Solar Panels. Anyone Have Them?

I've had them for about 3 year now and I've been pretty happy. They were very heavily subsidized by our electric company, plus there were great state and federal tax rebates at the time, so I probably would up paying about half the true cost. It cuts my annual electric bill in half. During the winter months my bill is higher because of the lack of sunlight. In the spring, when it's really sunny and there are no leaves on the trees to cast shade, I pay nothing for my electricity. My summer electric bills are about a 1/3 of what they used to be. Overall, I'd say it's pretty good, but unless your house faces full south with no trees around, it's very difficult to power 100% of your usage with the panels.

If you decide to go ahead with it, make sure the installer tosses in gratis squirrel netting to keep the squirrels out. Mine did that so I've had no problems, but a friend of mine had tremendous damage from squirrels making nests between the panels and the roof itself.

I haven't looked at them, but it usually takes 5-10 years for the "payback" .... will you be in that house that long? (The payback time may depend on your particular area, and how much sun you get on a regular basis, etc.)

The sellers are very good at listing all the GOOD stuff about them.... but conveniently forget to mention the ultimate payback time for your area.

i had an energy survey done by an efficiency expert (paid for by the county, thanks!) and we were talking about the pros and cons. my dh and i plan to be here for another 10 years so the payback plus the tax savings might just be worth it. but we'd have to go into debt to get them and right now we just don't want to do that. the expert was saying that in another 10 years they'll almost certainly have figured out how to lower the costs dramatically, so we're holding out for that.
which DOES kinda suck for the future generations who are counting on mine to take steps now! but our checkbook is what it is.
:) khairete
S.

We have both installed our own and investigated getting the other part of our roof done by a company who then acts like our power company. At present we have about 70% solar for our house's power. I think something to consider is not trying to go for 100% if you can't afford the space or money. If you get a big enough inverter upfront, you can always add more. Solar is pricey upfront - but there are often government (federal and state) incentives. My husband did a lot of research a few years back and we paid of phase 1 in two years.

DH installed what he could himself and only had the electrician wire up the panel in the house and the inverter and anything else the county wouldn't let him do himself. If you know some handy people, it's likely you could do a lot of it yourself. We reshingled that part of the roof first, so we wouldn't have to bother with it after the panels went up.

You can also check out companies that do it for you and you lease the panels for 20 years.

Our goal with the house in general is to get down close to just paying the fee to stay connected to the grid. We did it not just for the cost savings (some months we don't buy anything from the power company during peak i.e. expensive daytime hours) but to have battery/solar power for our home in case of emergency. We have several ways to power our home now in the even that we get cut off...again. I like having solar - cost savings, power backup, and doing something for the environment. Not only is it for us now, but us in retirement and our children and grandchildren. Just like hybrid cars, we feel we have to start somewhere. If you buy and move, you could still sell the panels on the house. People like us would appreciate a pre-installed system. In our area, there are solar house tours, even.

We also looked into geothermal (friend has it) and a wind turbine, but at this point they are not feasible for our house/yard.

I don't have then but I have been looking into them. Yes the payback time takes a while. Whether you keep your home or not it would be a wonderful investment for future generations.
My husband likes the argument of things not being worth it in our generation then I remind him that going green will benefit our children and future generations.

I want to get it through my work Vivint. They are a security company, but are big about going green and making life easier. They only are able to install in a couple states atm, but once they get to my state, I'm all for it.
They pay for all the initial equipment, so you don't have to shell out thousands of dollars upfront. WHICH I LOVE!

We have panels on our house. Got them two years ago, decrmber will be three The company that put them in were a bunch of idiots. It took about four months to get them installed because of one thing or another not because they didn't know what they were doing but because they were understaffed and took on too much and kept pushing us off. We complained enough to get them to install before end on year for tax credit.

We had a special grant from nyserda NY. I couldn't tell you if it's still around. We got a loan from a credit union that funded these projects. In total it was about 40,000. We paid half, or rather are still paying half.

Our electric bill depends in the sun of course in a sunny month we may break even when in months like in winter we may pay $50. We also had to scale back on the number of panels because the loan and grant we were only able to get 20 panels instead of 26 so technically based on usage we would have been at zero. They tried to have us get two loans for it and we said no.

It's also said the increase the value of the house but I don't know if it has.

We believe we should have gotten a wind turbine because that creates power all the time.

Edit: just got our electric bill today and it was negative 29 so we produced more then we used which is fantastic but our company charges us a basic service charge so we will never have a zero bill.

I don't, but my boss does....and I've seen his power bills....when mine are averaging close to $200 a month, his are between $5 and $15! I have no idea how much they cost to install though...I'm sure his were at a discount as he does own a solar installation company.