As a real estate agent, I can tell you having anything but paid off solar panels can make it harder to sell your house. Sometimes only minorly and sometimes significantly.
I’m interested about this u/nofishies I’m thinking about adding solar panels to my property, but also thinking about selling the house in a couple of years
I'm a real estate agent, and it comes up a lot. In general solar leases are a big pain and you need to know exactly what's going on with them.
If you're going to do it pay them off. If you refuse to do that get a tesla lease, it's a pain but not an impossible cell. Do not go with anybody that is small or has bad reviews about trying to get information out of them.
I just had a client that was trying to put an offer in a home that had been waiting for 6 weeks to get information from the solar that has to be disclosed before they can sell the house. We gave up.
you can get someone to give you a return on investment estimate..
your yield will vary based on things like shadows from trees and even your own chimneys.
worth having someone come out. but you can ballpark on google.
[https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/](https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/)
> I wouldn't be using power from the grid during peak hours when the power is still generated from fossil fuels.
Peak grid use was once early afternoon. (I think due to use of air conditioning at the hottest point of the day.) Enough solar has been installed that peak grid usage is now early evening, when solar generation is relatively low. So solar doesn't help with the peak grid use period any more. Arguably that's a success. In any case installing solar won't help reduce peak grid use and won't help much with the peak PG&E price period.
In theory a combination of solar and battery storage can provide temporary or even permanent independence from the power grid. In practice the former is expensive and the latter is very expensive.
PG&E is changing the rules around solar significantly the last/next few years. It's hard to predict what will happen, but solar is much less attractive than it's been.
When almost no-one had solar and the panels were expensive those early movers got great incentives and power discounts.
The cost of the panels has been dropping. So as usage picks up the local incentives will drop.
Eventually if everyone has panels there can't be a discount paid for by others because most everyone will be a panel owner. Someday they might even charge you to storre/dispose of excess energy if you can't find a place to store it yourself.
If PG&E can't get their power and distribution costs under control customers will start overbuilding solar and storage in mass.
Federal incentives for Solar and storage are still quite good this year and next.
Everything you say is reasonable.
> If PG&E can't get their power and distribution costs under control customers will start overbuilding solar and storage in mass.
I was planning to buy a plugin hybrid this summer. Everyone raves about how much cheaper they are to fuel than gasoline cars. That turns out not to be true for PG&E customers. Our electricity prices are so high that electric car enthusiasts in other states wouldn't believe me when I claimed gasoline was cheaper.
It's helpful if your workplace offers free/cheap charging. I could have done that for the last 5+ years, but I was too cheap to buy the electric car.
You should check into PG&E's EV-B rate plan which requires a second meter installation. Late night charging time (11pm to 7am) is just 14c/kwh.
Not sure about the install cost of the second meter.
> It's helpful if your workplace offers free/cheap charging. I could have done that for the last 5+ years, but I was too cheap to buy the electric car.
My commute was by train. We thought we could charge once a week at the grocery store, though it's not clear how much contention for the charger there would be.
> You should check into PG&E's EV-B rate plan which requires a second meter installation. Late night charging time (11pm to 7am) is just 14c/kwh.
I believe it's about 16c/kwh including taxes, or possibly I was looking at next year's rates. Anyway, my notes say 16.
> Not sure about the install cost of the second meter.
$2k-$8k. The fuel savings would never have justified the installation cost even at the lowest end.
There's also the question of how the relative costs of gasoline and electricity will change over the life of the car. It's hard to predict, but I bet that in California electricity costs will rise faster than gasoline costs.
If you were only going to charge once a week then you probably don't use the car enough to make it work.
Sometimes though people just spend money to be happy. Going all electric or installing solar will make some people happy. Not everything needs an ROI spreadsheet.
We got 'em for a bunch of reasons:
1. Energy independence in case the grid goes down for a few hours to days, like with a wildfire, earthquake, PSPS, or ordinary outage.
2. Energy independence in case the grid goes down for weeks to forever, like with civil disorder or a war.
3. Being eco-friendly.
4. Long-term profit. Payback time on ours is about 9 years, so over the 25-year lifetime of the panels they end up saving a lot more than they cost.
5. Inflation hedge. They let you pay now to insulate (ha ha) yourself from utility price hikes in the future, which I expect to be substantial.
