Going all the way with solar

[Axel]

Our new Leaf got us wondering if we could lower our carbon footprint, and so we decided to look into solar. We were very pleasantly surprised to find a number of lease options where we didn't have to pay anything at all and get to negate our electric bill including 15K miles/year charging at 3.5kW/mile. What I mean is it costs us zero dollars to get the system installed on the roof of our home, and we then pay the solar company what we would normally be paying to our electric utility company. In fact, the solar bill is cheaper by a few dollars each month and is guaranteed never to go up for the next 30 years. Our utility costs have gone up 12% each year for the last 10 years, I can't imagine what the rates will be in 30 years if we don't go solar now.

Talk about a windfall: 100% zero carbon footprint driving, 100% zero carbon footprint electricity in the house. This is a financial no-brainer. I find it hard to comprehend why more households aren't adopting this approach.

Anyone else gone all the way with solar?

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Our new Leaf got us wondering if we could lower our carbon footprint, and so we decided to look into solar. We were very pleasantly surprised to find a number of lease options where we didn't have to pay anything at all and get to negate our electric bill including 15K miles/year charging at 3.5kW/mile. What I mean is it costs us zero dollars to get the system installed on the roof of our home, and we then pay the solar company what we would normally be paying to our electric utility company. In fact, the solar bill is cheaper by a few dollars each month and is guaranteed never to go up for the next 30 years. Our utility costs have gone up 12% each year for the last 10 years, I can't imagine what the rates will be in 30 years if we don't go solar now.

Talk about a windfall: 100% zero carbon footprint driving, 100% zero carbon footprint electricity in the house. This is a financial no-brainer. I find it hard to comprehend why more households aren't adopting this approach.

Anyone else gone all the way with solar?

I looked at these deals as well. Unfortunately, in upstate NY, the lease deals start off more expensive than the utility. Over the lifetime of the lease, it's expected to break even. That changes if you purchase the panels outright which I did. My expected payoff is 10 years.

 

[madbrain]

Our new Leaf got us wondering if we could lower our carbon footprint, and so we decided to look into solar. We were very pleasantly surprised to find a number of lease options where we didn't have to pay anything at all and get to negate our electric bill including 15K miles/year charging at 3.5kW/mile. What I mean is it costs us zero dollars to get the system installed on the roof of our home, and we then pay the solar company what we would normally be paying to our electric utility company. In fact, the solar bill is cheaper by a few dollars each month and is guaranteed never to go up for the next 30 years. Our utility costs have gone up 12% each year for the last 10 years, I can't imagine what the rates will be in 30 years if we don't go solar now.

Talk about a windfall: 100% zero carbon footprint driving, 100% zero carbon footprint electricity in the house. This is a financial no-brainer. I find it hard to comprehend why more households aren't adopting this approach.

Anyone else gone all the way with solar?

You may want to discuss this in the solar forum on this site.

In general I think with today's prices on equipment, you could buy the system outright instead of leasing it, and have a fairly short payoff, depending on the size of your house and how much your current PG&E bill is. If your electric bill averages more than $200/month your payoff may be as short as 5 years when figuring out all the incentives. That means you would pay the same total amount over the next 5 years for your solar system as you would PG&E, and then the next 25 years after that are free electricity.
The payoff could be even shorter depending on your bill size and how cheap you can get it done. I can recommend someone who is very competitive. Just don't try to zero the PG&E bill, size the system properly to stay in baseline tiers, and make sure to use the E-6 TOU rate.

If your PG&E bill is low on the other hand, the solar payoff could be very long and then the lease may make sense.

The lease may also create problems if you ever choose to sell the house before the terms of the lease is up, whereas if you own, it is far simpler.

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

congrats, we just put up an array as well. it really is an amazing time to go solar. driving electric with net solar is one of the best feelings!!

the word is starting to get out and a lot more folks are thinking about it, keep telling your story. I have all those pioneers who shared their stories with me over the years to thank for us finally pulling the trigger and doing it. The more people see it, the more likely they are to go for it.

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

I think solarcity has changed the game completely. if they were in our neck of the woods we would have probably leased. they have an incredibly flexible lease program that allows the lease to be terminated early or passed on to the new owner... very much worth looking into! http://www.solarcity.com/

Our new Leaf got us wondering if we could lower our carbon footprint, and so we decided to look into solar. We were very pleasantly surprised to find a number of lease options where we didn't have to pay anything at all and get to negate our electric bill including 15K miles/year charging at 3.5kW/mile. What I mean is it costs us zero dollars to get the system installed on the roof of our home, and we then pay the solar company what we would normally be paying to our electric utility company. In fact, the solar bill is cheaper by a few dollars each month and is guaranteed never to go up for the next 30 years. Our utility costs have gone up 12% each year for the last 10 years, I can't imagine what the rates will be in 30 years if we don't go solar now.

