Solar Panels in NE the good, bad, and ugly opinions

Last Friday was the one year anniversary of my solar system going live, see below. The system is 36 panels, 14.58 kW and cost $34,500 net after tax credits. We purchased outright (flex on the poors). 16.94 MWh is $6150 in electricity at the current 36.3 cents per kWh. The electric bill is zero and we’ve generated $1600 worth of Eversource credits and about $425 in REC credits (pays as cash). ROI is calculating at 5.25 years. We bought a Tesla Y in March 2024 for the wife that is saving $1200 per year compared to her Tacoma. I recently leased a Ford Lightning the will burn up most of the surplus while saving me ~$2200 per year in gasoline. If I factor in the fuel savings from the cars ($3400 fuel savings but subtract the $1600 net metering credits for a net of $1800 annually) the ROI drops to 4.12 years. Assuming similar production and 5 year ROI the panels are warrantied out to 25 years to 12.5% degradation, so at today’s prices I’ll save $120,438 and would earn $11,652 in REC credits. We all know electricity prices will continue to increase making the investment even better.

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Well damn. A Tacoma to a Tesla. LOL

I still say - without a massive battery in teh basement, I'm not seeing a huge benefit to solar versus the potential issues later.

Issues? I may have mentioned it on this thread, but my daughter and SIL are having a hell of a time with their solar company. They bought the house with solar. Lease deal. There is a problem between the solar and metering. The company has been out twice. All sorts of ???? on thier part. My kids won't let me get in the middle, but at this point, I'd have an attorney contact them and tell them we are suspending payments until the issue is resolved. They are paying $300 a month PLUS paying 100% of their power bill. It's bonkers! The solar company can show how much solar has been generated but it isn't going against their bill and the solar company is, like, "so what do you want us to do about it?"

The system is about 6-7 years old.
 
Rockrivr1 said:
The wife and I looked into buying a solar array for the roof with battery storage from Tesla. Rough cost was $31k. At our current electric consumption we be close to 10 years before we broke even. It’s a tough choice when looking at the long term for a purchase like this.
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Funny how the payback is always just at most people's go/no-go threshold of pain.
That's free market pricing (what the market will bear). Gonna need more competition before it gets better.
 
Dennis in MA said:
Well damn. A Tacoma to a Tesla. LOL

I still say - without a massive battery in teh basement, I'm not seeing a huge benefit to solar versus the potential issues later.

Issues? I may have mentioned it on this thread, but my daughter and SIL are having a hell of a time with their solar company. They bought the house with solar. Lease deal. There is a problem between the solar and metering. The company has been out twice. All sorts of ???? on thier part. My kids won't let me get in the middle, but at this point, I'd have an attorney contact them and tell them we are suspending payments until the issue is resolved. They are paying $300 a month PLUS paying 100% of their power bill. It's bonkers! The solar company can show how much solar has been generated but it isn't going against their bill and the solar company is, like, "so what do you want us to do about it?"

The system is about 6-7 years old.
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Selling a home with leased Solar panels is a problem, realtors please add your comments. My nephew was looking at a house for sale in Franklin with 18 years left of the 20 year solar panel lease. His wife is a big deal contracts lawyer and called the solar company to get the buy-out info to negotiate the home sale price. The solar company made it clear that there was no way to buy out the lease, so they moved on to another property.

Just my (very limited) experience
 
Dennis in MA said:
Well damn. A Tacoma to a Tesla. LOL

I still say - without a massive battery in teh basement, I'm not seeing a huge benefit to solar versus the potential issues later.

Issues? I may have mentioned it on this thread, but my daughter and SIL are having a hell of a time with their solar company. They bought the house with solar. Lease deal. There is a problem between the solar and metering. The company has been out twice. All sorts of ???? on thier part. My kids won't let me get in the middle, but at this point, I'd have an attorney contact them and tell them we are suspending payments until the issue is resolved. They are paying $300 a month PLUS paying 100% of their power bill. It's bonkers! The solar company can show how much solar has been generated but it isn't going against their bill and the solar company is, like, "so what do you want us to do about it?"

