useful for us right now for several reasons, but more education/knowledge is always a good thing.