Well, the time has finally arrived.
Some of you have been asking for an update
on my solar panel system, and I’ve finally
passed the one year mark.
It was actually back at the beginning of October,
so I’m a little late, but better late than
never.
Let’s take a look at how much energy my
system has produced, how much I’ve saved,
and if it met the estimate my solar installer
predicted.
I’m Matt Ferrell.
Welcome to Undecided.
So if you haven’t seen my previous videos
on my solar installation, I’ll include links
in the description.
But to give a quick summary, I live in the
Boston area and have been documenting what
it’s been like living with a 9.49 kW solar
panel system in a colder climate.
My house has a few challenges.
If you live in the northern hemisphere, it’s
best to have a southern facing roof to maximize
your solar production, but my house is oriented
more east-to-west.
That’s why I have panels on both sides of
my roof.
The second issue is that my roof is relatively
small.
And finally, I have a fair amount of trees
on the western side of my house that start
to block the sun in the mid-to-late afternoon.
Even with all of those challenges, the more
efficient panels available today are still
able to provide me a significant portion of
the power I use over the year.
Before I jump into some of the year-end results,
one important factor that gets brought up
a lot on my solar panel videos is the high
energy use some of you see in my numbers.
I do use a lot of power, but it falls right
in line with the national average.
Getting solar panels helps to address the
power generation side of the equation, but
the other half is reducing the amount of power
you use.
I just published a video on that topic last
week, so be sure to check that out if you’re
interested to see some of the things I’ve
been doing to address that.
So we had our solar panels turned on on October
4th, 2018.
All of the numbers and data I’m going to
share stretch between that date and October
3rd, 2019.
Over the course of the year we had two short
periods where our system went down due to
a faulty shut off switch: once in January
and the other in April.
All in we lost 8 days of production, so not
too bad.
Ever since the switch was replaced the system
has been rock solid.
The production amount across the entire year
played out exactly like we expected.
There’s a sine wave looking pattern that
emerges, with the lowest production happening
in the dead of winter in December, and the
most production happening in July during the
summer.
What I found most interesting was that we
saw a pretty quick spike in production in
March, and a pretty dramatic drop in October.
It wasn’t as gradual as I was expecting.
[I use a Sense energy monitor on my home],
so I can closely track our energy use in addition
to our solar production.
We average around 875 kWh each month, so if
we layer on our usage line on top of our production
line, you can see we’re not meeting our
full needs.
This was known going in.
Our goal was to offset as much energy as we
could with our solar production ... given
our home’s specific challenges.
And in that regard we succeeded with about
a 54% reduction in our grid electricity use.
Our solar installer offered a 10 year production
guarantee with yearly estimates.
If our production doesn’t hit the 95% mark
of those estimates, they’ll pay out the
difference.
All in we’ve seen 6,688 kWh produced in
the first year, which comes in just above
their 95% estimate or 6,615 kWh.
We actually hit 96.4% of the best case scenario,
which is higher than I was expecting.
In fact, in my 9-month update, I thought we’d
fall just a little short of the installer
estimate, so I’m glad to be wrong with that
prediction.
For the days we missed because of the technical
issue, I averaged out the 4 days before and
4 days after each outage to try and estimate
what we might have seen during those days.
In January, we were averaging 5.3 kWh/day,
so probably missed out on 21.2 kWh.
And in April, we were averaging 19.3 kWh/day,
so missed out on 77.2 kWh.
As disappointing at that is, it’s probably
about $25 of electricity we lost out on during
that period.
If I add those missing Watts back into the
grand total, we probably should have seen
something like 6,786 kWh for the year, or
about 97.8% of the best case scenario.
I’ve stated this before, but my goal has
been to reduce my reliance on the grid as
much as I can, and to do so in a financially
responsible way that works for us.
So where did we land financially this past
year?
Well, my wife and I are pretty happy.
We used to average $212 a month for our electric
bill and now we’re averaging $97.80 a month
... and that’s also with adding an EV to
the mix.
If you look at this graph that shows the year
before solar compared to the year on solar,
you can see exactly how much our electric
bills have shifted.
Obviously, it follows the same sine wave trend
as the solar production, so there’s a big
drop in our bill right around June and July.
You can see that in June we actually had a
negative balance on our electric bill.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that my
wife stood in the living room laughing out
loud when she showed me the bill.
Year over year, we saved $1,489.86.
Right in line with the $1,500 estimate I was
projecting in my last video update.
In Massachusetts we have full net metering,
which means any overproduction we put into
the grid gets fully wiped off of our kWh used.
In essence the grid acts like a battery for
us for production and cost-wise.
That might not be the case where you live.
So how does all of this work out with the
cost of the system as a whole?
I’ve gone into great detail on this in previous
videos, so I won’t recap all of the details
here, but it worked out like we hoped.
Our system cost a total of $29,609, which
has 25 year warranties on the panels and micro-inverters,
as well as a 10 year warranty on the workmanship
and production from the installer.
The Federal solar tax credit allowed us to
recoup $8,883 of the cost.
