I actually appreciate this article. I’m not near where I need to be to invest in solar, but the details of the corporate fuckery that goes on in rooftop solar providers is helpful to learn.
Yeah, I had a pushy door to door salesman shove a tablet in my face telling me that the solar "purchase" would be completely free. I'm interested in solar but know "free" always has a catch and told him to pound sand. I checked it out later that day and the website for the company he represented (I forget which) and they started nothing "free" about it.
I did learn that solar is quite expensive, from the install process to the leasing of equipment. And very little to no information is available regarding repair of the panels, from malfunction to hail damage. And what happens if it's time to redo shingles on your roof? No idea, but I'm sure the salesmen will tell you something along the lines of "it's covered" or "don't worry about it right now". Well that's the way my brain works. I plan for long term and think of any obscure variables that may come along the way.
There's also the ROI on solar. When you purchase or lease the panels it takes about 10 years before you can actually see a benefit in your bank account.
I'd love to go solar, but until it's actually affordable and makes sense I can't bring myself to pull the trigger. Maybe in 2030 when the US's current tax incentive is due to expire I may take another look.
I got a 25 year 0% loan for my solar panels and installed them after replacing the roof so their lifespan is about the same. I put $0 downpayment. My monthly cost for the solar loan now is less than what I paid monthly for electricity before and I’m generating 3-4x what I used to consume (on average).
I see several benefits: more electricity for less money, cooler house since heat on that side where the panels are installed never touches the roof now, value of the home for resale is higher (and the solar loan is transferable), you get to pay a steady price for electricity every month so you don’t have to overbudget in case of high-use months in summer, inflation works for you (the monthly payment is the same in Dollar amount but the dollar is devalued over time), and you don’t have to worry about electricity companies raising your rates.
The caveats/downsides that I’ve become aware of: the solar installer salesmen like to push the fact that you’ll get a huge tax rebate but don’t tell you the details (more on this below), getting an unsecured “solar loan” comes with a huge security fee they add on top of the base price (around 30% in my case), repair costs for damages.
Tax credit details: this only applies to the federal rebate, and you’ll need to check if your state has an additional one. For the federal rebate, it is true that you get a huge refund. I got about 26% of the install cost back as a tax credit. However, for those of you unfamiliar with tax credits… this does not necessarily mean you’ll get it all back in your next tax filing. If you only had $5k withheld in taxes for the year but you are expecting to get back $7k as a refund because you have a $7k solar tax credit, you will be disappointed. You will only get back $5k. The government will not give you back more than was withheld for the year. However, the extra $2k will roll over to the next year so you will eventually get the full tax credit. Just be aware of this before you go crazy and spend $50k on a huge solar system expecting to recoup a bunch come tax season. It may not work out for you. Plan accordingly.
I highly recommend getting a traditional loan or paying fully up front instead of a solar loan because you will save a ton of money on it overall, but then you will be in the red for a few years before you begin to break even, as you mentioned. Solar loans are convenient because you get to see those savings start immediately in the first month, but in the long run you’ll pay more.
My system came with a warranty on parts (make sure it covers the hub, microinverters, and panels). I had one panel and several microinverters go bad in the first couple months or were defective. These were all replaced for free. It’s been about 2 years now and I had no further problems. Home insurance typically does not cover solar but you can get an additional policy to cover them. In my case, it was not worth the money. I live in Florida so the only risk to my panels is hurricanes and they don’t really damage panels as I’m not in a high impact area. We have already been hit by a Cat 4 and Cat 5 hurricane since installing our panels and have not had any damage. For hail damage, that’s something to consider and definitely research. I can’t advise you on that.
Speaking of weather, another consideration is snow. Solar panels heat themselves enough to melt snow so that’s not an issue, but the additional weight on the roof needs to be considered, and some places have laws that state that roofs with solar panels need additional guard rails installed to break up sheets of snow and ice that may slide in hige sheets off of the panels. This is thankfully something I didn’t have to worry about.
