We tend to move every 2–3 years. We also tend to hate paying our local utility anything. This has led to us to put in solar at a house, move, and then put in solar again. We’ve just finished putting a solar array on our house for the 3rd time. You might think we wasted a lot of money by putting in solar and then moving, but as you’ll find below, this hasn’t born out to be true.
We’re lucky to live in Colorado where we have over 300 days of sun. Coupled with politics that have put pressure on utility providers to modernize for alternative energy, Colorado is the perfect place to make solar work.
Here are 6 things we learned along the way:
- No one tells you this, but your property value gets a nice bump once you have solar.
Our houses with solar sold for noticeably more than identical or similar houses that didn’t have solar. Along the way we got a few years of no cost power out of it, received a federal tax credit of 30% of the install cost, and still got our money back on the sale of the house! So has solar been worth it for us? Cha-ching! - Leasing solar often makes the company money but doesn’t give you much other than a warm and fuzzy that you have solar.
Each time we put in solar we talked to many vendors to get the best price and setup for our situation. Almost all vendors like to pitch their leases. When you take a look at the leases, the company makes out great while you get little benefit and are saddled with a lease that you need to transfer when you sell your house. All three times we looked at leases and all three times they just weren’t even comparable to the value you’d get buying, so we bought the panels outright instead. - Costs are coming down while energy costs rise making payback periods shorter.
Each time we’ve bought solar we have been able to buy a larger system for less cost than the previous system. At the same time, energy prices are rising sharply in Colorado making the investment even more worthwhile. The relevant comparison is what you pay for solar now vs what you pay for energy costs over the next 25 years, taking into account the sharp rise in energy prices and small drop in panel efficiency. This is making payback periods in Colorado around 7-8 years. Considering item #1 above, this makes going solar a no brainer. - You can negotiate.
For our last install we used EnergySage, which is a portal for homeowners to put up their project and get bids on it. We submitted our project and received 4 bids. Even after tweaking the bids to be a bit more specific, we were able to play the bidders off each other and get another 6% off the total cost. Installers charge roughly 50% for materials and 50% for labor/profit. Thus, like everything else, there is room to squeeze them a little if you can make them want your business. - You can also save money by value engineering.
What many installers won’t tell you is that you can value engineer your setup a bit. Installers will often quote the highest efficiency panels currently available for your design. This generally means that you get the most power generation per panel, which is a good thing. However, this often comes at a steep price premium. What we’ve found is that if you install panels with high, but not the highest efficiency, you can usually get a nice price break. This sometimes means you need to add 1–2 panels, and your overall degradation rate may increase slightly, but the reduction in panel cost is worth it and you’re still getting a great, high efficiency panel. - The biggest benefit is thought-free, worry-free, cost-free power.
With solar there is nothing for you to do. You just sit there, check your app occasionally to see how much power you’re generating, and chuckle to yourself about how nice it is not to pay an electric bill. That’s it. It feels very freeing to not have to pay the utility bill every month.
The economics here, which I’ll do a separate post on another time, are basically that if you buy your panels you pay the full cost upfront for what should be 25 years or so of solar panel production. Solar panels do lose efficiency over time so you need to take that into account when you size your system. However, with a little math you can find your payback period for consideration. Also, if you happen to be handy you can install it yourself and save a bundle.
If you can afford the upfront cost, solar is one of the easiest investments you will ever make. If it’s daytime in Colorado while you read this, chances are my panels are generating power right now.