The system is about 6-7 years old.
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The Tesla is the wife’s daily driver and our trip car. It’s more comfortable for me than the Tacoma was, and we have a Ford Expedition and now my Lightning for truck stuff. Other than curbing the stupidly wide wheels, the car has been great for the first 10 months.

I didn’t purchase batteries, interestingly enough all three of the solar companies I got quotes from suggested I skip them because I already had a 20 kW standby generator. The only benefit I can see from batteries at this point is islanding during a long outage, allowing you to keep utilizing solar to charge the batteries rather than the panel output being wasted when the grid is down. My generator has about 68 hours on it since it was installed in 2019, so long outages aren’t extremely common. Batteries have a limited lifespan, are potentially dangerous (yes, I charge cars in the garage), take up space in the garage, etc. I’d make the investment when the generator needs replacing, but I’m also hoping the bidirectional tech for using the car batteries gets ubiquitous before then. My truck battery has the equivalent of 10 power walls, the car battery is another 6 power walls. If those could be utilized that 207 kWh could power my house for ~10 days in winter or ~6 days in summer.

I’m not seeing the “huge issues later” with just owned panels? All of the components on the roof are warrantied to 2049 and it’s confined to a single roof surface over the garage. After 10 years I’d be responsible for pulling the panel up and swapping a failed microinverter, plug and play installation I’d pay someone for in my late 50’s and beyond. If I have to replace the roof it’s only one 44’x22’ section with panels to deal with, roof was 7 years old when installed. The controller in the basement is warrantied to 2029, but it’s easy to access and currently costs $700. I have a couple friends who are 6-8 years in on their solar at this point using the same Enphase product as mine. Their only regrets have been not going bigger in the first place. One of them put the panels on the north side of his roof because he didn’t want to see them on the south facing front of his house, so his winter production is sub par while summer is great.

Leasing the solar is bad news. You are giving up your autonomy over your home to provide someone else profit. I know several people that have done it with mixed results. My buddy in metro west said his bills went from $500 winter and $800 summer (AC and pool) to $200 year round. Another buddy in New Bedford seems happy so far, but I don’t know his numbers. One in Tucson is having all kinds of problems, his system is almost the size of mine but the bill has only reduced by $50 per month.
 
rep308 said:
Selling a home with leased Solar panels is a problem, realtors please add your comments. My nephew was looking at a house for sale in Franklin with 18 years left of the 20 year solar panel lease. His wife is a big deal contracts lawyer and called the solar company to get the buy-out info to negotiate the home sale price. The solar company made it clear that there was no way to buy out the lease, so they moved on to another property.

Just my (very limited) experience
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Well, it's not really a lease, per se. Like, you aren't paying them X and then they pay the power bill and keep the difference. It's strange. They seemed to have bought the whole system on credit. Which is why they are having problems. The solar company, who maintains it, has no incentive to fix the problem. Yet the contract states a 90% reductino in power costs. I'm thinking a nice letter from a lawyer stating they owe them 18 months of 90% of the power bill would be nice. Maybe then they'll come and fix it.

I forget the company name but my SIL says when he looks online, they are the WORST for customer service. (They knew there was a problem and the company told them there was no problem for 6 months. ????)
 
My wife keeps bringing this up. We got contacted by a company called MassSolar who is offering a free system, guaranteed reductions in electric, written coverage for any damage done to the roof and incentives to give us a $2000 check up front to go with them.

It would still be their system but my wife is getting anxious about our electric bill now that winter is upon us

Sounds like a scam. Is it a scam? Anyone deal with this company before?
 
Rockrivr1 said:
My wife keeps bringing this up. We got contacted by a company called MassSolar who is offering a free system, guaranteed reductions in electric, written coverage for any damage done to the roof and incentives to give us a $2000 check up front to go with them.

It would still be their system but my wife is getting anxious about our electric bill now that winter is upon us

Sounds like a scam. Is it a scam? Anyone deal with this company before?
Click to expand...

I’ve heard bad things about them as a company. At one point they, and probably all of these solar companies, were filing UCC fixture filings against people’s homes, which isn’t an issue in itself, until you go to refinance or sell, and the solar company refuses to subordinate their lien to the new loan. Few, if any, lenders will loan money on that. Also, some of these companies used to make you sign an agreement which includes a clause that says when you go to sell your home THEY get to approve of the buyer before you enter into a P&S. I don’t know if this is still the practice.

