Anybody gone solar? (e.g. SolarCity)

shoeless

shoeless

Riffin'
I've been seeing more and more solar panels showing up on roofs in my area. SolarCity has been advertising quite a bit around here too. Basically it looks like they'll install and maintain the panels at not up-front cost, and they become your electric company.

My house is oriented pretty well for solar (southern exposure). I may have them come give me a quote. Anyone else make the transition to solar energy? Anything I should be wary of?
 
I have not done it, so take that into consideration, but from what I've learned, it's a lot of money up front that will eventually pay for itself, as you use less from your utility. There's maintenance to be aware of as well, batteries, controllers etc.
 
My house would be perfect for solar panels, and we looked into it when we first moved in.

Even with rebates and kick-backs, it was a tremendous amount of up-front money (I think it was like $70K or something outrageous).....
 
We are looking at it. There is a local group assisting with it, and we are going to take a look at the numbers to see if it makes sense for us.
 
I want to do it, but it seems the only programs around here are the "we'll pay you to allow us to put our stuff on your roof"
The electricity utility that you have now is still your utility.
The idea is that the money you make on "renting" out your rooftop offsets your electricity bill to some degree.

The only problem that I have with that is that there is no control over what the utility will charge. We've had two substantial rate hikes in the last few years. One because we conserved too much energy and the utility didn't make enough money...

I want to be pumping back to the grid as much as possible, or be off grid all together.
That's possible here, but it is expensive.
 
there is a developer in my area that has built an entire subdivision (25 LARGE lots) where the roof shingles ARE solar panels. granted, they're pretty up scale houses, but he claims (and his house is one of them) that he's SELLING electricity back to the electric company every month. (ohio law requires edison to buy it back....it's adding to the grid....or somthing). the shingles are pretty darn tough. he had a display in the model home and i believe him.
 
mongooz said:
there is a developer in my area that has built an entire subdivision (25 LARGE lots) where the roof shingles ARE solar panels. granted, they're pretty up scale houses, but he claims (and his house is one of them) that he's SELLING electricity back to the electric company every month. (ohio law requires edison to buy it back....it's adding to the grid....or somthing). the shingles are pretty darn tough. he had a display in the model home and i believe him.
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That's pretty cool actually. My only concern would be if a decent sized hail storm came and obliterated some of the panels. Would insurance cover that?

I guess another concern is what I've read about the folks down in Utah (I think), where they installed solar panels and the state (with the recommendation of the local power company) is basically taxing people more for using solar panels. Down is up scenario.
 
I have solar on my house, but it was already there when I bought the place. Unfortunately my local utility (SDG&E) doesn't pay you for generating more than you use and you still have to be hooked to the grid and they charge you $10 a month for that. The only time I use more than I generate is laundry day. So since they won't pay me for the extra juice I generate, I run my AC with reckless abandon on hot days.
 
I would (and they call me incessantly) but we have too many trees and our available sun on the property moves around accordingly (causing my wife major gardening grief).
 
My brother in law is considering it. He lives in SoCal, and his house is positioned great for it. He has a friend who installs them and he told him, he could get it done for around $10k. He is thinking about getting a Tesla, so he would eliminate his electric bill and he would have no cost to fuel his car.
 
I've looked into it as there is a lot around here but it doesn't make economic sense for us. There are some calculators out there you can use to see if it works for you. Take the ones from solar installers with a grain of salt. Generally my electrical bills are sub $50 currently so the payoff would be on the order of the lifetime of the system. It would be nice to be able to crack the AC in the hot days (like today) and not have to worry about the electrical bill going sky high but for the upfront money it just doesn't compute
 
My Wife is a realtor. The issue she runs into is most of the systems are long term leases where you pay a monthly fee but you're locked into a twenty year lease. Arizona Power Service has decided to start charging people for the connection to their system. In some areas it's now costing residents more monthly than it did prior to the installation of their solar.
 
Chad said:
My brother in law is considering it. He lives in SoCal, and his house is positioned great for it. He has a friend who installs them and he told him, he could get it done for around $10k. He is thinking about getting a Tesla, so he would eliminate his electric bill and he would have no cost to fuel his car.
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That would be cool. We are sunny most of the time. We do have snow on our roof in the winter, so would need to know how that works. But people do it. Idaho Power is trying to make it hard for folks, and have been moving to get laws changed so they don't have to buy the power generated. Specifically, they are trying to get out of buying it according to a prices set in a 20 year contract.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/...gs/letters-from-the-west/article40858674.html



I am not a big Idaho Power fan. They seem to oppose breaching old dams to save salmon runs, dams that don't help much, oppose alternative energy saying they don't want to have to buy it, yet use both coal and natural gas produced power, and are proposing another natural gas plant. Tesla is developing home energy storage batteries, and apparently has batteries that would help a guy go off the grid completely. I want to figure out the numbers, but even if I couldn't sell power to IP, I would love to go off their grid.
 
sunvalleylaw said:
Tesla is developing home energy storage batteries, and apparently has batteries that would help a guy go off the grid completely
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I have heard theories that the battery technology is Elon Musk's real end game, not electric cars. The electric cars are just a way to subsidize development of affordable super battery technology.

While I tend to not believe this, I have to admit that affordable super batteries coupled with cheap solar panels could effect a huge global change for the better. And that seems like something Musk would shoot for.
 
GomezAddams said:
I have heard theories that the battery technology is Elon Musk's real end game, not electric cars. The electric cars are just a way to subsidize development of affordable super battery technology.

While I tend to not believe this, I have to admit that affordable super batteries coupled with cheap solar panels could effect a huge global change for the better. And that seems like something Musk would shoot for.
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While the battery tech is cool, I wouldn't say it will help the environment that much. If you research what it takes to get the minerals needed for those batteries it does a great deal of harm to the environment. Right now China is the only country that is mining these minerals because they don't give a shit about the ecology of their country.
 
TomcatMF said:
While the battery tech is cool, I wouldn't say it will help the environment that much. If you research what it takes to get the minerals needed for those batteries it does a great deal of harm to the environment. Right now China is the only country that is mining these minerals because they don't give a shit about the ecology of their country.
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And yeah, that is a tough one. I keep hoping as the tech develops, some alternatives to using those harmful minerals will emerge.
 
Too many "gotchas" in the leases from these solar companies. No landlord termination rights of any kind, no negotiable lease terms at all in fact.
 
I used to live next to a place that installed panels, and did hvac work. They had 2 panels on the roof, and a rotating windmill that looked like a plane (pretty cool). The guy said enough power was produced to juice the whole building, which was about 2000 sq ft. This in Michigan too where we get a fair amount of clouds.
 
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