So we did a Solar consultation today over zoom. About an hour long, nice enough guy. Definitely some red flags though.
He did start off right with suggestions like doing an energy audit and check for updates that could make the house more energy efficient. Replace insulation in the attic and make sure ducts are sealed.
Supposedly using quality parts?Hanwa Q Peak Duo panels and Enphase Micro inverters?
19 panels 7.6 KW system cash price about 30k.
Now some sketchy stuff. Lots of figures and info in the presentation but not able to email the info so we could read through the stuff. Used free zoom so at 30 minutes we had to reconnect.
So the 30K was before tax credits but we don't have that much income tax liability that we could claim the credits. they really push these tax credits to make it seem cost effective. I don't think the numbers pencil out for us. Our average bill is 150.00 a month for electric. We have gas for heat and water heater. Just the two of us here.
Real weird stuff when he started talking about financing....big pass on that as others have suggested here.
Some how he projected we would save like 118,000 over 25 years? That's around 400 a month....that seems next to impossible? Fuzzy new math? Am I missing something there or did he slip a decimal point?
So more research is needed but seems probably more trouble than it's worth?
You have to guess on all sorts of things to do a projection. These solar marketing companies are just incented to err on all the numbers in a way that makes it seem like a good deal.
They typically don't know or don't understand that the tax credit is nonrefundable. (I think it carries forward, but don't quote me on that.)
They typically will assume zero maintenance and zero failures and zero roof replacement costs.
They typically will assume that your electric costs will go up at X% per year where X% is on the high side.
They probably assume that your electricity company will continue to buy back power at whatever current favorable deal exists. (Sometimes they'll say that you'll get grandfathered in to the current great deal and the electric company will be phasing that out soon...just a trick to instill a sense of urgency.)
If it suits, they might calculate you getting a big system and selling lots of power back to the power company at ever increasing prices (see X% above).
With optimistic numbers, I can probably calculate a payback in 5 years. With pessimistic numbers, it probably is 20 years to never.
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I dug out my papers from my presentation a few years ago from a local solar marketing company. Interestingly, similar size system to yours, similar hardware, similar price. Some notes about a loan, and "go solar for less than your current electricity bill" (not accurate). But also no paper quote from them with a price - just cool pictures of my house with solar panels CGI'ed on top of them, with a bunch of numbers and panels and calculations. Also no paper statement with payback period or IRR.