Reporter's Notes: Getting Paid to Go Solar
To go solar or not to go solar? Homeowners looking to save money on their energy bills have a number of factor to consider.
It's easy to get excited about installing solar panels on your house – particularly when you find out that state and federal rebates can cut the price almost in half.
But, as we've reported before, you might get more bang for your buck from far cheaper (and yes, far less exciting) fixes. Small things like weather stripping your doors, turning down the thermostat or upgrading your refrigerator, can put a dent in your utility bills.
Even if you've done all that, solar panels still might not pencil out. That's because of something called "tiered pricing", which is how most utilities calculate your monthly energy bills. The idea is that energy is relatively cheap as long as you stay within a certain amount. Exceed that, and you're in the next "tier," where the rate increases. At the next tier, the rate is even higher. The difference between top tier and bottom pier can be as much as 44 cents versus 8 cents per kilowatt hour.
That's why solar panels tend to make more sense for people with substantial energy needs – the big, air-conditioned houses, the heated pools, the multiple flat-screen TVs.
The higher your monthly utility bills without solar panels, the faster those panels will pay for themselves once they're installed. Plus, even if those panels don't meet the complete energy needs of your house, they may be enough to bring you down to a lower tier, where the rate is much better.
If you're interested in making your home more energy efficient, this handy and comprehensive online audit from the people at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs is a good place to start.
7 Comments
I came here to re-hear the solar panel piece, but when I click on it I hear a piece on state parks. Is there a broken link?
The main thing I wanted to hear again was the name of the company providing 5kW of panels for $35k, $20k after incentives. That's about half the price after incentives I was quoted when I looked into it last year. I want to look into it!
Thanks for a great report – it may lead to at least one more green home in the Bay Area!
-Fred
Your radio piece said check the website for a link to help explore whether "your house" is a good candidate for solar. I checked the website, no link. Any hints?
Hi Fred:
Sorry for the bad link, it has been fixed. The company mentioned is Akeena Solar. Thanks!
The link was posted in the blog, but it should indeed be more prominent. I will make sure it's more obvious. it's called The Home Energy Saver, provided by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:
http://hes.lbl.gov/
Hi Albert:
Sorry, I should have been clearer here. From a financial stanpoint, the question is: how soon will those solar panels pay for themselves, in terms of reduced energy bills? Because of "tiered pricing," people who live in small houses with modest energy needs will spend much longer paying off their panels than people with big, energy-guzzling homes.
This Solar Calculator will tell you how quickly you'll make back the money you spent on your PV system.
(For me, it's 16 years, which is probably less time than I'll own my house. So, again from a strictly financial standpoint, I'm probably better off making cheaper weatherization fixes around the house than investing in expensive PV panels.)
There are a number of practical and financial questions about residential solar installations that I never seem to be able to find the answer:
1. What is the expected life span of the solar panels and controllers?
2. What happens if the roof that the panels are installed on needs replacement?
3. What proportion of the installation costs are recaptured when the property is sold?
Today, California home owners with sunny southwest facing roofs are seeing an average payback on their solar power system (total installed system cost) between 5 – 8 years by offsetting their electric utility demand and therefore reducing or eliminating their electricity bills on month one of them getting their solar power system installed and turned on. By going solar today, home owners are able to lock-in their electricity savings the first month they go solar with the fixed cost of their solar installation and are able to continue to increase their electricity savings for decades while their solar power system produces clean, renewable power from their home.
To answer Jim's questions:
1) Andalay Solar panels (currently exclusively installed by Akeena Solar in California) carry a 25-year warranty for the laminates and have an expected production life span of 30+ years. Andalay AC has a micro-inverter built into each panel and carries a 15-year warranty whereas central inverters tend to carry warranties that range from 5 – 10 years. For any warranty issues you can call us 888.253.3628 and we will come out and replace the system part.
2) If the roof needs to be replaced in the near term then the home owner should not have their solar power system installed before replacing their roof. Akeena Solar performs free solar evaluations to evaluate when the home owners’ roof will need to be replaced and consider the roof life span with the solar power system life span. For roofs that do need to be replaced after a solar power system has been installed, the costs include but aren’t limited to, the labor involved with uninstalling & reinstalling the solar power system. Because Andalay AC has built-in racking, wiring, grounding and micro-inverter it has 80% fewer parts and can be installed in half the time of ordinary solar systems therefore carrying a lower cost to uninstall and reinstall.
3) An Andalay AC Solar Power System increases the value of a home, similar to the increased value a home owners realizes when they invest in other additions to their home. Solar electric power systems reduce the amount of electricity a home needs to purchase from the utility and therefore decreases the electricity load and costs that a new homeowner would have to absorb, providing value to a home with solar.
Christopher Earl
Marketing Manager
Akeena Solar
888.253.3628 | Akeena.com
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