Also, keep in mind that these solar companies go out of business at a shocking rate. I know someone who had the company that owned their panels go belly up, and the electric company made them disconnect the panels from the grid, and it took them over a year to have someone remove the equipment.

Judging from the halfwits that these solar companies send around my neighborhood, pounding on doors and in a few cases trying to physically open my door and my neighbors’ doors after no one answered, I wouldn’t let any of them near my home, nor would I enter into any business dealings with them.

The happiest people I know with solar own their own panels and have a bank of batteries to store any excess. It’s the same as though they bought a backup generator and they don’t have some company that likely won’t exist in a year controlling one aspect of their lives.
 
I really don't like the idea of spending such a chunk of change putting panels on the roof only to still lose power when my neighbor is having line work done or the grid goes down for whatever reason. I don't have any electric vehicles and there are 2 skylights that would probably need to be removed before panels go up on the roof so really not ideal in my eyes.

Makes more sense to me to build my own ground mounted setup with storage.
 
TJ4 said:
I’ve heard bad things about them as a company. At one point they, and probably all of these solar companies, were filing UCC fixture filings against people’s homes, which isn’t an issue in itself, until you go to refinance or sell, and the solar company refuses to subordinate their lien to the new loan. Few, if any, lenders will loan money on that. Also, some of these companies used to make you sign an agreement which includes a clause that says when you go to sell your home THEY get to approve of the buyer before you enter into a P&S. I don’t know if this is still the practice.

Also, keep in mind that these solar companies go out of business at a shocking rate. I know someone who had the company that owned their panels go belly up, and the electric company made them disconnect the panels from the grid, and it took them over a year to have someone remove the equipment.

Judging from the halfwits that these solar companies send around my neighborhood, pounding on doors and in a few cases trying to physically open my door and my neighbors’ doors after no one answered, I wouldn’t let any of them near my home, nor would I enter into any business dealings with them.

The happiest people I know with solar own their own panels and have a bank of batteries to store any excess. It’s the same as though they bought a backup generator and they don’t have some company that likely won’t exist in a year controlling one aspect of their lives.
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I agree but we looked at a full Tesla system and it was over $31k installed. That’s a long time before you break even.
 
cantstoptherf said:
I really don't like the idea of spending such a chunk of change putting panels on the roof only to still lose power when my neighbor is having line work done or the grid goes down for whatever reason. I don't have any electric vehicles and there are 2 skylights that would probably need to be removed before panels go up on the roof so really not ideal in my eyes.

Makes more sense to me to build my own ground mounted setup with storage.
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It is my understanding that ground mount systems are more expensive, due to the cost for the mount and buried wiring. How much more expensive? I don’t know.
 
Later this year we're going to put a shed in. Part of my plans involve putting one of the Anker big whole home batteries in basement, but putting solar panels on the backside of the shed, out of my wife's vision, so we have automatic switchover of power in the event of an outage.

I need to investigate if I can reasonably run a solar charging cable that far without a big loss. In the event of a much longer outage, I'll also want the option of running off the generator.

Or I'm overthinking all this...
 
richc said:
Later this year we're going to put a shed in. Part of my plans involve putting one of the Anker big whole home batteries in basement, but putting solar panels on the backside of the shed, out of my wife's vision, so we have automatic switchover of power in the event of an outage.

I need to investigate if I can reasonably run a solar charging cable that far without a big loss. In the event of a much longer outage, I'll also want the option of running off the generator.

Or I'm overthinking all this...
Click to expand...

Whoa! How big is this shed going to be? Man cave size? 😉
 
cantstoptherf said:
I really don't like the idea of spending such a chunk of change putting panels on the roof only to still lose power when my neighbor is having line work done or the grid goes down for whatever reason. I don't have any electric vehicles and there are 2 skylights that would probably need to be removed before panels go up on the roof so really not ideal in my eyes.

Makes more sense to me to build my own ground mounted setup with storage.
Click to expand...
If I were to move forward it would absolutely be a ground mount.
My neighbor has one and he’s had no electric bill for 2 years now.
It powers his 4k square foot home and then some.
 
