Yes, we went solar in late 2021. Pacific Gas & Electric’s rates, already among the highest in the US, kept climbing, and they were beginning to hurt. So I put aside my distaste for California’s solar policies and jumped on the bandwagon before the state changed its polices once again for the worse. I learned a lot in the process.
Not that I was a neophyte to solar. I knew a fair bit going into it, often more than the dealers who pitched me on their products. But being an advocate for solar photovoltaics for several decades is a far cry from buying a dozen panels for your own use.
After one company tried to sell me an installation that was twice what I expected to pay I said, “Whoa, I work with this stuff. I should explore the local market and see what I can learn.” And that’s what I did. I ended up with 14 local bids and estimates from Michigan, and Ontario, Canada for a reality check.
The Bottom Line: Be Patient
The bottom line? Be patient. Never take the first bid. Know what you want and what you expect to pay before you begin. We got the panels we wanted, installed the way we wanted, and for the price I expected.
On the other hand, this process did take me almost two years. I wasn’t happy with the bids I received in 2019 then Covid hit. So I stepped back and cooled my jets. Towards the end of Covid I took a different approach. Rather than have the vendors quote me directly, I asked my electrician if he could get me solar for what I expected to pay. He delivered. He found a solar installer who would work with us and we went on line in early 2022 at half the cost of that initial bid.
We installed a 4.3 kW system with panels made in Canada for $12,750 or less than $3,000 per kW. This was a far cry from the $24,000 system for 5.4 kW or the $20,000 for a 6.2 kW system that we were initially quoted. A little due diligence saved us from $7,000 to $11,000.
North American Panels
Installers here in Bakersfield were using Chinese panels and eventually Vietnamese. I didn’t want either.
As a big proponent of locally sourced materials, I wanted panels made in North America. My political activity was around policies to encourage solar manufacturing in Canada and the USA. There were still a few manufacturers left standing in the USA and two in Canada. I’d personally met the robots at SilFab outside Toronto and they were there because of my work in Ontario so I was partial to them.
The local installers grumbled that the SilFab panels were more expensive than the Chinese products. Maybe so, but the difference in cost was less than 15% for the panels alone and the panels make up only 40% of the total project cost. SilFab is a tier one manufacturer and their panels were competitive in quality and power with the Asian products. That’s what I wanted.
Some installers argued that they couldn’t get SilFab panels in Bakersfield. Unfortunately for them, I’d done my homework and could show them the wholesaler who advertised that they could delver SilFab panels in Bakersfield. The wholesaler eventually did deliver the panels to our job site as advertised and they work just fine.
We’re Not Coming Out
I learned in that initial bid that some solar installers were marking up their costs substantially. I’d had anecdotal evidence of this before. A friend had bragged to me about how well their solar was doing. When I asked who did the work and how many bids did he get, he responded that he was happy with the first bid and went with them. Some other friends told me that I’d be proud of them for accepting a bid for “American” solar panels. In this case, I knew the panels were Asian despite the company’s US address. In both cases I suspect that their installations were oversized for what they needed. They impulsively took the first quote, trusting in the local installers.
That homeowners were buying solar impulsively–likely induced by the lure of a 30% federal subsidy–was brought home to me by one vendor. When I called them for a site visit, they said, “Paul we know you. We’re not coming out.” They’d been in the solar business for almost three decades and we’d done programs together in the past. They knew that I knew solar better than most and correctly surmised that they weren’t going to sell me an expensive oversized system with fat profit margins.
All solar is good, but there’s no reason to pay thousands of dollars more than necessary for a system that’s far larger than you need. Buying an expensive solar system is a luxury only the well off can afford.
Inverters
For residential systems here in Bakersfield, the installers had all moved to micro-inverters. I’d worked with the German and Austrian string inverters and would have preferred using them. The local warehouse had string inverters in stock so somebody was using them.
Unfortunately, our site has several trees—shade trees are a luxury here in the desert—and the string inverters would be problematic. For partially shaded panels, micro-inverters work better. Our installer used Enphase micro-inverters on the back of each panel.
