Posted: 7/10/2016 12:39:07 PM EDT
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It has been requested that we spice up the conversations on the CTHTF, with some new and interesting topics. Well, here goes.
I was watching a program the other night by the crew that makes the show VICE. It's topic was climate change, and power sources other then fossil fuels (mostly solar). I found it a bit ironic, that on a segment about a dirt poor African country (forget which one), with no electrical infrastructure, how the village chief was handing out Chinese made solar powered lights. While rejecting fossil fuel power plants may be a good idea, replacing them with technology from China, who is infamous for it's toxic manufacturing methods, seems a bit counter-productive! Anyway. I was in Home Depot buying and air conditioner, with this program fresh in my mind, when the salesman from Solar City approached me. After a bit of a conversation, I agreed to have a rep come out to the house. I have a plain rectangular ranch house, who's narrow ends are at almost due north-south. I also have almost no shade, with both sides of the roof exposed to the sun for all but the earliest and latest hours of the day. Basically, the house bakes like a potato all day. I would appear to have a vary favorable location to install solar panels. The salesman also told me the panels work off of UV, so they produce power as long as there is light. I also have a friend who is an engineer for Eversource, and he tells me that solar power has many different parts to it, and not as attractive as the solar companies make it out to be. I have many question for the rep like: Do the panels shade and cool the roof. What happens in the winter, when they are covered with snow. And, just as important, how do they effect ice dams. That kind of stuff. So, do any members here have experience with solar power in general, and Solar City in particular? If so, can you please relate any/all of the pitfalls/advantages of letting any company cover my roof with ugly solar panels? Thanks for the insight! Please discuss! 
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| If you plan on being in your house for some time, the cost/benefit can be in your favor. If you are planing to move in the next 10 or so years, avoid. Also you are going to find solar city expensive and a hard sell type organization. Go with a local guy, I know there is a CTHF member that does it for a living. |
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If you plan on being in your house for some time, the cost/benefit can be in your favor. If you are planing to move in the next 10 or so years, avoid. Also you are going to find solar city expensive and a hard sell type organization. Go with a local guy, I know there is a CTHF member that does it for a living. Its zergman Unless you buy the panels the free panel deals seem sketchy to me. they wouldn't do it if they didn't make money. I was at home depot yesterday and now solar city offers a loan for a new roof too |
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.... I was in Home Depot buying and air conditioner, with this program fresh in my mind, when the salesman from Solar City approached me. After a bit of a conversation, I agreed to have a rep come out to the house. .... I have a bridge in the desert I can sell you. Solar power is for girly-men. Real men use compact single house nuclear power generators! The only reason I don't have one is I can't afford it, but if I could I would. I don't remember where conndcj's post is, but he mentioned something about threads degrading and Nazis.... (like I said I don't remember exactly). However, to make conndcj happy: fuck enviro-NAZIS!
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I had them out to my home as well... solar city.
My roof is 96% efficient for solar as per their software. I'm not fond of locking into a 20 year contract. It may be worth it in the long run, but the rep left alot of ambiguity. If I go forward, I will have to have my lawyer review the entire contract. |
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I had them out to my home as well... solar city. My roof is 96% efficient for solar as per their software. I'm not fond of locking into a 20 year contract. It may be worth it in the long run, but the rep left alot of ambiguity. If I go forward, I will have to have my lawyer review the entire contract. Have some other places come out. I can get our sales rep out if you're interested. We offer leases, too, but our bread and butter is selling you the system, not leasing it to you. The leases really take the benefits away from the homeowner. The advantage of the lease is it makes it affordable to people who can't outright buy it. Buying your system is the way to go. Shoot me an IM if you're (or anybody is) interested. I don't want to get this thread locked. |
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The vivent company hooks something to your cable modem so they can monitor the panels. It monitors production. There's dozens of ways to do it and it isn't always necessary but you'd be a fool not to do it. It's a cross reference for what the utility is saying you produced, so they can't bullshit you. And even more importantly IMO, you can tell when something breaks. If an inverter or panel stop producing it sends an alert so it can be remedied. It only uses your network to push your production values off to the monitoring website. CT requires Revenue Grade Monitoring in one form or another. There is also a Net Meter installed that uses a cell signal to push production numbers out to a website. It's nice because it doesn't rely on your network. |
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Zerg is your man on the technical aspect of this. I am not sure he has all the skinny on the financial/contract stuff.
