Looking for personal experience with solar panels for your house and possibly reputable companies here in Texas (West of DFW).

Non-personal experience discussion however I’m not really looking for.

Our house is 2700sf, metal roof, heat/water/cooktop and oven are all gas. Our electric bill runs 250-300$ during summer, I’ll have to look at our bill to get kWh a day I don’t have off the top of my head.

I’m not a green energy guy, far from it, but dollars and cents and possibly modern improvements to quality of panels is making it seem interesting. I mean if the monthly payment is less than our electric bill savings, why not? And tax refunds as well?

I’m hesitant about a ton of screws in our roof (should I be?), and maybe even would consider a panel array in the pasture out of sight next to us, we have no neighbors to care about pissing off.

Standing seam?

Yes regular r panel

S-5 clamps or similar mean no drilling.  Some guys penetrate the roof to bring conductors into the attic rather than running conduit all over he roof, but that's for aesthetics and not something you have to do.

I'm only working with one guy over in Tyler on solar.   All my other clients are out of state.  I design 'em, my clients install them.

If a company doesn't ask to see 12 months of electric bills, keep shopping.

Thanks for the advice!
So I guess you’d vote in favor of getting a solar setup, any companies you’d recommend or stay away from?

Sorry, I can't say you need solar.  While that's how I make a living, it's just not the right thing for some people.  If you've got an energy pig of a house, it's much better to reduce consumption through energy efficiency than it is to try to make electricity.  I've said that on Arfcom so many times that no one can dispute that is in fact my position.  

And no.  I can't recommend anyone to do an install or tell you who to stay away from anyone (other than "cough cough" Tesla).  Because I've not worked with people who serve your area.  But I'll say this - Stay away from leases.  Buy the stuff or don't do it.  Leases suck for the vast majority of people.

I appreciate it.
Our house is fairly efficient, it's well insulated, new windows, etc and we just upgraded to the newer ac/freon which made a drastic difference in our consumption. I guess I'm just really more interested getting off the grid, which I guess would also require some "powerwall" battery storage options to keep the solar producing during an outage also. Really after looking at prices and all the back up gen option for power outages would obviously be better, but still grid reliant 99.9999% of the rest of the time.

I've had a few people come to the house and I've flat out refused to talk to them. To me, the roof mounts look like shit and a leak waiting to happen.

I do have a second house on my business property. That house is surrounded by trees, but I've wondered about using ground mount panels instead. I've got some space for that, I just wonder about the power falloff the further away from the house you get. Pretty sure everyone wants to just do roof mounted, hurry up, get the cash and run.

Getting "off-the-grid" is a lifestyle change.  Not for the faint of heart.  It can be done, but for most people it really doesn't make sense - financially or otherwise.

The things I usually tell people is buy the system you can afford (because money is usually the deciding factor).  It's rare that people want to spend the money to produce 100% of what they use.  And it Texas, making more energy that you're actually using pushes the pay-back further out.  The exemption is some co-ops that offer true net metering.  But I've found those to be rare.  Every kWh you use at home is worth what you're paying the utility.  Every kWh you push out onto the grid is typically worthless to you and free money for the grid operator.  

And even if you produce 100% of your needed kWh, your electric bill will never be zero.  Every operator has grid connection charges.  Because in most cases, the grid is your "battery".  And batteries are never free.

I could go on for quite awhile on the rational for doing it, system sizing, etc....  but that's TL:DR for the vast majority of people.  

One other thing to caution you on...  there are tons of lead generation companies that are nothing more than sales shills.  They'll pretend to be installers, get you qualified, then sell your info to some random installation company.  The lead generation folks come and go so fast and change names so frequently that it's almost impossible to keep up with all of them.   So beware adverts on the internet, postcards in the mail and telemarketers calling to set up an appointment.

Are you saying that the meter never really "spins backwards" no matter how much solar you have?