M1911 said:
It is my understanding that ground mount systems are more expensive, due to the cost for the mount and buried wiring. How much more expensive? I don’t know.
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I wouldn't hire anyone. I prefer to do all the work myself. I don't have any underground cables now since the panels are close enough to the house but wouldn't be opposed to it if they weren't as close.

I repurposed an old picnic table to build my mounting location for the panels so that cost me only my labor. I wouldn't be opposed to tracking units but for an amateur, I'm not sure the juice would be worth the squeeze, for me at least.
 
What is the life span of the panels and the accompanying equipment? I was reading that some of the equipment that was supposed to last 25+ years was failing after 10-12 years. And the billion dollar solar array that went on line in 2015 is failing....
 
Went to go look at a Electrical service for a old man the other day he had Trinity solar on his roof which was not working properly. They were trying to blame his electrical panel for their problems which I believe to be shoddy connections in a piece of their equipment that caused a small fire. So now this guy who is in his late 70's has to fight with solar company get a lawyer etc. Seems like more hassle then its worth to me
 
Rockrivr1 said:
My wife keeps bringing this up. We got contacted by a company called MassSolar who is offering a free system, guaranteed reductions in electric, written coverage for any damage done to the roof and incentives to give us a $2000 check up front to go with them.

It would still be their system but my wife is getting anxious about our electric bill now that winter is upon us

Sounds like a scam. Is it a scam? Anyone deal with this company before?
Click to expand...
If they keep pushing hard to sell you something, it means they have a big commission in the works. I would stay away from Solar in this latitude, there are some smart people here who have made it work. Has anyone run the number that show solar make sense with NO SUBSIDIES?

If you have to lease your system, I would run away.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPELc1wEvk
 
richc said:
Later this year we're going to put a shed in. Part of my plans involve putting one of the Anker big whole home batteries in basement, but putting solar panels on the backside of the shed, out of my wife's vision, so we have automatic switchover of power in the event of an outage.

I need to investigate if I can reasonably run a solar charging cable that far without a big loss. In the event of a much longer outage, I'll also want the option of running off the generator.

Or I'm overthinking all this...
Click to expand...

Rich,

I'm not sure if their is nat gas in your neighborhood but how does the cost of your system compare to a $15K Generac system. You still could hook up a Generac to propane but the tank thing is a PIA
 
Rockrivr1 said:
I agree but we looked at a full Tesla system and it was over $31k installed. That’s a long time before you break even.
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Hint for old folks (like moi): If the payback period is many multiples of your expected remaining years above ground... forget about it! [laugh]
BroncoAZ said:
Break even really depends on your grid rates.
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... and a whole bunch of other factors, including your cost of money... a.k.a., your borrowing cost or your lost opportunity cost. :oops:

It's great if you are young, filthy rich and don't really care about the risks. It also helps if your electric rates are sky high. [dance]
 
EJFudd said:
Hint for old folks (like moi): If the payback period is many multiples of your expected remaining years above ground... forget about it! [laugh]

... and a whole bunch of other factors, including your cost of money... a.k.a., your borrowing cost or your lost opportunity cost. :oops:

It's great if you are young, filthy rich and don't really care about the risks. It also helps if your electric rates are sky high. [dance]
Click to expand...
I ran the numbers for opportunity cost, in my case the solar appeared to be a better return than putting that cash in the market at 5%. I posted my ROI numbers in post 121.
 
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EJFudd said:
Methinks you calculate return on investment a little differently than I calculate return on investment. [thumbsup]
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Dave Ramsey suggests that compound interest makes money double every 7 years, but I can’t seem to find those 10-12% returns he speaks of. My managed retirement funds are not making anywhere near that kind of return and CD’s are sub 5%.
 
BroncoAZ said:
Dave Ramsey suggests that compound interest makes money double every 7 years, but I can’t seem to find those 10-12% returns he speaks of. My managed retirement funds are not making anywhere near that kind of return and CD’s are sub 5%.
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Okay, but I'd love to see your calculation on how your $34,500 system paid for itself (or will pay for itself) in 5.2 years. Use whatever electric rates and cost of money you want.

Maybe I have this all wrong. It's too late for me anyway. Still, I'd like to learn. 🤔
 

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