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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#161

Post by Dylan16807 »

gwern wrote: post #79
Dylan16807 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody knows what California electricity prices are going to do in the next 20 years. That's true but with the way most utility costs have been dropping, the rates are probably not going to skyrocket. > using more power The problem is the rate being too high. More use doesn't help the problem. > duck curve Sure, but not very important to this choice. > A silent majority of people think PV panels are ugly. Like, hid…

> That's true but with the way most utility costs have been dropping, the rates are probably not going to skyrocket. With strict liability for wildfires, 'green deals', cap-and-trade or Pigovian tax proposals, California's classic policy insanities, grids potentially struggling with renewables and load sharing, you certainly cannot be >99% confident that there will be no large increases in the offing.

We'll see, sure.

Though when you're looking at a 20 year term it's easy to get solar panels reactively instead of proactively.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#162

Post by georgeecollins »

fbonetti wrote: post #156
georgeecollins wrote: post #148

An important take away from this article is simply the perils of home buying. People usually only do it once or twice in their life (I have done it twice so far) and it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake. Imagine this article with another property problem instead of Sun Run: a mother-in-law unit with a tenant, a disputed property line, a requirement to retrofit the house to make it earthquake proof, illeg…

> An important take away from this article is simply the perils of home buying ... it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake. This article was interesting but I don't think the author was at any risk of making a financial mistake. At the end of the day, Sunrun had a lien on the property. The title company and the lender would not allow the sale to go through unless the Jug estate was able to deliver a clear t…

You are right. He made an arrangement to have the seller remove the equipment that SunRun itself said was rare. People don't often accept surprise problems in homes with less negotiation. Don't do that.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#163

Post by cwkoss »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
city41 wrote: post #20

We bought a house with TPO panels from SolarCity. It's been ... ok. Our monthly payment never goes up for the life of the lease and SolarCity sends us a check if the panels ever don't produce enough. They provide 100% of our electricity and we generate excess that the power company pays us a tiny amount for. If I could do it again I'd get a house without TPO panels. If for nothing else, just one less variable and thi…

1. (Edit: In most cases) Never pay for premium PV panels. The 10-20% premium only nets you an additional 1-2% in generation output. 2. Always get at least three quotes, using energysage: https://www.energysage.com 3. As a residential customer, never sign a PPA. Either pay cash or get a loan 4. Tesla solar customer service is wildly inconsistent. Even as a Tesla investor, I do not recommend them for solar. Sorry for y…

Energysage website is broken and requires an email - seems like it's main purpose is to harvest PII. I'd be wary of using that site. Gave fake quotes after I gave fake email...

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#164

Post by throwaway5752 »

jpeg_hero wrote: post #96
throwaway5752 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels are not electronics. Solar panels usually are warrantied to at least 80% of nameplace capacity out to 25 years. And there are hard caps on 1) PV efficiency (Shockley–Queisser) 2) insolation that are non-negotiable physics. If that system is clean and reasonably maintained, it will be 80% as good as they day you bought it (and probably 80% as good as a brand new system) in a quarter of a century.

True, you’ll still have your 80% but that will be compared to the state of the art at the time as a trade off. The production of contemporary panels should (hopefully) be much much better. Imagine the advances in the next 2 decades: higher efficiency, lighter weight, more module, standards we can’t conceive of. Like the other poster in this thread said: sure your Athlon 500mhz is still runninnfine, even at 80% effici…

I'm a bit disappointed in your response. Did you look up Shockley–Queisser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi...)? The maximum theoretical single p-n junction efficiency is low 30%s. Sunpower is the best consumer grade product and they are in the low 20%s right now (https://us.sunpower.com/products/solar-panels/). There is not that room for improvement. There are higher efficiency pv cells, but they are stacked layers with different bandgaps and/or involve concentrators. And the hard cap is insolation (the amount of sunlight/area) and I am personally very pessimistic that solar tracking will make it in a reliable way to consumer/residential application.

Your Athlon example only works because of where we were in the transistor density s-curve (aka "Moore's law" when it was in the earlier phase and looked exponential). Solar is a lot closer to the analogy at 5 nm scale where quantum tunneling becomes a concern and incremental progress is much slower and more expensive.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#165

Post by timcederman »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #16

FYI, this has nothing to do with solar panels and everything to do with a buying a house that has stuff with transferable contracts. Save up and buy your solar outright, companies don't lease things to you unless there is profit in it.