Be careful because most of these schemes where you pay no money are nothing more than electricity purchase contracts. The company puts power generating panels on your roof they sell the power to you at a predetermined rate and any surplus goes to the power company. Be real careful because you may have the electricity equivalent of an ARM mortgage. Low up front costs and then every year you pay more and more. Solar Shitty will not tell you the details straight up, they are very deceptive. If you need a roof during the time the panels are there you have to pay them to remove them and reinstall increasing your roof cost significantly. If you sell your house you better hope the new buyer wants to "assume" your contract or you pay a huge penalty to get out of it. Unless you buy the system I do not think it is worth it. I looked into it and it is like dealing with snake oil salesman. You need a shower after talking to them. Solar City is probably the worst in their business practice and workmanship. Think aluminum siding salesman from the 60s. Elon Musk is the owner and that piece of crap loves to talk about his Tesla cars and how great they are and how well the company is doing. Why not Google Tesla and see how much money he gets in government subsidies and then see where his profit is coming from. He started PayPal, everyone's favorite anti-gun company. You will see Musk loves to build businesses based on government subsidies. |
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If you plan on being in your house for some time, the cost/benefit can be in your favor. If you are planing to move in the next 10 or so years, avoid. Also you are going to find solar city expensive and a hard sell type organization. Go with a local guy, I know there is a CTHF member that does it for a living. The ten year plan is really dependent on whether your purchase or lease. In some areas a new array on a house adds up to $4 per watt to its value. |
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Zerg is your man on the technical aspect of this. I am not sure he has all the skinny on the financial/contract stuff. Be careful because most of these schemes where you pay no money are nothing more than electricity purchase contracts. The company puts power generating panels on your roof they sell the power to you at a predetermined rate and any surplus goes to the power company. Be real careful because you may have the electricity equivalent of an ARM mortgage. Low up front costs and then every year you pay more and more. Solar Shitty will not tell you the details straight up, they are very deceptive. If you need a roof during the time the panels are there you have to pay them to remove them and reinstall increasing your roof cost significantly. If you sell your house you better hope the new buyer wants to "assume" your contract or you pay a huge penalty to get out of it. Unless you buy the system I do not think it is worth it. I looked into it and it is like dealing with snake oil salesman. You need a shower after talking to them. Solar City is probably the worst in their business practice and workmanship. Think aluminum siding salesman from the 60s. Elon Musk is the owner and that piece of crap loves to talk about his Tesla cars and how great they are and how well the company is doing. Why not Google Tesla and see how much money he gets in government subsidies and then see where his profit is coming from. He started PayPal, everyone's favorite anti-gun company. You will see Musk loves to build businesses based on government subsidies. 2.9% per year increase, starting at 13.5 cents. He makes money selling carbon credits too |
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It has been requested that we spice up the conversations on the CTHTF, with some new and interesting topics. Well, here goes. I was watching a program the other night by the crew that makes the show VICE. It's topic was climate change, and power sources other then fossil fuels (mostly solar). I found it a bit ironic, that on a segment about a dirt poor African country (forget which one), with no electrical infrastructure, how the village chief was handing out Chinese made solar powered lights. While rejecting fossil fuel power plants may be a good idea, replacing them with technology from China, who is infamous for it's toxic manufacturing methods, seems a bit counter-productive! Solar might be the dirtiest industry out there right now.  there will be whole new industries in the coming years figuring out how to recycle old panels etc. there is currently nothing in place.