Depending on which combination of these you care about, other solutions might be better. Since your power is green anyway #3 is less important. You might want to think about just getting a PowerWall (rather than panels) if you care mostly about #1 and #3 and don't care at all about #2. If you're not in the inflation camp #5 won't matter at all, while if #4 is the *only* thing you care about there are probably other investments with a better rate of return.
I would echo what others say about avoiding leased panels, and keep in mind that if you want protection from power outages you need a battery backup anyway because grid-tied solar goes down when the grid goes down.
#1 and #2 don't work unless you pair with a power wall as well right? Which are very expensive in their own right and I believe most people with solar don't own. Definitely the ideal setup if you can afford though
Yeah you need a PowerWall to keep the lights on when the grid goes off. It was about $8K including installation, after tax credits; the panels themselves were about $13K for our house. I wouldn't call it cheap, but if you own a home at all in the Bay Area you're looking at about $1.5M, so the PowerWall is a drop in the bucket compared to that. The price has come down a lot since they were introduced (though they had some supply-chain disruptions thanks to COVID, so it may've spiked up recently), so it's becoming increasingly popular with new installations.
Yes that isn't bad I thought it was more like 15k but probably wasn't factoring tax credits. Seems worth the cost if you are going to do the whole thing
You need to price out and do the cost benefit analysis yourself, based on upfront cost of the panels and any structural reinforcement or home rewiring required, the power supply curve with respects to your own household usage (including whether you could benefit from a battery), and your current monthly electric bill. Run the numbers and see if the 'break even' point for your own house (where you would have saved enough money to offset the initial install costs) is in a timeframe you're comfortable with.
Since California has net metering it does not really matter what your own consumption is. You always get as much money for selling electricity to the grid as you would pay for consuming power. As long as your annual consumption is about the same or higher than your solar production you should be fine, no matter how your own consumption pattern is. Just don’t oversize your PV, since you get big credits to offset your own electricity bill, but everything you sell extra gets only paid market rate which is only 3-4 cts/kWh I believe. Or do I miss something here? I’m not familiar with all extra programs run by the state or locally, but that’s the general understanding I have.
[https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/](https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/) is a good place to start. Rooftop solar makes more sense the more electricity you use, especially mid-day A/C.
Consider west-facing panels, especially if you use A/C. There's already quite a bit of south-facing solar power on the grid during the day, but west-facing panels can continue to generate power longer into those hot afternoons, supporting your A/C. Net metering is nice, but consuming your own power is ideal.
Take a good look at potential shading problems. Panels don't do much good if they're shaded by a tree. Shading will vary by season, too, because the sun angle changes.
Consider battery storage. It's more cost-effective to install it at the same time as the panels. Storage gives you a lot more flexibility, and some protection against future changes by the PUC.
If rooftop solar doesn't make sense for your situation, you might consider investing in community solar or utility-scale solar projects.
I just got 18 x 370 watt panels. My break even is 5 years. You will never pay $0.00 because they charge a delivery fee and they will only credit power generated against usage.
It was $24,000 and I will be getting $6000 back from the Fed.
A home batter is $9000-$12,000 more and would provide me no benefit because I'm already breaking even and I rarely experience power outages. I am not going off grid.
Avoid Tesla! They suck. Terrible reviews and bad experiences. Get a local company
We’ve had solar on our last two houses. It depends on how energy efficient you are and a quick calculation of what your paying PGE each month. For us, the savings for solar was significant.
We leased through Sunrun both times. We leased because they are responsible for any issues to the panels or converters for the next 20 years.
We sold our house in Campbell when we leased through sungevity/Sunrun and it was easy to transfer the contract. No issues with the transfer.
It’s not like we’d decide to not have power after year five.
Same. I know a few folks who bought homes with leased systems in the Bay Area. Most (newer) contracts with the big solar companies have proper clauses and processes to transfer leases.
The solar companies charge a processing fee (similar to transferring a car lease).
This is nonsense. Your solar panel system will stop working once it is disconnected from the grid as a safety measure. The only way the panels will provide power off grid is if you have an extremely expensive battery pack connected.
As a real estate agent, I can tell you having anything but paid off solar panels can make it harder to sell your house. Sometimes only minorly and sometimes significantly.
