We've Gone Solar!

We've Gone Solar!

I'll take a break from posting our vacation pictures to talk about something we did last year - adding solar panels to our home. 

I'm just going to go through our experience from start to finish and make some observations in case you're thinking about it. First off, we started considering it at least a year before we actually pulled the trigger. If you go on-line and fill out one of those "Is solar right for me?" type things, your phone will ring off the hook with companies wanting to come out and sell you on it. We ended up talking to four different companies - two actually had someone come out and two didn't. They all made recommendations and proposals and they were pretty similar price-wise. 

There are a lot of reasons to go solar. I'm cool with renewable energy and all, but I told every salesman that this was strictly a financial decision. If it made $$ sense I would do it. If not, nope.

It was initially confusing. There are government rebates and you have to try to figure out your ROI (return on investment) so I kind of put it on the back burner for a while. 

Eventually, one of the companies that I had talked to began full court pressing me so I started thinking about it again. I tried asking on my neighborhood Facebook page if anyone who had gone solar was willing to talk to me, but the only people that responded were folks that had looked into it and decided not to do it. 

I decided just to analyse it myself and make a decision: 

Was our property right for solar?

Oh yeah! We have tons of roof line with much of it facing south. We have no tree coverage of those roof areas and we get lots of sun being on the Texas coast. We also have electricity providers that will do net metering. If you're looking into solar, this is very important. I won't get into it here, but net metering basically means they will buy energy from you as you produce it just like they sell it to you. I'll cover more on this later.

Were we a good candidate for solar?   

Yes, as it turns out. We are heavy electric users. The more electricity you use, the more solar makes sense for you. I generally don't talk money on posts, but I kind of have to here. Our average electric bill over 12 months was about $630 per month. That's over $7500 per year. That's not insignificant. We are also planning to stay in our current home for the foreseeable future. If you think you're moving soon, it probably doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money on solar panels.

Was the ROI reasonable?

It's always hard to tell for sure, but you have to do the math as best you can. A solar system isn't cheap. We put a massive system in with 104 panels (they're LG 335s if you're wondering). That's a 34.84 kW system that should produce 47,574 kWh annually - basically about what we were using. To be net electricity independent, this was the size we needed to go with. I talked to folks that had put small systems on their home and still had an electric bill, albeit a reduced one. If I was going to do it I wanted to be 100% solar.

Panels will cost you about $1000 each with a system completely installed. There are variations from company to company of course, but they were all in that ballpark. We got a little break so let's just call it $100,000 to install the system out the door to make the math easy. Now if you're doing the math ahead you would say that we were paying about $7500 annually for electric and we spent $100,000 to make that go away so it will take a little over 13 years to see our ROI. But wait - there's a government tax credit! The federal government gave us a 30% tax credit to install solar through 2019 (it's dropped to 26% for 2020 I believe). That's huge! So now our solar system cost us $70,000 (when we pay our taxes this year - I'll update if there are any issues). Now it's just a little over 9 years ROI. But wait - the cost of electricity goes up a little every year but ours won't. It's impossible to know exactly where our ROI will be but our entire system is warrantied for 25 years (more on that later as well).

There's also another factor to consider - the increase in property value. It's hard to say how much solar panels add to a homes value - every system is different. HAR says that maybe every 30 panels adds like $15K in value. Another national statistic I read said something like solar raises a homes value by an average of 4.1%. A Berkeley Lab study says each watt is worth $3. For me that would mean I've added $104,520 of value to my home! I think that's stretching it a bit, but the point is there is value to putting them on if we ever decide to sell.

We decided to do it. 

Picking a company:

This turned out to be really hard. Of the four companies we initially got bids from, there was one that was smaller and local and they just couldn't match the price of the other larger national companies. It ultimately came down to Sunpro v GreenSolar for us. There are differences in technology - and they'll all make a compelling case for which is best - but ultimately we decided to go with....

The pricing was pretty much the same, and both companies offered a 25 year parts and labor warranty on everything. What set Sunpro apart were three things really:

1. They also are a roofing company so they offer a 25 year warranty against any damage or leaking on the roof and install.
2. They have this Energypro thing which means they give you a bunch of stuff and also come out and do things to make your home more efficient. For us they wrapped one of our hot water heaters and added an attic tent. They also leak checked our home and gave us 64 LED light bulbs and some other stuff like a Nest thermostat. In the end it really wasn't a big deal but it was a good selling differentiator. 
3. The most important to me was that they offer a 25 year Power Production Guarantee. Basically, they guarantee that your system will produce what it's supposed to annually and if it doesn't they will pay you double the difference in cash. Nobody else was even close to this. We'll see if I need it and if I do how they are about paying up. I hope I never have to find out. 

Installation:

After we picked Sunpro they came out and mapped out the panel placement on the roof - they even used a drone. Then an engineer draws up the plans and you approve them. Then you have to wait for the city to sign off on everything.

A crew then came out and trenched from our breaker panel to our guest house - by hand. They said it was the longest they've ever had to trench for a home.

Eventually it's install day. In our case it was about 12 guys in four trucks and they got it all done in a day.

Then the electricians get everything wired in and they fill back in the trench. 

Then you wait. You need the city to come out and sign off on the install and then you need the power company to approve everything and come put in a special meter and tell you it's okay to flip the switch.

We got this pretty quick, but it took a while for Texas New Mexico Power to sign off on their end. Once they did we flipped the switch and boom - we're solar baby!

We switched our energy provider to Green Mountain Energy because they were by far the best for our area. They do dollar for dollar on buying wattage - basically they pay us exactly what they charge us for each watt that we send to the grid. 

So how's it going so far? Well, we started it up in October and to this point we, like the United States for the first time ever, are a net energy exporter. I haven't paid an electric bill since October and we are building up a credit with Green Mountain, which we'll need in the summer to offset our increased usage. BTW - They won't actually write you a check for the energy you sell them. The only way to get paid for your credit is to leave for another provider. I'm not doing that, but I hope it's an issue some day.

Sunpro was great during the sales process and even better during the install and startup process. They've been good after the fact with my only concern that they're a little slow to respond when I call them with an issue. I've had a couple and left messages with my contact and didn't hear back and then had to call the main number. Once they talk to me they've been great about fixing minor issues. We had a small roof leak which they took care of immediately and had some issues getting the Enphase monitoring system to send data so we could track how everything is working and they have fixed that as well. 

I would recommend Sunpro if you're going to look into solar...and you should look into solar if you're staying in your home for a while. It makes sense. I'm happy to talk to anyone that's considering it as well.