Anyway. I was in Home Depot buying and air conditioner, with this program fresh in my mind, when the salesman from Solar City approached me. After a bit of a conversation, I agreed to have a rep come out to the house. Stay away from SC they are the WalMart of solar. They have by far the shittiest installations you can buy. It's cookie cutter, in/out work. It's a product of their quantity, they soak up 30+% of the market and it shows in their quality. It's a disgrace to the industry. You can spot a SC job because it will have fucking conduit run all across the roofs, over the eaves and down/around the sides of the houses. It's complete hack work. I have a plain rectangular ranch house, who's narrow ends are at almost due north-south. I also have almost no shade, with both sides of the roof exposed to the sun for all but the earliest and latest hours of the day. Basically, the house bakes like a potato all day. I would appear to have a vary favorable location to install solar panels. The salesman also told me the panels work off of UV, so they produce power as long as there is light. Today's panels only actually capture the red band of UV and are around 21%efficient. There are a lot of variables that affect a panels production and clouds are one of the biggest. On an overcast day you can still expect to see somewhere in the range of 20% production. Meaning, if you have a 10kw system, you should be producing around 2kw when it's cloudy out. Heat is the next biggest enemy. 65 degrees is the testing temperature; for every 5 degrees over that you lose 1% efficiency. Contrary to popular belief, summer has the worst operating conditions (but the longest operational time). The panels are more efficient in the winter but the days are just short. Fall and spring are the money makers. Things like humidity also have small effect, season, angle of the sun, ambient temperature etc I also have a friend who is an engineer for Eversource, and he tells me that solar power has many different parts to it, and not as attractive as the solar companies make it out to be. I have many question for the rep like: Do the panels shade and cool the roof. What happens in the winter, when they are covered with snow. And, just as important, how do they effect ice dams. That kind of stuff. solar has three or 4 major components. The panels, the inverter(s), disconnects, and metering. There's really not much to em. Conduit and wire connect them all. I don't actually know if they cause the roof to be cooler. Probably a little, but they definitely extend the longevity of the roof directly under the panels. Knowing the panels work better the cooler they are, it is advantageous to promote air flow under the panels so it's mind boggling to me why Solarcity sells their systems with that skirt at the bottom of the panels, effectively eliminating all airflow under the panels. When they are covered in snow they don't produce. The panels have a rainx type film on them that causes them to shed snow and pollen very well. You'd have to treat any roof with panels on it as a metal roof. Snow has a tendency to Avalanche off as soon as it warms around 30 degrees and is sunny. Ice dams are generally less common because the snow doesn't stay on the roof. But there's so many different variables from roof pitch to temperature etc it's impossible to guarantee one thing or another. So, do any members here have experience with solar power in general, and Solar City in particular? If so, can you please relate any/all of the pitfalls/advantages of letting any company cover my roof with ugly solar panels? I have almost ten years in Solar Construction. I'm not a salesman. There are many reasons to go solar and a few to not. Only you can really decide if it is for you. Thanks for the insight! Please discuss! Let me know if you have any other questions. |
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Zerg is your man on the technical aspect of this. I am not sure he has all the skinny on the financial/contract stuff. Be careful because most of these schemes where you pay no money are nothing more than electricity purchase contracts. The company puts power generating panels on your roof they sell the power to you at a predetermined rate and any surplus goes to the power company. Be real careful because you may have the electricity equivalent of an ARM mortgage. Low up front costs and then every year you pay more and more. Solar Shitty will not tell you the details straight up, they are very deceptive. If you need a roof during the time the panels are there you have to pay them to remove them and reinstall increasing your roof cost significantly. If you sell your house you better hope the new buyer wants to "assume" your contract or you pay a huge penalty to get out of it. Unless you buy the system I do not think it is worth it. I looked into it and it is like dealing with snake oil salesman. You need a shower after talking to them. Solar City is probably the worst in their business practice and workmanship. Think aluminum siding salesman from the 60s. Elon Musk is the owner and that piece of crap loves to talk about his Tesla cars and how great they are and how well the company is doing. Why not Google Tesla and see how much money he gets in government subsidies and then see where his profit is coming from. He started PayPal, everyone's favorite anti-gun company. You will see Musk loves to build businesses based on government subsidies. Musk just bought SolarCity with Tesla. Figure that out. One company that operates at a loss just ate a company that loses Millions of dollars a quarter. 