Talk about a windfall: 100% zero carbon footprint driving, 100% zero carbon footprint electricity in the house. This is a financial no-brainer. I find it hard to comprehend why more households aren't adopting this approach.

Anyone else gone all the way with solar?

You may want to discuss this in the solar forum on this site.

In general I think with today's prices on equipment, you could buy the system outright instead of leasing it, and have a fairly short payoff, depending on the size of your house and how much your current PG&E bill is. If your electric bill averages more than $200/month your payoff may be as short as 5 years when figuring out all the incentives. That means you would pay the same total amount over the next 5 years for your solar system as you would PG&E, and then the next 25 years after that are free electricity.
The payoff could be even shorter depending on your bill size and how cheap you can get it done. I can recommend someone who is very competitive. Just don't try to zero the PG&E bill, size the system properly to stay in baseline tiers, and make sure to use the E-6 TOU rate.

If your PG&E bill is low on the other hand, the solar payoff could be very long and then the lease may make sense.

The lease may also create problems if you ever choose to sell the house before the terms of the lease is up, whereas if you own, it is far simpler.

 

[madbrain]

I think solarcity has changed the game completely. if they were in our neck of the woods we would have probably leased. they have an incredibly flexible lease program that allows the lease to be terminated early or passed on to the new owner... very much worth looking into! http://www.solarcity.com/

When I put my first array 2 years ago Solarcity was quite high and their contracts were crazy with 3% cost increases per year. Very much worth skipping.
Looks like their lease deals have changed now.

They also don't use the best technology, they use big inverters vs micro inverters and that will not maximize production. I'm very happy with my Enphase system, it's been producing far more kWh than originally predicted, about 20% more in fact.

Still, my consumption grew, and especially with the Leaf I just got, I added another array recently, 12 240W panels + Enphase inverters + install after all incentives only cost about $5500 after incentives . That's $1.93 per watt DC . The addition has only a 4.5 year payoff assuming I charge the new Leaf 12 kWh/day. If I charge 6 kWh/day it will be 5.2 years.
Actual home charging will be somewhere in between depending how much I charge at work.

 

[mrradon]

I make enough for my house and to drive my Leaf about 22,000/year and not pay an electric bill. My state has a solar production incentive so the ROI on my system is about 7%. Inother words, yeah I paid up front but it pays for itself in 8 years and then makes me $$$$....

Screw the lease crap dive full in and own your system if the number make it seem like a good investment.

 

[Boomer23]

Replacing gasoline costs for driving gives us a greatly enhanced payback formula. We bought a 5.2 kW system 6 years ago, went on Time of Use rates when we got the LEAF and we now pay an electric bill of ZERO for all of our household usage AND driving 11,000 miles a year.

Our story and detailed monthly data in my blog, linked below in my signature.

 

[Axel]

In general I think with today's prices on equipment, you could buy the system outright instead of leasing it, and have a fairly short payoff, depending on the size of your house and how much your current PG&E bill is. If your electric bill averages more than $200/month your payoff may be as short as 5 years when figuring out all the incentives. That means you would pay the same total amount over the next 5 years for your solar system as you would PG&E, and then the next 25 years after that are free electricity.
The payoff could be even shorter depending on your bill size and how cheap you can get it done. I can recommend someone who is very competitive. Just don't try to zero the PG&E bill, size the system properly to stay in baseline tiers, and make sure to use the E-6 TOU rate.

If your PG&E bill is low on the other hand, the solar payoff could be very long and then the lease may make sense.

The lease may also create problems if you ever choose to sell the house before the terms of the lease is up, whereas if you own, it is far simpler.

Oh boy, I wish that were true! But based on what I researched, the costs for a system that would negate a $200 bill would be in the 20-30K range after rebates, unless you can do it yourself, which of course would be way cheaper, but then you have to deal with all the hassles involved.

The cheapest I've seen for a 1.5kwp system (800kwh per year max if 100% south facing unblocked) is about $6K. The average home needs far more than what a 4kwp system could produce.

 

[planet4ever]

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm - we've had solar for five years and I consider it the best investment we've made in improving our house - but doesn't Santa Cruz get quite a bit of fog? It may take more capacity than you think to reduce your electric bill to zero, and it really isn't necessary. The most significant payoff comes in keeping out of PG&E's more expensive tiers.

