Solar Hackr -- Now 2024

On your setup, since you DIYed it, what is the warranty? Is their any stipulation of “licensed installer” or anything? Any additional costs incurred outside of the installation?

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Love it @spockvr6 ! I encourage anyone who’s got the knowledge and willing to do it themselves (calling all engineers) then absolutely do it yourself. You’ll save a little $ as opposed to having a company do it—that being said I know it isn’t for the faint of heart! Everything you said is spot on though, ballast for flat roofs is what I encourage for all the custom homes here too; better heat/cooling coefficient when it’s ballasted as supposed to pitched on the angled roof. The difference is somewhat nominal (pitched roofs still achieve great irradiance).

You guys are saying all the right stuff. I always encourage my customers to shop around; it makes absolutely zero logical sense to just take the first proposal you’re given—you might as well walk into a dealership and lease that $900/month genesis SUV.
Just no way to know you’re getting a proper fair deal for your state without shopping around, solar sales reps will pull all the tricks out of the book the first sit down with them if they’re good salesman.

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@Jesuscookies Agreed on all fronts! Solar can be so cost efficient if you just do what you did. Smart you didn’t take the first deal they gave you.

I can promise you any sales rep knocking your door or you find is leading with an inflated price most likely the first sit down.

Energysage is actually a decent site, it’s a bummer there aren’t more data points for people on solar especially on the internet. That’s mostly because you have one company charging you one price and another charging you the same for far more product. It would be so much easier if there was a national MF rate like for cars

@02cic Yes you basically got it correct. Let’s say you have an extra 30k in upgrades (I know ridiculous) but let’s say you have an entire reroof needed, a main panel upgrade (MPU), 2 power walls for 7k each, and a 25k solar system.

Your tax credit would be 26% of the total scope of work, so $55k would be total and tax credit would be $14,300.

As opposed to just having a roofing company, an electrician, and the solar contractors all doing different projects with their own pricing.

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Mine totalled $16,500 for everything soup to nuts (including permits). After the 30% tax credit (it was 30% at the time) my net was $11,550 for a 12.24 kW rated system.

The warranties on all equipment was the same as if a contractor installed it. One can easily register the equipment online for warranty with date of startup.

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@yellowdog those are great questions! I totally meant to put that in my section at the end so thank you so much for that haha! I’ll add those because I always tell people the same thing, ask the pertinent questions that you asked.

And those in CA do have to worry about MPU’s a bit more. Luckily in Nevada and other states with larger systems most homes already have the right panel :crossed_fingers:t4:. Coincidentally most the homes here are tile in the southwest

I’ll be adding your questions on the section

EDIT: added a few more sections, roofing, ground mounts, and important questions to ask.

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@cyak typically going through a professional installation what would be the range of ROIs?

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@cyak can certainly answer more conclusively, but I can answer for my specific case. Local market (and of course utility rates) will play huge into this, but for my area (Tampa Bay, FL) the cost was a tad more than 2x for a contractor to do the work vs me DIY’ing it for the same basic scope. So, the ROI would have been about twice as long (~9 years rather than ~4.5). I suspect that folks in areas with much higher utility costs can trim this ROI down (as long as the local market does not dictate installation pricing that effectively chews up on the possible savings from the high utility rates).

For a short period, my utility had a very aggressive incentive plan (that the state forced them to do I believe :slight_smile: ) that paid $20 per gross W installed. That means a nominal 10 kW system would receive $20,000 from the utility. But, one had to use one of the pre-vetted solar contractors in the program and curiously when this utility incentive program ended, their costs for some reason magically went down :slight_smile: LOL. In seriousness, much of the utility incentive was simply being passed to the contractors.

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Depends if you’re doing cash or financing. ROI doesn’t really come into play when financing as you’re just using someone else’s money to build equity in something you’re already paying for ie. your utility bill.

Now when it comes to cash I actually had a customer sell their home with it paid off and he said his ROI was around 4 years or 86%. He said he walked away with an extra $30k that he didn’t expect for the house. So take that for what you will.