A transferable contract locked in for years for a system sized for someone with higher than average energy usage. This seems like an outlier in things to consider for buying a house with solar.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#166

Post by gwbas1c »

I just built a house with solar panels. I had a bit of trouble with the bank, because the appraiser refused include the panels when appraising the home.

Ultimately, my state offered better financing than a traditional mortgage. I just wonder what's going to happen if I ask a buyer in 5, 10, or 20 years to pay for the panels. They clearly reduce the home's energy consumption, and thus have a clear demonstrated value.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#167

Post by Hankenstein2 »

imgabe wrote: post #23
BeetleB wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. As for the tax credit, you do get it in the form of a discounted price. Over here, that's how all the solar companies pitch it. They'll install it for cheap, but the condition is that you pay them a big fraction of the tax credit the foll…

> Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. Ok? That is standard practice when you own a home. You are responsible for all the maintenance on your home. What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I assume they have to be cleaned every so often. Anything else? Maybe you have an electrician come and retorque the connections once a year? It's not like they have a lot of moving parts assuming it'…

I had solar panels for 13 years that I bought up front. Never cleaned them, never had to do anything. We had 1 cataclysmic hail storm (Colorado) that destroyed our roof but the panels had zero damage. We had to pay $5000 to get the panels off to fix the roof but the insurance paid for it.

We also paid no extra insurance for the panels.

One of the best decisions we ever made. We just recently sold the house and it is true the panels gave no extra bump to the sales price but the new owners are ecstatic which is also a warm fuzzy.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#168

Post by joshe »

The tax credit thing as designed by legislation is nutty. It lets companies buy your tax credit and use it to offset their own income. Leading to all this zero value financial engineering.

But from a homeowner's point of view and Sunrun's point of view it makes sense. Lots of people might not be able use the tax credit because they already owe have low income tax (moderate income + mortgage interest deduction, or retired with a nice nest egg will get you to very low income tax).

(If you pay enough income tax to use the credit you should just get a loan and avoid this.)

This was legislated poorly, probably in order to call it a "tax credit" instead of "subsidy". A subsidy would be much cleaner, have the same economics and they should just do it that way. This whole mess and industry was created just for this one talking point. The government giving you $2000 off an installation is the same as getting a $2000 tax credit from the Treasury's point of view.

Sunrun sounds like not the best business to be involved with. Like "new buyer doesn't want the system" is an obvious thing for the customer service manual. (Referring to "...prepay the lease and leave the hardware ... I’ve been kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have saved the estate around $12,000").

Also they are clearly selling this to a bunch of people who could easily use the tax credit and could easily get a homeowner's loan. Super dodgy. I'll bet a lot of the sales nonsense is to hide this fact.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#169

Post by throwaway5752 »

secabeen wrote: post #131
throwaway5752 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you owned a multi-kW inverter before? Because if you know one that is mostly free of drama I would love to know the brand! Solar photovoltaic systems are not as maintenance free as one might wish. They still make a ton of financial sense if you own them outright, but inverters and critter damage to wiring can be unwelcome surprise costs.

I have an Aurora PVI-6000-OUTD-US that's been pretty solid. I've also heard good things about the Sunny-Boy inverters. One thing I like about my Aurora is that there is a linux command-line tool that can pull data from the inverter over serial. I pull data from mine every 5 minutes into text files on my home server.

Thank you. I have a SolarEdge currently... after two bad units (to their credit, under warranty) the third has been solid for a long time. I have heard mixed things about microinverters, and my installation has developed partial shading over time (damn trees!) so that's something else I've looked at.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#170

Post by toomuchtodo »

cwkoss wrote: post #163
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. (Edit: In most cases) Never pay for premium PV panels. The 10-20% premium only nets you an additional 1-2% in generation output. 2. Always get at least three quotes, using energysage: https://www.energysage.com 3. As a residential customer, never sign a PPA. Either pay cash or get a loan 4. Tesla solar customer service is wildly inconsistent. Even as a Tesla investor, I do not recommend them for solar. Sorry for y…

Energysage website is broken and requires an email - seems like it's main purpose is to harvest PII. I'd be wary of using that site. Gave fake quotes after I gave fake email...

Energysage is a legit marketplace for solar quotes with funding from the Department of Energy. No affiliation, but I do send everyone consisting solar there for quotes.
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