Keith, can you share details or an example of how you come out ahead financed? Every time I do the math it is similar to what boost posted above and keeping the money invested always grossly outpaces any payback from solar.
Keith, can you share details or an example of how you come out ahead financed? Every time I do the math it is similar to what boost posted above and keeping the money invested always grossly outpaces any payback from solar.
Our array is 100% financed and covers a bit more than 100% of our annual electricity use. Our monthly payment to service the loan is less than our average monthly electric bill has been historically. No money has been paid out or invested in the array on our part, so there's no money that could have been used somewhere else and no lost opportunity cost. I simply traded one bill for another, and not paying anything isn't really an option if I want electricity.
This only works because of ridiculous financing terms - the loan is at 0.99% through Sungage Financial and is secured by the array itself and not the house. There was even a no-interest portion that matched the tax refund amount, that would have converted to interest-bearing if I hadn't paid it off after tax return season. I have no idea how the math works on the lender's side, but the paperwork doesn't have any gotchas I can see. One of the other installers had a lower bid price but a 5.5% financing rate, so the math did not work there.
It also helps that I live in an area that gets a lot of sun both in terms of intensity and lack of cloud cover. I had a nearly-flat unshaded 1200 square foot roof to use to mount the array so my output is pretty close to optimal with a low installation cost. Due to the size of my array, the wiring cost is a low percentage of the total so most of my money went towards stuff that actually makes power. Also, I have a utility that gives very good terms for the grid tie especially if you pay attention to how the non-default option works. It's probably no surprise that solar is extremely common around my neighborhood. Flyin' Miata has had solar panels on the roof for over a decade.
I'll happily admit it won't work for everyone. But it CAN work, and about the only effort it required on my part was contacting a few of the well established solar companies in town for quotes. I'm now protected from any future electricity increases and I'm keeping extra money in my pocket every month with no up front cost. The downside is that it's a long commitment, and I can't take any of my overproduction credits with me if I move. I can take the array, so I'd only have to pay for installation if I did move.
So with all of the info at hand, I was finally able to sit down with The Dancer (my wife) and talk over what we thought about things and wanted to do. And the final verdict is... that the more we look at things, the more it seems like we'll likely want to move out of this house and either into one that is much better suited for us on the long term (this house has 4 levels- it was a nightmare when my Achilles' went out, and when either of us are injured, and despite its size we both never seem to have enough storage and somehow don't actually use like half the house most of the time...) as soon as we can manage it, so investing 10K+ into anything here at this point just doesn't make sense. We're betting that an outage of the likes of the one a few weeks ago isn't going to occur again anytime soon- and that if it does, we're better prepared overall to deal with it having been through this one.
If we are able to do what we really want to- buy some land and design and have built exactly what we want in the way of a house- we will 100% be designing and building it with solar in mind to try and minimize the monthly costs when we retire.
Logical result.
Designing from the ground up lets you do all sorts of interesting things with window and overhang design, lot placement, etc. A friend in Germany built his own house that is remarkably and invisibly efficient, right down to a natural water swimming pool that acts as a heat sink for the solar hot water heaters.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Exactly- and even basic orientation of the house and roofs makes a huge difference, which was an issue with putting enough panels on our current house to generate more than just 1/3 of what we usually use. And building things from the ground up (or lower) means things can be baked into the build- allowing for installing the wiring to have panels on the roof of a garage/workshop that could either power it with its own separate battery and/or be tied into the main houses' setup (since most of the time the garage/shop wouldn't be being used and need to have so much power on its own). Of course, depending on how things go down the line it may be more difficult to have as much of the heating of things done with natural gas, but we'll deal with that when we get to that point.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
Sounds like Keith is referencing Passive Solar building techniques. Instead of just building the house optimized for solar panels, you can build it in a way that reduces your overall energy needs, meaning you'd need much smaller HVAC, solar voltaic systems, etc.
In reply to STM317 :
You're both right :) Build for passive solar and solar generation. Werner's house has rooftop solar as well as the passive features, although I'm not sure if it's photovoltaic or hot water to use for heat. It's been a few years since he gave me the tour.
Right- I was figuring that both would be coming into play with designing it from scratch.
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