It took a while between first learning about solar back in the 1970s and the first costly estimates I got for a prior home in the 1990s to the point where a couple of years ago the fifth estimate I got to add solar photovoltaic (to provide electric power) to my roof was affordable, especially after the various utility company, state and federal incentives and tax benefits. What we were told was a ‘pipe dream’ is now producing all the power for my three family home as well as creating surplus that we are paid for by check from the utility company and creating a large credit on our bill.
The house has also been outfitted with a separate solar system to heat our domestic water. Previously the oil boiler had to run all year long to make water, which was both inefficient and heated up the house in the summer. So there were benefits beyond being more environmentally friendly by saving oil and wear and tear on the boiler in that the house is more comfortable now in summer. Solar hot water systems are rather simple and create hot water even on overcast days and store it in very well insulated tanks (think of a high tech travel mug for coffee but much larger) so that there is plenty of hot water for us to bathe with at night.
Not every house has a roof that is easy to put panels on and not every place has good sunlight to render a system efficient. For folks that want to go green but don’t own a home or have room there are community solar farms that one can join. There are distinctions between not for profit groups or co-operatives offering solar shares and corporations offering to switch your power bill to green energy so read up carefully and be well informed before you make a choice. One can also rent solar panels rather than buy them and avoid the upfront cost but also lose out on the tax credits and rebates as well as on the free power or profit from selling power back to the grid. Those are topics beyond the scope of this article.
Mostly I wanted to share some details that may be useful. Many communities or regions have programs designed to help walk people through the process of getting solar systems in place on their homes or businesses. Check with your city, county and state and ask others who have solar for information. Federal incentives exist too including substantial tax deductions. All these can vary from year to year and place to place and can make a project more practical if one can tap into them. It usually starts with a solar company calculating the viability of your location and property for a solar array. Some can do this on line by looking at GPS coordinates and images of your property and others use special tools on premises to calculate efficiency. Even here in New England, on my home where the roof does not face south but closer to east or west and is rather shallow and there is quite a bit of tree shading they figured out that the system would be more than 70% efficient and predicted the annual production very closely to what it actually turned out to be. From the initial evaluation if the situation looks promising they usually will draw up or generate an image of what the system will look like. While some people have aesthetic concerns about solar panels on many homes they are either not visible from the front or are reasonably discrete. Some installations are integrated into canopies, awnings, carports or other shelters that will be built or already exist on or near the house. And year over year people are getting more accepting of seeing solar panels on the roof. They are a lot less offensive than smokestacks belching smoke to make power.
Most solar systems are ‘grid connected’ which means you still get power from the wires coming into your home. But when you make more solar than you use a meter measures the power you are sending out into the grid and you get credited for it. On those very hot sunny summer days a good system will run your air conditioning with no stress on the grid at peak time and may even send extra power out to help the grid. Unless a grid connected system has a storage battery installed (these can be added later as they are costly and not optimized yet but are getting better) when the grid goes down the solar system will not provide you power. A good storage up battery you can be used in place of a generator to keep some essentials running and doesn’t have the risks or liabilities of a fossil fuel generator so we hope to get one some day. It is important to assure your roof is in good condition prior to installing solar on it as it can be costly to remove and later reinstall the solar array to replace the roof .
Without going into too much detail we were able to calculate that the solar system in total would cost about what we would pay at today’s rates for 10 years of electric usage at the house. The system should last 20 years or more and power company rates are certain to rise over time plus we are getting paid for the extra power we produce so our payback time is probably going to be shorter than 10 years. We also have quite a bit of ‘rainy day’ credit on our power bill and that allows us to consider using safe modern electric heat pumps versus oil for our heating and to allow us to charge a plug in hybrid car off our solar without having to pay out any utility bills. So that means we can substantially reduce our heating oil bills and reduce gasoline use and costs. Coupled with reducing pollution it was a ‘no-brainer’ for us and we’ve been very satisfied with the results.
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