In a perfect world I'd buy my own panels and sell the excess electric myself buy that's more than I can spend in the near future. If I'm understanding the info they sent me with Solar City I let them put the panels on my roof. The own and maintain them and I buy the power at a reduced rate. Has anyone tried them? Has it work like they say? Any problems?
They call my house a lot.
A friend of mine of mine works for them in Bend, OR. Don't know anything else about them though, but I could ask.
Search for Solar City reviews online, quite a few unhappy customers. Not sure I would go with them, check them out before hand.
If you lease the roof to them (which is what it sounds like, rather than you leasing the panels from them), what's going to happen if you decide to sell the place?
BoxheadTim wrote: If you lease the roof to them (which is what it sounds like, rather than you leasing the panels from them), what's going to happen if you decide to sell the place?
The lease is transferrable, and it's a selling point, to have the reduced electric costs.
And yes, if you look them up online there are a few complaints. Just like for any other larger business.
My concern would be that it'd potentially restrict the number of buyers somewhat.
I just put in solar at my place last year. I checked out solar city and a few others and there was no way I could make the numbers work for a lease.
We had to have a huge array (44 270w panels) to offset our needs (electric heat) that had a total price of $47k-ish. Due to state and government grants, we ended up paying about 25k total. The monthly payments now for the loan are less than what our average electric bill was, and when we pay it off, we'll have zero cost.
If we went with solar city, we'd end up with a ~50% reduction on our electric bill, it wasn't really worth it to us.
That said, I don't know what grants are available to you in NY (that's where you live, right?) I do know that by shopping around local installers, I saved ~5k and got better panels.
Edit - Thinking about it, I believe the company I went with services NY, too. I know the sales guy was based out of NJ. Would you like their number?
I'm interested in solar, bit I don't think the sun visits MI enough to make it worth it. Wind maybe...
My wife sold roof top residential solar for a competitor here in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. They are at the Walmart / Target end of the solar industry. You need to set your expectations for quality of installation and service accordingly.
That is not a slam against them. I shop at Target. And when I do, I know where I am. I don't expect a Nieman Marcus customer experience. I think that is the source of a lot of complaints about them.
I don't know enough about the lease deals to comment. This is my wife's realm of expertise. The ins and out vary from state to state. Whether its a good deal is going to depend on how much power you use, what it costs in your area, and what the regulations say about selling excess power.
In reply to WonkoTheSane:
That would be great.
I hadn't thought about grants, I will have to look into them. We don't use a lot of electricity so if we could afford to own them that may make more sense if we could sell the excess power back.
Hey Wally,
I checked with them, and they don't service NY, only CT & NJ. Sorry about that.
I will say that you shouldn't plan on selling anything back to the power company. The deal (at least here in CT) is that you operate on a "Credit" system with the power company. For every 1 KWh that I generate in excess, I get 1 as a credit. If I pull more than I use (like in January/February when I'm using electric heat), then I get to draw from my credits before I buy any back. That means that each credit is "worth" ~$.25.
However, at the end of the year, if there's any excess credits, the power company will only give me fair market value, which means I'm competing with the big coal and nuke plants that generate energy in bulk, and they'll only pay me ~$.05 per KWh.
You can never pay back the cost of a panel making 5 cents/KWh, so don't try. The guy I got my solar from explained that you should set up your system so on the coldest year where you're drawing a lot of power, you might have to pay in 1 or 2 hundred dollars, and on the warmest year, you'll get enough back for a nice dinner or something, anything else is a lost investment.
One thing to look for when you get quoted on panels is to make sure they're setting you up with micro-inverters, which means that each panel gets its' own individual inverter. Solar panels are like batteries, they generate DC energy, so the "circuit" will only generate as much power as the lowest voltage "cell." This means if you go with a string-inverter (where you only have one inverter that all the panels run through), and you have one panel that gets covered up by leaves, damaged, shade, etc. all of the panels operate at that level.
We did work out a fairly good quote with Ross solar group and Earthlight, they were the other two competitors for JD Solar (who we went with).
anytime I see a name of a business with 'city' in it, I can't help but think about the mongolians in southpark.
In reply to WonkoTheSane:
Thanks. I haven't really looked into it much to see how the credits of buying/selling power works. I have some more reading to do to see if it makes sense for us. I hadn't given it much thought until this week but now I'm intrigued by the idea.
I'm not ready to trust the Sun as a reliable source of light and heat...
A waterwheel is probably a better idea at this point.
rcutclif wrote: anytime I see a name of a business with 'city' in it, I can't help but think about the mongolians in southpark.
I think of Spatula City
I really want the numbers to work but after having both Solar City and Sun out to my house to do assessments and give estimates, it just doesn’t currently make sense in my case. Even though I live in Southern California, the last estimated savings came in at only $35 per month.
Personally, I’m not willing to sign away a long term lease on my roof for so little benefit…I just don’t feel comfortable trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong and thoroughly reviewing the contract to ensure I’m protected.
I am installing dual pane, argon filled windows and sliders throughout my house this week, I’ve already got a high efficiency HVAC system, and I’m receptive to getting a whole-house fan so I guess I naturally gravitate towards working on demand side of the equation….add plenty of lightness and all of that.
What sort of lifespan is expected? Assuming no hail storms, heavy winds, tree branches etc, do they last a year? A decade? A century?
Streetwiseguy wrote: What sort of lifespan is expected? Assuming no hail storms, heavy winds, tree branches etc, do they last a year? A decade? A century?
Most warranties guarantee at least 80% power after 25 years. However, I’m involved in HALT (highly accelerated life testing) in my profession and I know it isn’t possible to accurately compress time…the best science can do is take you from complete guessing to educated guessing.
Anecdotally, a significant percent of widow seals fail within their first few years of operation and they receive less direct sun light and have gravity to whisk standing water away.
So, the claims seem a little too optimistic to me.
RX Reven' wrote: I’m involved in HALT (highly accelerated life testing) in my profession and I know it isn’t possible to accurately compress time…the best science can do is take you from complete guessing to educated guessing.
I've always said that companies should test their new products by dropping a few examples off at the firehouse. Talk about Highly Accelerated Life Testing. Firemen can actually compress time. I'd have complete confidence in any product that was Firehouse Tested and actually survived.
Streetwiseguy wrote: What sort of lifespan is expected? Assuming no hail storms, heavy winds, tree branches etc, do they last a year? A decade? A century?
Both my panels and inverters are guaranteed for 25 years, the panels being 80% at that point as mentioned above.
If you go with quality panels, I have no reason to believe they won't make it, solar panels have been in use well over 50 years, it's not like it's brand new tech or anything. And they were originally supposed to be used in really remote places, so I'd guess they were designed for harsher climates than a suburban backyard..
I second the "drop them off at the fire station"idea, but just to see how strong the glass really is.
Mines a ground mount array, and the guys said that a baseball shouldn't be able to damage them.
Rx - Yeah, leasing didn't make sense to me, either. I've got a loan payment now, but at least when that's over, it's mine, but theirs..
Woody wrote: I'd have complete confidence in any product that was Firehouse Tested and actually survived.
This is completely true.
So what's in it for the leasing company? They grab the government subsidy and make out some how? I bet once the subsidies are gone, so are these companies.
Solar E36 M3ty has been hounding us. So I paid a local company to install a 8kwh system. Should be done in a couple weeks.
Screw the big guy. If its going on my roof I want quality and commitment to service. My guy has written guarantees for work AND the panels beyond the manufacturer stuff.
We went with commercial panels made in Germany.
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