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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do you have electric or gas water heater and furnace?  If your systems are on gas (excluding seasonal electric A/C and laundry) and you are not planning on adding battery storage to your system or selling back electricity will it even be worthwhile financially to either buy or lease?

I’ve been looking into solar for my house and keep coming back to this question.  My neighbor spent $30k on solar panels and says that they will recoup the money in only 10 years. That seems like a lot of time to me and in that time the technology can change considerably.  [/quote]

Whoa - $30K in 10 years seems like a long time to me too. I was under the assumption that since solar has become much more competitive over the last decade and the systems have improved, that the costs would be lower and the time to recoup also lower.

To answer your first question, yes we have both gas and electric. Gas water heater, furnace, cooktop, dryer. Electric for all else.  Will have to look at what SDGE says about selling energy back to them.[/quote]

I’m the pp who wrote this. If you live in Southern California your cooling needs are probably greater than your heating needs unlike us in Bethesda so solar would make more sense.

I forgot that we recently got an online quote from a MoCo solar panel program for our 2100 sf Bethesda split level for $27k for the purchase of solar panels. It seems  ridiculously high. [/quote]

See that's the part that confuses me.  $27K-$30K it's going to take forever to recoup that. This is where I need more education.[/quote]

Well you get a 30% federal tax credit so the $30k immediately becomes $21k. Then some states have add’l tax credits or SREC markets where you can sell credits to help utilities meet their renewable portfolio requirements. [/quote]

I installed a $30K system in DC a few years ago. It produces about $150 worth of electricity each month, and about $500 worth of SREC's -- Solar Renewable Energy Credits. As you say, with the 30% federal credit the installed cost was about $21K. It paid for itself in a little over three years, since then [b]it's been generating about $7000 a year in income[/b]. The value of the SREC's has gone down slightly but the cost of electricity has gone up. [/quote]

Can you explain what you mean by this - "generating $7K annual income"?[/quote]

NP. The SREC (solar renewable energy credit) market in DC is the strongest in the country. for every megawatt of solar I generate, I get paid approximately $400 for a SREC, because pepco gets fined $500 per megawatt for failing to source ~15% of their power from renewable energy within the district. (which is less than 10 square miles of space to generate solar, in a densely built-up landscape.)

In maryland and virginia, a SREC is around $50. In the rest of the country most of the payback is going to be in reducing your energy bills.

So my system should generate about $8000/year in SREC credits, and reduce my annual power expenditures by about $3500 a year based on what I paid last year, thus my solar panels will be paid off in a few years.[/quote]

Wow! I had no idea.  So dumb question here - is this considered taxable income? [/quote]

The IRS hasn't ruled on SREC's. You don't get a 1099.

The avoided cost of electricity wouldn't be considered taxable income. [/quote]

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