Good call.  Around here those are usually the lead generation shills I mentioned earlier.  Not always.  Sometimes a company's sale people will walk a neighborhood while they're installing in that area.  But most initial sales contact is not an in-person thing.  A lot of them will set up at garden shows or community events.  I have noticed some actual installers setting up at the gun shows.  There were at least 2 at Market Hall this past weekend.  But door-to-door is rare.


Opinions vary.  The aesthetics of solar has gotten a whole lot better in the last 10 years.  And with the flashing and roof penetrations used in the industry today, leaks are extremely rare.  A good installer will do a full survey of an attic and document any signs of prior leaks to cover his ass.  The thing not to do is put a new solar system on a roof that will need replacing in a few years.  Odds of new leaks go up because the roof was already weak.  And the PV system has to come off to put a new roof on.  That's not done for free.


You'd be surprised how many people want ground mounts and how often it's done.  But typically there's not enough free land to make it work, though carport structures and patio covers with solar are a big business in certain parts of the country.  

The downside is that ground mounts cost more because the racking has more "stuff" in it.  There is also more labor cost.  And you have to restrict access to the back of PV arrays that are close to ground levels to keep the kids from swinging on the wires.

The upside is that a ground mount runs cooler and will make more energy than the same system mounted on the roof.  And a ground mount doesn't have to be Rapid Shutdown compliant in most jurisdictions, which can save some money.  

Voltage drop isn't an issue unless you're going really long distances.  We can upsize AC or DC conductors to reduce resistive losses, which is pretty common, but rarely necessary on a residential job.  For larger systems connected to 3-phase grid, we have inverters  with 1000Vdc or even 1500Vdc inputs, so we can go long, long distances and still not have to worry about voltage drop.  But even on small systems, we can go as high as 600Vdc open circuit...  which means we're in the 400Vdc range for nominal working voltage over temperature.  A couple hundred feet is not unusual for DC conductors and most inverters will push 100 ft with minimum ampacity sized conductors.

Digital meters?  Almost never.  It certainly detects the reverse flow and will flag it if you've not told the utility you've interconnected solar.  But getting credit for putting energy on the grid depends on the electrical provider.  Very few will give credit, and even then it probably won't be full retail credit.  It's more like an avoided cost credit - a few cents per kWh.  It can be a different deal if the utility is municipally owned.  Seems to me that Austin Energy used to have a pretty good deal for net metering, but I've not done work in Austin for about 8 years now.  And with the shit show that city has turned into...  

There are exceptions.  Sometimes a utility is trying to hit a renewable portfolio target and will create a program where people with larger systems (usually at least 25kW) will get full credit (or even higher) for PV generation.  But then those systems almost always connect on the utility side of your meter.  So your electric bill won't change.  But you will get a check for what your system makes.  They're called Feed-In Tariffs.  They're also not common around here.

Old mechanical meters will spin backwards, but who uses those anymore?

True net metering (i.e. - if you push out 1kWh out, your next incoming 1kWh is free) almost doesn't exist anymore in North Texas....  and probably in most of Texas.  But it's not something I keep up with because it has pretty much zero affect on what I do.

Thanks for some honest answers. I appreciate it.

A seemingly reputable company I was looking at out of Abilene has a ton of clients that they have done ground mounts for, and that would easily be an option for us. But after reading your replies I think I'm about over considering it all together anyway! I know the hometown forum doesn't get a lot of traffic I guess I was just looking for some "we got them and love them" replies

There's a lot of hate for solar in Texas by the average Joe.  And a lot of frustration by people who do want it trying to find someone ethical and knowledgeable.  It doesn't help that our electricity is relatively cheap.   In my neighborhood of probably 400+ houses, there are maybe 5 solar systems.  And I'm not one of them - trees.  So I'm not surprised at all that people aren't jumping in to say how much they love theirs.  Cause there just aren't that many adopters.  And a lot of them would never hang out at Arfcom, if you catch the drift.