Something else to consider is that you either need to fork out tons of money for batteries or you’ll still need to be connected to the grid, which means you still won’t have power to your home if the grid goes down. This is an important consideration if you’re planning to get solar to protect from an unreliable grid (like in Texas). It also may not be worth being connected to the grid unless you have net metering available. I do, which made it an attractive option for me, and that’s what I went with. I’m hoping that big battery costs decrease enough in the next decade to add a battery to my home to use for emergencies like during natural disasters.
Overall, I am very happy with my solar system, even moreso now that I have an EV as well. Electricity costs me nothing, and now I’ve cut out gas cost for 1 vehicle too. I hope this information helps you in your decisions.
That's definitely a help, thanks for the details! The description of your plan sounds more along what was a available to us, but I'm currently paying off a 401k loan until 2027 so any huge project would need to wait for sure. I'm in Ohio and a few houses in my neighborhood already have solar, and we do get hail about twice a year here. I'd also want batteries as our neighborhood gets brownouts a couple of times a year too and that would help with it.
I also appreciate how you explained how the tax credit works too. I'm hopeful to do something before they expire it, and I'm also hoping they don't end it early!
If it makes you feel better, the current cost of a battery that would last a day with reduced electricity use (like just fridge and some HVAC) is about the same that it would cost to buy a gas powered generator for the same purpose. So is not exactly impractical, but it is not cheap either.
That is all nice, but I’m not good with taxes or math, so how long will it take you to pay the system off, and what happens if you need to move before you pay off that loan?
I have a 25 year loan so it will take 25 years to pay it off. But that isn’t really a problem because if I didn’t have the solar loan, I would still be paying more money every month to the electric company instead of the loan company.
If I have to move before the loan is paid off, I can transfer it to the new owners when they buy the house, or simply raise the price of the house when I sell it and pay off the solar loan then, just as I would be paying off the remainder of the mortgage.
As more of anything is out there, more will be for sale used, but how badly will anyone want them? They degrade over time and installing is a huge cost. How much are you willing to pay for mismatched used solar panels from a 15 year old system?
Might be interesting for a “do it yourself” project, from someone after retirement who has enough land space. But only if the price is low enough.
New panels without installation goes for what now ? Maybe $1 or $2 per peek Watts ? I would say 10% to 20% of the new panel price would be interesting.
More like 60 cents. Installing/connecting the panels generally costs far more than buying them even if it’s a DIY job (which, seriously, it shouldn’t be. You could get someone killed).
Also the modern panels tend to produce more power per square foot than panels made just a year or two ago. And they often come with a warranty between 25 and 40 years which you won’t get secondhand.
I could see a certified refurbished market someday but secondhand panels are hard to sell. When I’ve bought them I’ve paid about ten bucks or so (and that was just for hobby projects - the ones on the roof of my house? Bought those ones new).
Why buy new, when you can just trade it in for a new model in a few millennia? You know a solar system loses 20% of its initial value just by driving it off the lot?
Technically, they lose about 20% of their generation capacity within a few hours of first exposing them to sunlight. It's one of those weird quirks that researchers have been trying to solve for decades.
Also, they tend to lose the rest of their generation capacity over decades, not millennia. The industry standard is for a panel to be able to produce 80% of installed capacity after 25 years.
They also predict a 12% chance that the Solar System will be ejected from the new galaxy sometime during the collision. Such an event would have no adverse effect on the system and the chances of any sort of disturbance to the Sun or planets themselves may be remote.
“We” may be able to explore the cosmos without leaving home.
A team at NREL found evidence for the cause of this a couple years ago. It’s something to do with interaction between the boron and the oxygen content within the silicon cells. If it holds up, hopefully we’re on the road lessening the degradation over time.
Jesus. The initial transient used to be about 3%, but now is under 1% for most product being sold. It was never near 20%.
But that doesn’t stop idiots from saying “we have optimizers” and installing them in the shade or facing north and acting surprised when they underperform.
that actually reminds me of a thing from a scifi book I listened to where they took some low acceleration but powerful planet moving tech and smashed two decently sized planets into the enemies sun from opposite sides, by the time they got the planets to the sun they where moving as close to the speed of light as they could get them so the effect was pretty brutal
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