Solar Panels

[Anonymous]

I live on the Hill and am interested. I hear prices on panels are dropping and tax credits are back, but I am really unfamiliar with what system I might need. My house is about 1200sqft. Can anyone weigh in on their experiences in DC with solar panels, mitigating their costs with tax incentives/credits, and the whole process? I am considering buying not leasing. Any pros or cons to solar?

[Anonymous]

Not really a pro or con, but you may want to look into what else you can do for energy efficiency first. We looked into buying solar panels for our 1400 sq foot house, but even with a perfect roof and location for solar, the costs and benefits didn't balance out for us. Our house runs on a combination of electric and natural gas, so YMMV. A few hundred dollars on insulation, caulk, and a few thousand on new doors can make a big difference on your energy consumption for a small fraction of the cost of solar panels. As much as I'd love to send even less money to our electric company, the costs was such that it would have taken decades for the system to save us the money we would have spent on it. If I had more money I might have done it for non-financial reasons, but we are not in that situation.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tips. I also have a combination of gas and electric powering the place. The house was gutted and renovated in 2009. It has double pane argon windows, storm door, led lights, etc, so I've got that angle covered. I've been reading the prices of solar panels continue to fall, and they become more effective at sunlight conversion, every year. I am hoping someone can weigh in on how long could it effectively take to recoup costs (with credits factored in). Additionally, if anyone has any knowledge of how the new Exelon-Pepco merger could potentially effect net metering in the future, I'd like to learn about it as well. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the tips. I also have a combination of gas and electric powering the place. The house was gutted and renovated in 2009. It has double pane argon windows, storm door, led lights, etc, so I've got that angle covered. I've been reading the prices of solar panels continue to fall, and they become more effective at sunlight conversion, every year. I am hoping someone can weigh in on how long could it effectively take to recoup costs (with credits factored in). Additionally, if anyone has any knowledge of how the new Exelon-Pepco merger could potentially effect net metering in the future, I'd like to learn about it as well. Thanks.

It's the PP again. The challenge with calculating time to recoup costs is that it relies on either assuming the price per credit you sell back to the electric company will either remain the same or predicting what it will change to in the future. We were looking at a system that would have costs around 30k after adjusting for tax credits (that's for product and install, which you have to have done by an accredited professional if you want the tax credits) and would have presumably paid for itself in 7-10 years. The problem with those projections is that as solar because cheaper and more desirable I wouldn't expect incentives to stay the same. I also have doubts about the sustainability of the mode whereby you sell electricity back to the grid. Home batteries could be a game-changer for using solar energy though, as you could be on the grid but store some of your own energy for when you weren't generating it, making the whole arrangement much more tempting and easier to forecast due to less reliance on policies that may not be in place forever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's the PP again. The challenge with calculating time to recoup costs is that it relies on either assuming the price per credit you sell back to the electric company will either remain the same or predicting what it will change to in the future. We were looking at a system that would have costs around 30k after adjusting for tax credits (that's for product and install, which you have to have done by an accredited professional if you want the tax credits) and would have presumably paid for itself in 7-10 years. The problem with those projections is that as solar because cheaper and more desirable I wouldn't expect incentives to stay the same. I also have doubts about the sustainability of the mode whereby you sell electricity back to the grid. Home batteries could be a game-changer for using solar energy though, as you could be on the grid but store some of your own energy for when you weren't generating it, making the whole arrangement much more tempting and easier to forecast due to less reliance on policies that may not be in place forever.

I agree with all of this. There is so much movement in this market, I'm holding out. Elon Musk's batteries (and others to follow) could change the entire situation in the coming years. I don't think you can count on the subsidies nor the ability to sell back electricity going forward.