But there's a lot of solar in Texas....  not in the crazy Cali way.  I've done a lot of design in the state.  And while residential systems are the majority by project count, commercial is where all the watts are.  I just finished designing phase 2 for Komatsu in Longview.  We did 384kW on the first pass and have 521kW waiting on equipment to show up.  Lots of big businesses install solar.  Businesses tend to make sound business decisions.  This is not about looking good to the public cause it frequently can't be seen from the ground.  So if it can work for them, it can work for the average Joe.  

But it's like buying a new vehicle.  It takes a ton of research, putting up with asshole sales people, spending money and still having it break at some point going down the road (cause everything breaks eventually).  But with no moving parts, the failures are usually in the monitoring system.  I used to deal with people calling all the time with, "my system isn't making power."  Usually it was and they just needed to reboot the router.  

Modules will pretty much live forever, save natural disasters that remove the roof from your house.  Inverters should last 15+ years.  And given time, a PV system will make electricity worth more than the cost of buying the system.  

But it doesn't work for everyone because of a bunch of reasons that would create another TL:DR

Interesting about the net metering thing.


I was under the impression the utility is required by law to purchase (or at least credit) any power you push back into the system at the generation rate.*


*I'm not sure of the actual term.  Every bill includes two fees, presented as one.  The price you pay for the power to be generated, and the price you pay for the power to be transmitted to your meter.  The former is to what i refer, and that which you are credited for by generating more power than you consume.


Apparently that is an incorrect understanding?

My electrical provider won't provide ANY credit.  If you have solar and you consume nothing from the grid, you're not being charged.  If you consume from the grid, you're being charged like anyone else.  If you produce more than you use and give back to the grid, you get nothing.  It's a co-op, if that matters (I know the legal stuff is different for co-ops), but I still don't understand not offering some sort of credit for giving back to the grid.  Unless/until this changes, I will NOT be getting solar (unless I win the lottery and buy some land and can truly get off the grid if desired).  I thought about getting a small setup to defray the costs, but that would almost certainly never produce more than I consume, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.

I don't know who my parents use, but they just got solar a few years back.  Overall they produce more than they consume, and they get credited up to the amount of electricity they consume, so they don't ever get paid cash for their solar power, but it wipes their bill out to as close to zero as it can be (all they pay are the connection fees or whatever they are).  When the weather is nice, they produce so much more than they consume that my dad used to leave lights on all night because he said he was just getting some of his money back.

Nope.


Sounds like you're expecting fair treatment.  As a gun owner, you should know better than that by now.  

So not getting credit is the norm.  But even if you make all the electricity you use with solar, there are still connection charges.  A zero dollar electric bill is something from the past.  


Most solar sold is done as a $/kW kind of thing.  There are adjustments for PITA factors.  Like it's easier to install on a single story house than a two story house.  But until you go really big or really small, the price per kW is pretty linear.  At least with the honest companies.  

Now if you live in bumfuck and the installer has to drive 3 hours each way, expect that to cost money.  But most of us already knew that.


And there's one of the things about solar that causes unhappiness.  Once people have it, they think electricity is free and start using more than they used to.  That's a bad thing.  And they blame the solar company.  But if you start wasting electricity, look in the fucking mirror - there's your idiot.  

Even if you're pushing power back to the grid they typically only want to pay wholesale power rates if they pay anything That credit will not in include transmission charges which is the other part of your electric bill beside the actual kwh used.  


Think of it this way regardless of which directions you drive on the toll way You still have to pay the toll.  Same for the grid or at least thats what the grid operators were arguing a few years ago.

I don't recall the names of the various charges, but they got credit for most of the electrical consumption.  The fees that weren't credited were under $20 a month.

It can be different depending on where you live which T&D operator you're using whether it's  Co-op/municipal operator etc.  Really it's a patchwork and the real problem is what they're doing today may changed after you put the panels in because there's no standard policy.  


Don't get me wrong I like the idea of solar but when I'm paying a .08 per kwh flat rate it's hard to justify the cost.  If I had to deal with time of day or demand charges like commercial/industrial users do that equation would change.