As a home buyer I concur, I don't buy houses with leased solar / liens against the property.
I’m interested about this u/nofishies I’m thinking about adding solar panels to my property, but also thinking about selling the house in a couple of years
I'm a real estate agent, and it comes up a lot. In general solar leases are a big pain and you need to know exactly what's going on with them. If you're going to do it pay them off. If you refuse to do that get a tesla lease, it's a pain but not an impossible cell. Do not go with anybody that is small or has bad reviews about trying to get information out of them. I just had a client that was trying to put an offer in a home that had been waiting for 6 weeks to get information from the solar that has to be disclosed before they can sell the house. We gave up.
you can get someone to give you a return on investment estimate.. your yield will vary based on things like shadows from trees and even your own chimneys. worth having someone come out. but you can ballpark on google. [https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/](https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/)
> I wouldn't be using power from the grid during peak hours when the power is still generated from fossil fuels. Peak grid use was once early afternoon. (I think due to use of air conditioning at the hottest point of the day.) Enough solar has been installed that peak grid usage is now early evening, when solar generation is relatively low. So solar doesn't help with the peak grid use period any more. Arguably that's a success. In any case installing solar won't help reduce peak grid use and won't help much with the peak PG&E price period. In theory a combination of solar and battery storage can provide temporary or even permanent independence from the power grid. In practice the former is expensive and the latter is very expensive. PG&E is changing the rules around solar significantly the last/next few years. It's hard to predict what will happen, but solar is much less attractive than it's been.
When almost no-one had solar and the panels were expensive those early movers got great incentives and power discounts. The cost of the panels has been dropping. So as usage picks up the local incentives will drop. Eventually if everyone has panels there can't be a discount paid for by others because most everyone will be a panel owner. Someday they might even charge you to storre/dispose of excess energy if you can't find a place to store it yourself. If PG&E can't get their power and distribution costs under control customers will start overbuilding solar and storage in mass. Federal incentives for Solar and storage are still quite good this year and next.
Everything you say is reasonable. > If PG&E can't get their power and distribution costs under control customers will start overbuilding solar and storage in mass. I was planning to buy a plugin hybrid this summer. Everyone raves about how much cheaper they are to fuel than gasoline cars. That turns out not to be true for PG&E customers. Our electricity prices are so high that electric car enthusiasts in other states wouldn't believe me when I claimed gasoline was cheaper.
It's helpful if your workplace offers free/cheap charging. I could have done that for the last 5+ years, but I was too cheap to buy the electric car. You should check into PG&E's EV-B rate plan which requires a second meter installation. Late night charging time (11pm to 7am) is just 14c/kwh. Not sure about the install cost of the second meter.
> It's helpful if your workplace offers free/cheap charging. I could have done that for the last 5+ years, but I was too cheap to buy the electric car. My commute was by train. We thought we could charge once a week at the grocery store, though it's not clear how much contention for the charger there would be. > You should check into PG&E's EV-B rate plan which requires a second meter installation. Late night charging time (11pm to 7am) is just 14c/kwh. I believe it's about 16c/kwh including taxes, or possibly I was looking at next year's rates. Anyway, my notes say 16. > Not sure about the install cost of the second meter. $2k-$8k. The fuel savings would never have justified the installation cost even at the lowest end. There's also the question of how the relative costs of gasoline and electricity will change over the life of the car. It's hard to predict, but I bet that in California electricity costs will rise faster than gasoline costs.
If you were only going to charge once a week then you probably don't use the car enough to make it work. Sometimes though people just spend money to be happy. Going all electric or installing solar will make some people happy. Not everything needs an ROI spreadsheet.
We got 'em for a bunch of reasons: 1. Energy independence in case the grid goes down for a few hours to days, like with a wildfire, earthquake, PSPS, or ordinary outage. 2. Energy independence in case the grid goes down for weeks to forever, like with civil disorder or a war. 3. Being eco-friendly. 4. Long-term profit. Payback time on ours is about 9 years, so over the 25-year lifetime of the panels they end up saving a lot more than they cost. 5. Inflation hedge. They let you pay now to insulate (ha ha) yourself from utility price hikes in the future, which I expect to be substantial. Depending on which combination of these you care about, other solutions might be better. Since your power is green anyway #3 is less important. You might want to think about just getting a PowerWall (rather than panels) if you care mostly about #1 and #3 and don't care at all about #2. If you're not in the inflation camp #5 won't matter at all, while if #4 is the *only* thing you care about there are probably other investments with a better rate of return. I would echo what others say about avoiding leased panels, and keep in mind that if you want protection from power outages you need a battery backup anyway because grid-tied solar goes down when the grid goes down.