In or Out—Wire Run
We’d seen a lot of poorly done solar installations in our neighborhood where the contractors took shortcuts with the wire runs. Rather than run the wires connecting the panels together in the attic crawl space, they’d run the wires in conduit laid on the roof. Some went so far as to paint the conduit to match the roof color rather than put the wire in the attic space. This looks tacky and unprofessional. We didn’t want that.
What we wanted was all wiring inside the roof space with none visible on the outside. That was how we specified it to our contractor. They didn’t complain and told us that was the only way they did it.
Our attic craw space was difficult to access with several inches of cellulose insulation, yet the contractor’s young employees were nimble enough to get the job done.
You Need a New Roof
Everyone and their brother were selling solar here in 2019, including roofing companies. We had a roofing company give us a quote. First, they said, we need a new roof. That wasn’t entirely unexpected; they were a roofing company after all.
We had an expensive roof installed two decades before and it looked fine to us. I called another roofing company—one that didn’t do solar. They came out, for hire, and said our roof was fine for at least another decade.
In the end, the first roofing company didn’t even send us a quote. They made some excuse that their software couldn’t handle SilFab panels. Most likely they just didn’t want to bother bidding competitively on a small job.
Small Job
I’ve been doing this—energy—for a long time. Two decades ago, we remodeled the house in part to be energy efficient. For years we used half the electricity for equivalent homes in this part of the utility’s service area. Our annual consumption was comparable to the typical northern European or about 3,000 kWh per year.
Nearly a decade ago, we moved to an electric car. That doubled our consumption to around 6,000 kWh per year—still less than the typical household here.
Solar vendors expected to install a much larger system than we needed. That’s what they were used to and that’s the profit they expected from each job.
One vendor bid a 6.2 kW system, which was far more than we needed. In the end, our contractor installed 12 SilFab panels in a 4.3 kW system. It meets our needs
California Price Gouging
When the quotes were coming in much higher than expected, I started asking around. I called my colleagues in Michigan, and in Ontario, Canada. They were in the business. They knew residential solar.
In Ontario, they were installing residential solar for about US$2,900 per kW. It was even less in Michigan: $2,300 per kW. Because I was helpful once, the Michigan installer even offered to come out to California and install it for that price if I had all the materials on hand.
Now I had a firm baseline and that’s what I told my electrician I wanted to pay. Our contractor installed our 4.3 kW system for slightly less than $3,000 kW.
My only explanation for the difference in cost is price gouging. Prices for electricity in Michigan and Ontario are one-third to one-quarter those in California. Solar PV offsets the cost of electricity from the utility. California installers were charging “what the market could bear.” Even with inflated prices, a solar installation would still pay for itself in California within seven years. And that seemed to be the target payback—seven years.
Summary Cost
We installed a 4.3 kW system with panels made in Canada for $12,750 or less than $3,000 per kW. This was a far cry from the $24,000 system for 5.4 kW or the $20,000 for a 6.2 kW system that we were initially quoted. A little due diligence saved us from $7,000 to $11,000.
Performance—How Well Are We Doing?
Our contractor projected we would generate ~1,567 kWh/kW of installed solar during a full year of operation, but we only produced 1,387 kWh/kW for a partial year. During our first year, generation was off 11% from that estimated. Under our net-energy metering program we paid around $200 for electricity at the end of our “true up” period.
Production is slightly higher in our second year, and it looks like we should finish the year in the black with possibly a surplus of 100 kWh or more.
What’s Next?
Now that our solar PV installation is doing what we expected at the cost we expected, we’re moving to electrify the rest of our appliances and disconnect PG&E’s natural gas line. We plan to take advantage of the subsidies in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and replace our gas stove with an induction range, and replace our gas water heater, and our gas HVAC system with heat pumps.
Questioning Solar Installers
Here are some questions to keep in mind if you want to go solar.
- How much will I need to offset my bill?
- How many panels?
- How many kW?
- What will it cost in total with tax?
- What kind of panels will you use?
- Where are they made?
- What kind of inverters will you use?
- Where will you mount the interconnect box?
- Where will you put the solar panels?
- How will you run the wiring?
- Inside the attic or out?
- How long have you been in this business?
- Do you have references that I can check?
- Are there any subsidies I can use?