Now in CA it can be a bit different in the ROI as @spockvr6 said, but in Nevada, FL, AZ it’s almost within the first year or two, after that tax credit that the ROI is noticeable. I tell most people though ROI isn’t really too important if you’re financing as there’s absolutely no money you’re putting up front, you’re just replacing one inflated market rate bill with a locked in (usually) lower rate bill. CA residents I know it’s more mandatory than anything and the ROI can vary from 4-9 years if you pay cash

Florida and Nevada as I stated earlier those states have 100% offset so the savings are a bit more exponential—not to mention Florida charges obscene rates for some people that have Duke and those other providers :face_vomiting:

Something I stress to people is that getting solar right now will lock in your rates and grandfather you in with your states programs. Not to mention it locks in your tax credit for the next 5 years (if for some reason you can’t claim the full amount cough cough realtors; for some reason they always have low tax liability :joy:). You can ALWAYS add to any system if you have roof space, so let’s say you’re like oh man I want to get my use down to zero but we may get a pool and EV’s, then after exactly 1 year you can add to your system if you need more panels.

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I have Duke energy, after all the dust settles it ends up being $.13 per kWh. Certainly not the cheapest around Florida (or the country for that matter), but overall it is not too bad. And honestly, they do not penalize heavy users like many other utilities do with the multi tiered rates.

In my opinion, the rate of return on this can be so high in certain circumstances that, if one can swing it, the only logical approach is to pay for it yourself. When the return on something is really good, you do not want to share it with somebody else :-).

My return was 23-24% in year 1 and steadily increasing year over year. That’s the beauty of solar, unless something goes wrong with your equipment, the decline in output with age appears to always be smaller than the typical increase in utility costs, thus the rising rate of return.

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Same thing happened to me. We sold the house and definitely got more for it because it had the solar on the roof. It’s impossible to say how much more but in the least I’m figuring we got the original cost of the system back, and then all the free power along the way.

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Yeah…Getting paid the retail rate up to your level of consumption is pretty ridiculous. It cannot get any more consumer friendly.

I work for a very large company and we just finished putting a nearly 2 MW system on one of our buildings…same net metering arrangement there too✔️

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Yeah everything you said is pretty much spot on with my experience and my client. The tax credit of 26% basically gives you that return or the equivalent, so the first year is a big return solely for that reason.

Yeah I have done a few in St. Petersburg where my friend who’s a realtor lives; she had a 9.6kW and her bill went from $209 avg to a flat $179 (she actually didn’t have the best credit and she still was able to get it remarkably). The $0.13/kWh is about identical to hers, I think where Duke really nails people is on their surge charge/rate—highway robbery.

Years ago it used to be much tighter parameters on what qualified, they’re learning now that you shouldn’t really need credit for something you HAVE to pay for (aka no one really gets a choice they need power to survive). I hope one day everyone who has a home and pays their bills on time can get Photovoltaic in some form—were years behind other countries on renewables.

I know some people don’t like the Green New Deal, but that will hopefully put the utility companies in check for the future. The fact that some states, mine included, have a monopoly business when monopolies are technically now allowed, makes my head spin lol.

UPDATE I should be uploading a mock proposal for all 19 states; FL, NV, SC, NC, TX, NJ, CA, CO, WA etc… This should allow you guys to fiddle around with price, layout, breakdown of numbers, everything. Hoping I can create an external link for it. This should also allow you to get an idea for your home if you’re in another newer solar state. Added to the system size section to explain what happens when a homeowner hasn’t been in the home at least a year.

Also uploading photos of installs, so people can see the difference between a clean install and a nightmarish one.

If anyone would like a real one for your own home DM me and I can see if I can get one drawn up real fast. It’s partially done by computers so not a big deal to do. That way you’ll have an idea of what to expect

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This was the estimated return I calculated for my system before I installed it. The production was tracking very close to the prediction for the time we owned the house. We no longer live there…so I cant confirm if the trend continued.

This is based on a straight up buy of the system and 3% avg yearly utility cost increases and a 3% loss in capacity for the system year 1, and 0.6% capacity losses for the remaining system useful life.

As one can see…if you can manage to pay for the system up front (and ideally install it yourself), it is a no brainer. The returns are too high to want to share :slight_smile:

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IMO, its not worth doing PV to save something like that per month. (Just my opinion). The added complexities the equipment adds (and one will probably have roofing warranty issues…any problems and the manufacturer will use the solar as a reason for the claim :slight_smile: ) make this a tough decision unless one wants the subjective benefits of turning otherwise unused energy into something useful.