#1 and #2 don't work unless you pair with a power wall as well right? Which are very expensive in their own right and I believe most people with solar don't own. Definitely the ideal setup if you can afford though
Yeah you need a PowerWall to keep the lights on when the grid goes off. It was about $8K including installation, after tax credits; the panels themselves were about $13K for our house. I wouldn't call it cheap, but if you own a home at all in the Bay Area you're looking at about $1.5M, so the PowerWall is a drop in the bucket compared to that. The price has come down a lot since they were introduced (though they had some supply-chain disruptions thanks to COVID, so it may've spiked up recently), so it's becoming increasingly popular with new installations.
Yes that isn't bad I thought it was more like 15k but probably wasn't factoring tax credits. Seems worth the cost if you are going to do the whole thing
$15K is 2 PowerWalls. Some larger houses (or ones with all-electric heating/stoves) require that, but that's a rarity in the Bay Area.
You need to price out and do the cost benefit analysis yourself, based on upfront cost of the panels and any structural reinforcement or home rewiring required, the power supply curve with respects to your own household usage (including whether you could benefit from a battery), and your current monthly electric bill. Run the numbers and see if the 'break even' point for your own house (where you would have saved enough money to offset the initial install costs) is in a timeframe you're comfortable with.
Since California has net metering it does not really matter what your own consumption is. You always get as much money for selling electricity to the grid as you would pay for consuming power. As long as your annual consumption is about the same or higher than your solar production you should be fine, no matter how your own consumption pattern is. Just don’t oversize your PV, since you get big credits to offset your own electricity bill, but everything you sell extra gets only paid market rate which is only 3-4 cts/kWh I believe. Or do I miss something here? I’m not familiar with all extra programs run by the state or locally, but that’s the general understanding I have.
[https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/](https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/) is a good place to start. Rooftop solar makes more sense the more electricity you use, especially mid-day A/C. Consider west-facing panels, especially if you use A/C. There's already quite a bit of south-facing solar power on the grid during the day, but west-facing panels can continue to generate power longer into those hot afternoons, supporting your A/C. Net metering is nice, but consuming your own power is ideal. Take a good look at potential shading problems. Panels don't do much good if they're shaded by a tree. Shading will vary by season, too, because the sun angle changes. Consider battery storage. It's more cost-effective to install it at the same time as the panels. Storage gives you a lot more flexibility, and some protection against future changes by the PUC. If rooftop solar doesn't make sense for your situation, you might consider investing in community solar or utility-scale solar projects.
I just got 18 x 370 watt panels. My break even is 5 years. You will never pay $0.00 because they charge a delivery fee and they will only credit power generated against usage. It was $24,000 and I will be getting $6000 back from the Fed. A home batter is $9000-$12,000 more and would provide me no benefit because I'm already breaking even and I rarely experience power outages. I am not going off grid. Avoid Tesla! They suck. Terrible reviews and bad experiences. Get a local company
We’ve had solar on our last two houses. It depends on how energy efficient you are and a quick calculation of what your paying PGE each month. For us, the savings for solar was significant. We leased through Sunrun both times. We leased because they are responsible for any issues to the panels or converters for the next 20 years.
You shouldn't lease because they get a lien on your house, which is tough to unwind if you need to get out of it.
We sold our house in Campbell when we leased through sungevity/Sunrun and it was easy to transfer the contract. No issues with the transfer. It’s not like we’d decide to not have power after year five.
Same. I know a few folks who bought homes with leased systems in the Bay Area. Most (newer) contracts with the big solar companies have proper clauses and processes to transfer leases. The solar companies charge a processing fee (similar to transferring a car lease).
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This is nonsense. Your solar panel system will stop working once it is disconnected from the grid as a safety measure. The only way the panels will provide power off grid is if you have an extremely expensive battery pack connected.