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Does anyone here actually have solar panels on your roof (or anywhere else)? I have Reliant Energy and they have a program in which you can lease the panels and they buy back from you the energy produced. I haven't even called them for information so I am just beginning to investigate the possibility. I was wondering if anyone here has done anything like this?
My company works through programs similar to what your vendor is doing, only on the commercial side. By doing what they're doing they get to take advantage of the 30% Federal Tax Credit and any state, local and/or utility incentives that are available. Those incentives help keep the costs of the installation down. Without them there is almost nowhere in this country that solar would make any (economic) sense to install. The lease idea can work out pretty well if you really want solar, but don't want to fork out the cost of a system up front. If you can afford to buy it outright it will usually be a little bit better deal economically because you will qualify for all the same incentives, but the payoff is still way down the road. Probably over 10 years out and you do have that out of pocket expense. If you have any thoughts of moving any time soon or want to preserve your cash, but still want solar, its probably best to lease.
San Onofre Guy
7-12-12, 6:55pm
They don't make sense for me. My electric bill typically is in the range of $60-$70 per month. When it gets hot and we have to run the A/C which hasn't yet been needed this summer then for August and September it is $100. It would take a long time to pay off for me.
I can never get straight answers about the true lifecycle cost of solar panels.
What do today's solar panels require in the way of energy inputs to manufacture? Including the energy to mine and refine the materials used in their production? And what is the environmental effect of the mining and production?
What is the energy/resource/ecological cost to properly dispose of the panels at their end of life?
I'm in the solar business (in a tertiary sense, anyway) and also can not get a straight answer, bae. My best guess is that they are the Prius of the energy world. Cool, but not all they're cracked up to be if we could see the big picture. For me personally the manufacturing process is the most worrisome part of their production.
What little I do know is that use of the panels does not produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases, but making them does. Nitrogen triflouride, (17,000 times as potent as CO2) and sulphur hexaflouride (the most potent greenhouse gas known) are both used in the manuracturing process. Heavy metals like cadmium, indium, gallium, and selenium are all needed to make panels. As in other electronic manufacturing there is a long list of toxic chemicals used. A big concern there is that so much of the manufacturing takes place in China, which is hardly known for environmental leadership in the disposal of such chemicals.
My gut feeling is that when it comes to using sunlight the simplest answers are by far the best. Unless you're off grid LED lights and extra insulation are probably wiser investments than panels. We should all design our houses to take advantage of the sun to light the interior. We should have windows that let it shine in providing heat during the winter, but are shaded in the summer. Use the sun to grow some of your own food in a garden. Those are all even better than being freebies in environmental terms, they all reduce the need for energy from other sources. Nothing most of us here don't already know.
Wildflower
7-13-12, 2:42pm
My DH has the dream of being off grid and so we checked into getting solar for our small house. It did not make financial sense at all, so obviously we are not getting it. I can see why solar energy companies are going under....
The election provides a funny twist. Guess which party is supported most heavily by the solar industry? If you went against convention and chose the Republicans you would be right. Because the equipment is so expensive the only way anyone can afford, or justify, installing it is because of the subsidy in the form of tax credits. If that were to go away, and there are a lot of folks that feel that it would under a Democratic administration, the industry would die on the vine. Kind of funny how things aren't always as they seem.
I'm in the solar business (in a tertiary sense, anyway) and also can not get a straight answer, bae. My best guess is that they are the Prius of the energy world. Cool, but not all they're cracked up to be if we could see the big picture. For me personally the manufacturing process is the most worrisome part of their production.
That's about where I get every time I dig into it as well :-(
I hadn't even considered the environmental cost of production. We live in a hot, humid climate and a/c is a big expense for 6 months out of the year. A large portion of our roof is south facing so I was thinking that would be where the panels would go. But then I am concerned about high winds during hurricanes tearing the panels and damaging the roof. We are 64 and 65 and the lease I understand is 20 years. Who knows what will happen in the next 20 years? I don't know.
I don't know about the lease arrangements, but I've had a cost estimate done to own. They had a nifty computer program where they would estimate your electrical use to size the system, tax and other incentives and rebates, and then a cost estimate and payback period. I would guess that most of the guys do this and my guys did not do a hard sell. As opposed to a lease arrangement, I would suppose that the equity in the panels would increase your home value and could be financed over a few years.
I hadn't even considered the environmental cost of production...
Of course not, they count on you not to. Just like the Green builders don't want you to consider the huge (environmental) costs of building a new structure. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle old houses, that's my motto.
OK we have both types of panel here on our roof in the UK. The type that heat the water have been up there for in excess of 27 years as DH's late aunt who originally had this little bungalow was at the forefront of environmental issues in the 60s and 70s. They were expensive in relative terms when she first had them fitted but have paid for themselves over and over again. Generally from 1st May to around 1st October we do not need to run the central heating (Gas) to heat the water. Today I had a lovely long soak in the bath in hot water heated by the sun.
The PV panels have been up on our roof for about 18 months. We paid for them outright as we did not want/trust the leasing option. We had some money sitting in a pension pot that was just getting smaller rather than growing so we took advantage of 2 Government schemes. We took 25% tax free from the pot and bought the panels outright. The Government Scheme pays us for the electricity that we generate. 45.40pence for what we generate to use ourselves and an extra 3.20pence per unit for the electricity that goes back into the grid.
To date we have earned about £1176.38 against our initial output of £11,000 so they should have paid for themselves in just shy of 10 years. We keep a spreadsheet of weekly meter reading and again seem to produce more or very near the amount of electricity we consume each week.
We had a forecast from our energy supplier just a few days and we are seen has being in the "Very Low User Category" for both gas and electricity.
For us they work just fine and are both saving and making us money. If we had left the outlay in the little pension pot to purchase an annuity it's buying power would have shrunk considerably over the last 2 years and if we had invested it we would be only looking at 3%-3.5% before tax at most.
We've talked with a few contractors in the past couple of weeks, and it sounds like a promising option for us.
The out-of-pocket will be around $10K after the federal incentive, and then our power company will pay us an additional incentive of $0.155 per kilowatt hour for the next 10 years (6600.00 total). The payback period (including the electric savings) would be around 7 years. The panels are German (Bosch), not Chinese, and are warrantied for 20 years. The inverter, only 10 years, but we can start a small auto-deduction to replace that when the time comes.
I think I can live with that, as we're planning to be here for quite a while. I'm actually surprised it's so inexpensive with the incentives.
Leasing is also an option, but I'd rather purchase if we can make it work.
We have 12 solar modules (panels) on our roof in Santa Fe plus one for hot water heater, and in summer our electric bill is $3-$6--and everything in our house is electric.
We have 3 solar modules on our roof in the off-grid mountains plus one on our wellhouse to pump the wellwater and no electric bill. The only time you can't use them is if you've had more than 3 days of no sun at all (hasn't happened yet in about 4 years we've been there). We can't use a lot of electrical stuff some people might need, but not a problem for us. We have satellite there for our computer.
No AC either place.
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