Big investors and stock holders are fucking pissed. |
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2.9% per year increase, starting at 13.5 cents. He makes money selling carbon credits too Quoted:
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Zerg is your man on the technical aspect of this. I am not sure he has all the skinny on the financial/contract stuff. Be careful because most of these schemes where you pay no money are nothing more than electricity purchase contracts. The company puts power generating panels on your roof they sell the power to you at a predetermined rate and any surplus goes to the power company. Be real careful because you may have the electricity equivalent of an ARM mortgage. Low up front costs and then every year you pay more and more. Solar Shitty will not tell you the details straight up, they are very deceptive. If you need a roof during the time the panels are there you have to pay them to remove them and reinstall increasing your roof cost significantly. If you sell your house you better hope the new buyer wants to "assume" your contract or you pay a huge penalty to get out of it. Unless you buy the system I do not think it is worth it. I looked into it and it is like dealing with snake oil salesman. You need a shower after talking to them. Solar City is probably the worst in their business practice and workmanship. Think aluminum siding salesman from the 60s. Elon Musk is the owner and that piece of crap loves to talk about his Tesla cars and how great they are and how well the company is doing. Why not Google Tesla and see how much money he gets in government subsidies and then see where his profit is coming from. He started PayPal, everyone's favorite anti-gun company. You will see Musk loves to build businesses based on government subsidies. 2.9% per year increase, starting at 13.5 cents. He makes money selling carbon credits too 13.5 cents per kWh, holy shit. Eversource is at 9.55 cents and if you shop around you can get even better. Wow Musk is no dummy he gets the feds, state and even his customers to pay him. Subsidies from the state and feds and more per kWh than Eversource. He makes money just by being an alternate supplier. He also gets the co-generation credits on top of all this. Such a deal, you get the ugly panels on your roof, a contract to pay more per kWh and a white elephant when you go to sell. Sign me up! Or you can do a lease-purchase from Zegermeister and get all tax breaks and co-generation credits and only pay the net difference. This is the way to go if the number work for you. My electric bill is between $125 and $185 depending on the time of year. So for my purposes even owning solar does not make it worth it for me. I am looking at a 10+ year payback. That is providing there are zero equipment failures during this time. |
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Thanks to everyone, especially the Z man, for all the replies. It appears there truly is no such thing as a free lunch, not that I thought there was. It doesn't sound like this is something I need to get involved with. All this is the "parts" that my friend was referring to, not the actual hardware. Due to our usage, our electric bill is pretty high, but I don't think solar is the way to go quite yet. I cant see myself staying in this house for another 10 years. It is a very rough piece of land, my wife has horses, and I am turning 60 in Oct. I am coming to the end of my rope wanting to deal with all the work. Since I am currently working on a very expensive deal to get city water to my house, I have no funds available to purchase a solar system outright, It will be hard enough to sell this place, without the specter of some kind of solar panel lean hanging over the property.
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply. Now to come up with another interesting topic to start a thread about!
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I had also read they lose a minimum 12% on every job, minimum. When they bid a job, they know right out of the gate they will be out at least 12%. I can't imagine what I could personally accomplish in this industry if I had Elon Musk to back me. He probably makes 500 percent selling carbon credits |
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He probably makes 500 percent selling carbon credits Quoted:
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I had also read they lose a minimum 12% on every job, minimum. When they bid a job, they know right out of the gate they will be out at least 12%. I can't imagine what I could personally accomplish in this industry if I had Elon Musk to back me. He probably makes 500 percent selling carbon credits If that were the case he wouldn't need to bail himself out of a $7,400,000,000 hole. A couple times a quarter they bundle their leases up and sell them to investors. |
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How invasive is it bolting the panels to your roof???? That part I don't like. If you have competent crew performing the work, the area where we anchor our attachments becomes more dexterous than the surrounding roof. We send a 5/16"x4" Stainless Lag directly through the roof and into the rafter; through a fully self containing flashing system, and we flood the pilot home with a Tri-Polymer sealant, and also create a barrier around the hole with it, too. That's for a standard asphalt shingle roof, there's different methods, that's just what we use. It's different for corrugated or standing seam metal roofs, EPDM rubber roofs, flat roofs etc. It's always funny having a customer watch you drill 100 holes in their roof.
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