Ray

 

[RegGuheert]

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm - we've had solar for five years and I consider it the best investment we've made in improving our house - but doesn't Santa Cruz get quite a bit of fog?

If morning fog is a frequent occurrence, one strategy that can be used is to point the panels more toward the southwest than the south. While this will not allow you to produce as much electricity as a south-pointing array with no fog, it may produce more than a south-pointing array with frequent morning fog.

Of course you are limited to the compass directions available on the roof of your house, but the fog might allow you to make a better decision on which roof to choose. For instance, if you have a choice between southwest or southeast roofs, then you should prefer the southwest roof because of the fog.

Please note that the compass direction of the roof does not impair production nearly as much as you would expect intuitively, but clouds and fog certainly do have a big impact. For reference, here are some data points for our house:

The ideal elevation and azimuth to maximize year-round production for our array is 34 degrees elevation and azimuth of 180 (South). Our roof has a 7/12 pitch, which equates to 30 degrees elevation and the south-facing roof is at 194 degrees, or slightly west of south. But this amount of pointing error only reduces our yearly production by 1.2% versus an array with ideal pointing.

But we also have a massive 7/12 pitch roof which faces toward 104 degrees, or about 14 degrees south of east. This roof is about 75 degrees off the ideal pointing angle, but it will still provides 85% of the production we could get from the ideal array.

Anyway, if you can point slightly (even 45 degrees) toward the west versus true south, you might be able to improve your production in a frequent-morning-fog scenario.

 

[madbrain]

Oh boy, I wish that were true! But based on what I researched, the costs for a system that would negate a $200 bill would be in the 20-30K range after rebates, unless you can do it yourself, which of course would be way cheaper, but then you have to deal with all the hassles involved.

The cheapest I've seen for a 1.5kwp system (800kwh per year max if 100% south facing unblocked) is about $6K. The average home needs far more than what a 4kwp system could produce.

Your numbers are way off both on prices and production estimates.

1) On prices, have you gotten actual quotes ?

Don't waste time pricing a very small system like 1500 W DC, there is no point. There are some fixed costs for the install regardless like permits, drawings, inspections, load centers, etc. These costs don't scale up on a large system in general, so you get a higher price per watt on a small system. You should probably not install anything less than 3000 W DC system to get a reasonable price per watt.

$6K for a 1500W DC system is $4/watt . If that's after incentives, you can do much better than that if you have - and need - a larger system.

I just did a 2880W DC expansion for $8500 or under $3/watt gross, and that's before incentives. After incentives it will be under $2/watt.

To get this price, I purchased panels and micro-inverters myself, and then got a contractor to install them. PM me if you want the name of the suppliers & contractors.
If you buy it all in one place, you may indeed pay $4/watt indeed before incentives. It still should be under $3/watt afterwards.

If you buy it all from one company, they will take their margin on the materials which isn't necessary.

2) on your production estimates

Two years ago I installed a 6580 W DC system. It was estimated to be about 9800 kWh/year when I installed, but it has outperformed a lot. It has actually done an average of 11800 kWh/year.
That's in San Jose, a bit north of you. We don't get much fog admittedly. Pretty much full sun and full production all summer long.

A 1500 W DC system should produce at least 2200 kWh per year, maybe 2600 kWh/year.

 

[hill]

In general I think with today's prices on equipment, you could buy the system outright instead of leasing it, and have a fairly short payoff, depending on the size of your house and how much your current PG&E bill is. If your electric bill averages more than $200/month your payoff may be as short as 5 years when figuring out all the incentives. That means you would pay the same total amount over the next 5 years for your solar system as you would PG&E, and then the next 25 years after that are free electricity.
The payoff could be even shorter depending on your bill size and how cheap you can get it done. I can recommend someone who is very competitive. Just don't try to zero the PG&E bill, size the system properly to stay in baseline tiers, and make sure to use the E-6 TOU rate.

If your PG&E bill is low on the other hand, the solar payoff could be very long and then the lease may make sense.

The lease may also create problems if you ever choose to sell the house before the terms of the lease is up, whereas if you own, it is far simpler.

Oh boy, I wish that were true! But based on what I researched, the costs for a system that would negate a $200 bill would be in the 20-30K range after rebates . . . . . . . . . . snip . . . . . .