I hate to even state this (as I am an EV fan, PV fan, and general chaser of efficiency in my dayjob), but its the objective reality. Sometimes “soft” reasons need to be invoked.

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Yeah totally understandable, you also have a much greater knowledge than most of this so it probably wasn’t as appealing.

But for most of the general public, the idea of replacing a rental of $200/month with a “mortgage” (solar) of $170/month with no down payment makes all the sense financially. At least it’s $170 of equity and not $200 in the fireplace every month for something they’re already paying for. Not to mention the tax credits, helps federal mandate get met, and the one thing people care the least about I have found, “going green”. For some reason that’s peoples least concern, which is kind of sad lol

For me personally I put it on our roof with a 25 year 1.49% loan, replaced our $120/month bill with an $89/month and Nevada Energy isn’t getting my money anymore. I feel a hell of a lot better paying the principle down every month as opposed to burning my money in a fire; but that’s just how I personally view it. I also don’t have the wherewithal or engineering mind to do it myself. I would screw it up im sure :joy:. While renting may make sense with a lease (for cars), I just feel personally there’s not a good reason to NOT get it unless your roof is horrible for solar and/or you pay such cheap rates it’s negligible (rarely seen this).

Heck I have clients who switch from a $200 bill to one thats increasing their overhead by $50-60 because their roof is so bad they need twice the panels, and they still get it because they feel the equity/asset is worth it. Not to mention most energy companies increase cost by about 4-7% per year. So even after 4-5 years it’s caught up

I am 100% behind solar PV…the only reason I dont have in on our current house is because the 11th fairway is on our backyard and our roof gets hit multiple times per week :frowning: Panels wouldnt last a week without getting broken :frowning: The 2nd reason is that my roof is alot higher now and Im a chicken to get up there!

The other thing for folks to consider is that planned repair $ needs to be set aside for purchased systems that will eat away at the savings over its life. This is why saving something like $30 a month may not make sense. If one needs to replace an out of warranty inverter for $1500, thats 4 years of savings down the tubes.

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I was soooooo lucky. Azimuth 180, no shade…the solar assessment tool (Pathfinder? ) indicated something like 97-98% of theoretical maximum insolation being available.

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Ooof golf course could be little tough depending your location on the course :rofl:. BUT that being said, they can take hail the size of a golf ball at 200 mph and they can generate energy through 3 inches of snow so they’re pretty good today. I could see the concern though if you have any sort of objects launching at them lol. We have a ton of systems in Colorado (one of our largest concentrations of systems) and man am I shocked at how well they hold up over the weather.

In regards to your maintenance needs, that only concerns someone like yourself that did it all themselves. Most companies also have the 25 year warranties. Anytime they need to be replaced it’s not coming out of your pocket, not to mention they aren’t really needing to be replaced that often if at all over the course of 12+ years.

Previously the warranties weren’t great but now most companies have 25 year panel and inverters and all hardware, 10 year roof warranty - at least at the minimum the good solar companies do as a gold standard. The great companies are doing a 25 year production guarantee now; which is great if a system is ever slightly under producing someday or under the guaranteed production, freeee new panels haha.

The MOST you have to worry about is maybe having your panels cleaned off every 9-18 months depending where you live. Out here it’s like $90 and they’ll professionally clean it, little new industry popping up actually. Otherwise you’re really not having to be concerned of anything that serious. Why for me the Pros of having a company do it, peace of mind knowing everything is covered and taken care of, helps me sleep at night; if anything were to ever go awry (bedsides the fact I would have no idea what I’m doing up there and would probably light my house on fire lol). Like the biggest issue out in the southwest is pigeons, why every system I just make sure it’s included don’t even want to deal with that phone call of a nightmare a year down the road.

I would equate what you did to a Chevy bolt one pay lease :fire:; absolute no brainer knock out deal, you got the maximum incentives and everything—one of the (albeit im a bit jealous) people who can pull it off. While people like myself are stuck just doing a 36/15k :joy:

So, I have what seems like probably a silly question. I live in the PNW and particularly around my property have lots of tall, mature evergreen and similar trees that shade a lot of our roof. Do we stand a chance at making good use of solar? I ask this particularly given that we also have like 9 months of cloudy weather…

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If Germany can generate 8% of its electricity by solar…

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