I should say a little about solar energy, which I looked into this past week (for planning and budgeting).
I called SunPower and asked for an assessment. I got a call from the local SunPower installer/authorized reseller.
The reason I was asking was that my new home has a large south-facing roof and another that faces east. It also doesn’t have a lot of trees or neighbors with trees. So I figured I should check in and see what was up.
The short answer is that I’d have to finance it or save up. There’s more interesting stuff that I found out, though.
- They recommend that you have a new roof before installation, so right now (with a very new roof) would be a great time to do it.
- There is a 30% (of purchase price) Federal Tax Credit offered for the next 8 years for this kind of effort (and one of the kinds of financing the solar installers will provide is a bridge loan until you can get that credit)
- There’s a Maryland State tax rebate. The solar installer said it was $6,000, but looking at the actual documentation makes it more difficult to understand.
- There may be other financial/tax benefits.
- Panels mount on bracket systems, which are installed under (I think) the lapping of asphalt shingles.
- Solar installations are NOT power backup solutions. In fact, they have automatic cut-offs during total voltage drops to try to avoid electrocuting electric company workers (who might otherwise expect the lines to be dead during a blackout/power failure).
- A 4kW system (like I was discussing) ends up costing about $32k but you get about 45% back after all the rebates/credits.
- Solar installations not only save you money against your use of electricity from the electric company but they also generate green energy credits, which the electric company buys from you to reduce its carbon footprint.
Anyhow, it all looks very interesting, but it’s clear I’ll need to save up (or get comfortable with the idea of financing) before I do this.
Why WOULDN’T you finance the system?
When you sign up with the utility, they don’t ask you to pre-pay the next 25 years of bills. You shouldn’t pre-pay for your solar power either.
Financing a solar system is the logical thing to do, unless you are considering the system as an alternative to a traditional investment, like the stock market or bank CD.
@mschmidt, I am not interested in financing the system because I think that within a year or two I will be able to pay for it outright. Since financing would ask me to pay a third party a percentage of the total cost for several years, that interest would impact my bottom line and probably also impact my ability to get other financial assistance if need be for my next car or some other large property/asset.
It is additionally, for me/my household an investment. It is not clear to me whether we’ll stay long enough in this house to recoup the investment, but it might contribute to resale value.
I don’t know what your experience has been like, but mine with renovations has been that you don’t get nearly as much back out in the form of sales revenue as you put into a house in the form of renovation investment.
I should note that mschmidt’s registration credentials ID him as being a SunPower employee of some kind.