And not to go off on a tangent, but I get
a lot of comments about my “neighbors paying
for my solar panels” ... that’s not how
the tax credits work.
It’s a credit on your tax burden for the
year that you claim it and isn’t that different
from being able to claim your children as
dependents in order to increase your tax deductions.
The money you get back comes in the form of
a tax refund because you’ve overpaid taxes
for that year.
Depending on your situation, you aren’t
guaranteed to get the full 30% back in cash.
In any case, our final cost works out to $20,726,
which we have in a 10 year solar loan.
We’ve been working on paying that off as
quickly as we can, and have actually paid
it down by half already, so our interest on
the loan should work out to be pretty low
when all is said and done.
Aside from a recent big lump sum we sent,
we’ve been paying $200/month on the loan.
We also receive SRECs for the amount of solar
we produce, which amounts to $126.22 a month
for a total of 10 years.
In case you don’t know what SRECs are, [they’re
solar renewable energy credits] that are paid
out by the electric companies.
Electric companies are required to achieve
a certain amount of renewable energy in their
grid system, so SRECs are an incentive to
increase the number of people contributing
to that renewable goal.
Not every state has an SREC market, and the
value varies region to region.
When you average out our monthly electric
bill savings, we’re saving $114.20 a month.
Add together the SREC and electric bill savings
and you get $240.42, which means we’re coming
out a whopping $40.42 ahead each month right
now.
(Yes, my wife is planning to retire early
on these savings.)
I know solar detractors may point to that
as proof that this wasn’t worth it, but
if you look long term, those numbers change
quite a bit.
It’s only $40 right now because we’re
still paying off our loan at $200 a month.
But at the rate we’re paying this off, we’re
hoping to have the loan gone within a couple
of years.
The $1,500 per year electric bill savings
will work out to $15,000 in savings in the
first 10 years alone.
And that’s assuming that electricity prices
won’t increase, which they will.
They’ve increased 15% over the past 10 years,
which is about $0.02 per kWh per year.
But that varies depending on the region.
Even without SRECs, we’d achieve breakeven
on the solar panels in 13-14 years.
But with SRECs we’re looking at a payback
period much shorter than that.
The SRECs and electric bill savings over 10
years work out to $30,146, which means a breakeven
in just under 7 years.
However, we have the interest on the solar
loan to contend with.
But as I mentioned before, we’re paying
it off much faster than the 10 year loan,
so the total interest should be a couple thousand
dollars.
We’re on track to breakeven in a little
over 8 years at this point, which is right
in the ballpark of what we were expecting
before we got the panels installed.
And this is on a system with a 25-year warranty,
which should be able to last well beyond that.
Yes, there might be maintenance costs here
and there down the line.
And yes, if I have to replace my roof, it
may cost a few thousand dollars to have a
solar installer remove and replace the panels
for me.
But just looking at the total savings in electricity
from year 10 - 25, once the SRECs are gone,
we’re still talking about $20,000 - $25,000
in electricity savings ... if not more.
Everything from year 9 onwards should be pure
profit for us, so having to spend a little
money here or there to maintain or replace
our roof is a drop in the bucket overall.
And this isn’t even counting the positive
impact solar panels have on your home’s
value.
If you finance and pay for the system yourself
and don’t lease it, adding solar to your
home actually increases your home’s value
by 3-4%.
You’ll often see about $4 per watt of the
installed solar panel system added to your
home’s value.
While I’m not counting on that for my system,
it’s nice to know that I should be seeing
a sizable increase on my home’s value on
top of the electricity savings.
I’ve stated it on previous videos, but my
goal was to get as much energy as I can from
a renewable and sustainable resource, and
do it in a manner financially that worked
for us.
And on that goal we’ve succeeded so far.
Right now there’s only a small savings month-to-month,
but as soon as the panels hit breakeven the
system turns into a profit maker each and
every month going forward.
It also doesn’t hurt that my car is mostly
charged with sunlight.
If you’re interested in going solar, I strongly
recommend checking out Energysage for research
and articles.
It’s a completely free service that has
great write-ups and reviews of different solar
panels, inverters, and solar tech that can
be useful no matter where you live.
But if you live in the U.S. and are interested
in going solar, you can get quotes from installers
by using my Energysage portal.
You can plug in your information and request
quotes from solar installers, which all get
funneled into your EnergySage account.
You don’t have to worry about getting flooded
with phone calls.
It makes it easy to compare installers, cost
estimates and energy production quotes in
one place.
And installers also have customer rankings
and feedback, so you can find a reputable
and good quality installer.
I’ve used it myself, that’s how I found
my installer, so I can vouch for how well
it helped me through the process.
I’ll continue doing these solar panel updates
as things move along.
I may be getting a Tesla Powerwall at some
point down the line, so will absolutely cover
that if and when it happens.
Let me know if you have questions you’d
like to see me cover.
And I’d love to hear what your experience
has been going solar?
Jump into the comments and let me know.
I hope you found this video useful.
If you did, be sure to give it a thumbs up
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And as always, thanks so much for watching,
I’ll see you in the next one.