Even back in 2007 - 2009 our electric bill averaged $225. It's all relative. Got a $25 electric bill? Then you got a teeny life style, with teeny living space. Huge bill? Then the big system will affect your wallet accordingly. We, just like Phil - put up a system big enough to cover all our electric expenses ... including our Leaf, which didn't come until over a year after our PV. We built big enough to cover not only the Leaf, but a future plug in. And, in the mean time - the utility pays us a couple hundred for our surplus juice, per year. Nothing wrong with over building if you're planning for the future.

 

[madbrain]

We built big enough to cover not only the Leaf, but a future plug in. And, in the mean time - the utility pays us a couple hundred for our surplus juice, per year. Nothing wrong with over building if you're planning for the future.

Actually there is a lot of wrong with overbuilding depending on your utility rate schedule. You must really have oversized your system for the utility to pay you a couple hundred extra for surplus juice.
PG&E will only pay 3 cents/kWh for surplus electricity.
Even if you are only getting $200/year, that means you have over 6500 kWh extra per year . That's huge.
How big of a system do you have ?

With PG&E's crazy TOU tiered rates you don't even need to meet 100% of your electricity demand to zero your bill.
With my time usage patterns, I can zero the bill even producing as little as 85% of my energy consumption.

Any additional panels to cover usage between 85% and 100% of my usage would purely be a gift of electricity to PG&E - I would have a surplus of energy charges at the end of the year that would be zero'ed on december 31st. They don't start paying one cent until you have net juice above 100%.

FYI, here my spreadsheet with actual usage the past few years, calculations and estimates
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1eSSO_7gwqeQl94bEpGeHhvTnM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
These are good for PG&E territory X which is most of the SF bay area.

It's very comprehensive and a little hard to explain given all the sheets and all the columns. It's best viewed on multiple 2560x1600 30" monitors which is what I used to create it. Anyway, I will try to explain it below...

How-to use :

- if you aren't in territory X, edit the baselines in the sheets named with the rate schedule and dates. Eg. "E1 07-01-2012" and "E6 07-01-2012" for the current rates. Only the baselines change between territories, not the rates, so this is a quick edit.

- Go to the sheet called "estimates".
- Put your current monthly usage on lines 3 - 14 , in columns E through J . If you aren't already on TOU rate, erase the values in columns E through I on those lines, and only put the current total kWh in column J .
- zero column K on lines 2-16 . These solar production numbers only relate to my 2-year old solar system are most likely irrelevant to others, unless you live in San Jose and have a 6.5 kW DC / 5.9 kW PTC system
- you should now have an annual total for the E1 rate in cell L17 . This should match your current bills.
- if you have input data for TOU periods in columns E-I, you will also get an E6 TOU bill estimate in cell N17

- now go to the second part of this sheet that starts on line 26
- edit cell I26 . If your EV charging was already included in the usage data in the top part, zero this cell. Otherwise, put your average daily kWh home charging for the EV. The reason for this section of the sheet is I didn't have the Leaf before and had to estimate the impact of the additional charging on my bill.

- now go to the third section of the sheet that starts on line 51
- on lines 56 - 67, column K, input the projected kWh for each month for the solar system you are considering purchasing. You can get those from PVWatts for example.
- in cell N73, put the total cost of the solar system you are looking to purchase
- cell M70 will have your total estimated annual bill for E1, cell N70 for E6 if you entered TOU period data earlier.
- cell N72 will have the annual dollar savings from adding solar. this is based on TOU though. If you don't have TOU estimates, change the formula to use column M instead of N ...
- you will get a payback period in N74 and payback date in N76

Hope that helps somebody who is considered solar and/or a Leaf ..

 

[Axel]

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm - we've had solar for five years and I consider it the best investment we've made in improving our house - but doesn't Santa Cruz get quite a bit of fog? It may take more capacity than you think to reduce your electric bill to zero, and it really isn't necessary. The most significant payoff comes in keeping out of PG&E's more expensive tiers.

Ray

I live in the Santa Cruz mountains right above Santa Cruz, we get quite a bit more sun here, and we are on a southwest facing slope, so we don't get early Morning sun, which is when it's foggy anyway. I get the model of reducing the bill to just offset the expensive usage, but our motivation for the solar is to have zero carbon footprint.

Anyway, we got a really awesome quote so far to cover 800kwh/month and it comes in at less than PG&E's monthly electric bill, it's up to the company to put up an efficient enough system to make it work. They're the ones who guarantee the production. Works for me, I am not going to complain.

 

[Axel]

Your numbers are way off both on prices and production estimates.

1) On prices, have you gotten actual quotes ?

Don't waste time pricing a very small system like 1500 W DC, there is no point. There are some fixed costs for the install regardless like permits, drawings, inspections, load centers, etc. These costs don't scale up on a large system in general, so you get a higher price per watt on a small system. You should probably not install anything less than 3000 W DC system to get a reasonable price per watt.

$6K for a 1500W DC system is $4/watt . If that's after incentives, you can do much better than that if you have - and need - a larger system.

I just did a 2880W DC expansion for $8500 or under $3/watt gross, and that's before incentives. After incentives it will be under $2/watt.

To get this price, I purchased panels and micro-inverters myself, and then got a contractor to install them. PM me if you want the name of the suppliers & contractors.
If you buy it all in one place, you may indeed pay $4/watt indeed before incentives. It still should be under $3/watt afterwards.

If you buy it all from one company, they will take their margin on the materials which isn't necessary.

2) on your production estimates

Two years ago I installed a 6580 W DC system. It was estimated to be about 9800 kWh/year when I installed, but it has outperformed a lot. It has actually done an average of 11800 kWh/year.
That's in San Jose, a bit north of you. We don't get much fog admittedly. Pretty much full sun and full production all summer long.

A 1500 W DC system should produce at least 2200 kWh per year, maybe 2600 kWh/year.

I'll definitely PM you for the contractor contacts. Sounds like I may do better installing my own.

 

[surfingslovak]

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm - we've had solar for five years and I consider it the best investment we've made in improving our house - but doesn't Santa Cruz get quite a bit of fog?

If morning fog is a frequent occurrence, one strategy that can be used is to point the panels more toward the southwest than the south. While this will not allow you to produce as much electricity as a south-pointing array with no fog, it may produce more than a south-pointing array with frequent morning fog.

Axel, hallo. You might want to contact Jack Brown or Rick and Kathy Corcoran. They installed solar recently on their homes and live not far from you in Aptos. What madbrain said about SolarCity is true, and there is a host of other installers available. While it's likely that SolarCity will come up with very attractive financing options, it's worth considering other factors as well before making your decision. We went with their prepaid PPA, as it made the most sense in our situation. I would recommend that you at least gave Real Good Solar a call, they have an experienced local contractor and were offering very good deals as well. BMW contracted them for the ActiveE program, and I would expect their systems to be high-quality.

 

[madbrain]

Anyway, we got a really awesome quote so far to cover 800kwh/month and it comes in at less than PG&E's monthly electric bill, it's up to the company to put up an efficient enough system to make it work. They're the ones who guarantee the production. Works for me, I am not going to complain.

The leases in general are awesome for the companies doing them - they are getting a big profit.
You can accomplish your goal of being carbon neutral too, for much lower cost in the long run, if you purchase. But of course there are upfront costs.

If you have fog issues, you would have to compensate by adding more panels to make up for the lost days/hours of sun.

 

[Deleted member 3147]

One nice thing about leases is, in general, the leasing company takes responsibility for maintenance and insurance on the system for the life of the lease. Frankly, it's worth a little bit more cost to me to not worry about it.

I did a 20-year lease with no per-KWh charge. In addition, I paid the entire lease up-front so I have no more costs associated with the system. I just finished my first year and my 4KW DC system put out just over 6,000 KWh, right on with the company's prediction, which was just over 50% of my consumption, including charging my Leaf.

It's not no-PG&E-cost, not zero-carbon-footprint, but I'm very happy with what I did to my PG&E bill.

 

[madbrain]

One nice thing about leases is, in general, the leasing company takes responsibility for maintenance and insurance on the system for the life of the lease. Frankly, it's worth a little bit more cost to me to not worry about it.

I did a 20-year lease with no per-KWh charge. In addition, I paid the entire lease up-front so I have no more costs associated with the system. I just finished my first year and my 4KW DC system put out just over 6,000 KWh, right on with the company's prediction, which was just over 50% of my consumption, including charging my Leaf.

It's not no-PG&E-cost, not zero-carbon-footprint, but I'm very happy with what I did to my PG&E bill.

The maintenance is cleaning the panels once a year basically.

If you have micro inverters they may never need replacement, or it would be warranty replacement.
New enphase micro inverters have 25 year warranty. With big inverters, they might need 1-2 replacements.

Your home insurance should cover the PV panels. With the $2M that my insurance co thinks my house would cost to rebuild, the PV are a drop in the bucket, sadly. I have been fighting them on that value but not going anywhere, sigh.