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It’s been almost 4 years since I had solar panels installed on my house, which is located in
Massachusetts. In general they’ve been performing pretty close to what was promised, but last
year threw us some curveballs that made me a little concerned. I saw a pretty sharp decline
in the amount of solar produced. Since my solar panels are nearing their 4 year anniversary, I
thought it would be a good idea to share what I’ve learned living with solar panels in an
area you might not think they’d be good for, as well as what happened last year. Do I still
think getting solar panels was a good idea? Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this. I’m Matt Ferrell … welcome to Undecided. If you haven’t seen my previous videos on my
solar panel installation, I’ll include links in the description so you can check them out. I won’t
rehash everything from those videos, but in short, 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 wife and I decided to get solar installed for two reasons: 1) reduce our electric bill and
save money over time, and 2) get as much of our electricity from clean sources as possible.
There’s no question where my electricity is coming from when it’s being produced on my roof.
You could probably also include a third reason to the mix, my Tesla Model 3. Charging up your
EV with electricity that you generate yourself is pretty cool. I guess you could say the
idea of energy independence is enticing. 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, so I can capture morning and afternoon sun. The
second issue is that my roof is pretty 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. Like I
said, my house is a bit challenging for solar. For the past few years my solar panels have
reduced our reliance on the grid by about 54%, which is what we expected given my
home’s issues. We’re still on track for the system to have paid for itself in
savings by 2026 (it’s a 7-8 year payback), but there’s some wrinkles to
that I’ll get to in a bit. First though, I’ve got to get into last year’s
issues. We saw a pretty steep drop in performance in 2021, but it’s really important to give these
numbers some context. If you don’t have solar, it’s easy to armchair quarterback and
ridicule solar as a waste of money. Some of the comments I see most often on my
solar panel videos bring up the misperception that solar panels degrade and die quickly. Others
question the accuracy of solar installers telling you how much you’ll produce each year … sometimes
for the next 10, 15, 20 years. Weather is going to be a huge factor in how well your solar panels
work. The criticism is usually, if a meteorologist struggles to predict the weather a week out,
how can you predict years of solar production. On that first point about degradation, it’s
absolutely true that you’ll see a decline year over year. However, if you have quality
made panels from the major manufacturers, those panels will last 30+ years. For these
panels you’ll have warranties that guarantee minimal losses over the next 20 years, but that’s
not end of life … that’s just the warranty period. In my case I have LG solar panels on my home
that are guaranteed to produce at least 88.4% of their original efficiency, which means
you’re talking about a .5% drop each year. And that’s why I had to raise an
eyebrow at last year’s numbers. My solar installer offered a 10 year production
guarantee. If my panels produce less than 95% of their projection, they’ll pay the difference
in the cost of electricity. They projected that we’d be producing close to 6,600
kWh each year for the first few years, but last year we produced only 6,479 kWh.
The year before we produced 7,293 kWh. So comparing 2021 to 2020, we saw an 11% drop in
production. So yeah … I was a little perplexed, frustrated, with a dash of concern. To add to that
our electricity use had increased slightly because my wife started working from home due to the
pandemic, and our electricity prices had risen … a lot. Back when we got the solar panels installed
we were paying about $0.24/kWh. Now we’re paying about $0.30/kWh. On average we use roughly
950 kWh per month over the course of a year, so you’re talking about going from a potential
bill of $228 a few years ago to $285 today. That’s when the data nerd in me kicked into gear and I started crunching the numbers
to figure out what was going on. But before getting to what I found,
there’s some other numbers worth crunching. I’ve been asked on previous solar panel videos how
much my home insurance went up with solar panels, and that really depends on your provider. My home
insurance didn’t change at all with solar, but we’re planning on moving at some point soon, so
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to Policygenius and to all of you for supporting the channel. Now back to what I found
after digging into my solar production data. When looking at your solar panel production,
it’s important to not focus and obsess on the day-to-day numbers. There’s going
to be an incredible amount of volatility day to day depending on the weather.
Cloudy days, rain, snow, etc. It all depends, so you have to look longer
term when assessing how it’s performing and if it’s worth the cost of the system. It’s the same
reason my solar installer does a yearly guarantee. Take a look at my monthly numbers year over
year and you’ll start to spot some clear trends. Summer is obviously going to be peak production
because of the increased daylight hours and the sun being at a higher angle in the sky.
During winter you have shorter days and a lower angle of sun. The yearly trend looks a lot
like a daily trend. Very low production in the winter and none at night, and a swell
during the summer months or middle of the day. However, something should jump out at you
on this chart. The 2021 numbers between May and September are dramatically
lower than the years before it. I knew weather was going to play a role in how
effective my panels would perform, but I didn’t expect such a huge swing to happen year over
year. That’s when I pulled up the historical weather data for my area. If you overlay the
amount of precipitation on top of the solar production chart, the correlation is pretty clear.
Here in the New England area, 2021 was one of the warmest and wettest on record, especially if you
look at the July, August, and September data. 2021 was the third warmest on record going all
the way back to 1895. It was also the third wettest year on record and July 2021 coming in
as the wettest month on record. Massachusetts typically sees about 4 inches of rain in July,
but last year we saw an average of 10.3 inches. So the mystery was solved for
why 2021’s production was so low. It wasn’t anything wrong with my
panels, inverters, or other hardware. Thankfully, if you look at what we’ve seen so far
in 2022, everything is back to normal. In fact, April’s production numbers were the best
we’ve seen so far after four years of data. While you might think this challenged my belief
in only vetting solar production numbers year to year vs. day to day, and that weather doesn’t
really factor in too much long term, it hasn’t. 2021’s yearly number came in at 6,479.6 kWh with
a prediction from my installer of 6,549 kWh. That prediction was off by about 1%, which
really isn’t bad at all. The variability in seasonal weather conditions is factored into
historical data that solar installers pull from to make their future production numbers. And
from what I’m seeing, it’s pretty accurate … even though I’ve seen wild swings between a couple of
years. 2020 was about 10.8% higher than predicted. They worked out the prediction on the
concervative side of what we might see. And that brings me to the giant question
of, “do I still think it was worth it?” If you’ve watched my previous videos on my solar
panels, you’ll know that I’ve said in each one of these that the answer is yes. But you’ll
also know that I always stress very hard that it’s going to depend on what your personal goals
are. Anyone that tells you that solar panels are worth it no matter what should be ignored.
And the same is true from anyone that says solar panels are a scam and will never work.
Solar panels are just one method of producing electricity and don’t necessarily make sense for
every person in every location and situation. For me, I live in an area without time of use
electricity rates, but we do have net metering that pays back nearly a 1 to 1 credit on my
electricity bill. So we bank some credits in the summer that wipe out our electric bills in
those months and into the fall. And during the winter we’re primarily pulling from the grid like
anyone else. We also have solar renewable energy credits (SREC). We’re getting $126.22 a month
in SREC credits for 10 years, so we’ll be seeing $15,146 from that. That leaves us on the hook
for $12,380 out of pocket for the cost of our solar panels. But then you have to look at the
money we’re saving on our electric bill. We were spending about $2,600 a year on electricity, but
we’ve been saving almost $1,500 a year with solar. And since our electricity prices have risen
to $0.30/kWh, our savings has actually gone up a little bit. All of that rolled together
is how our solar panel system will pay for itself sometime in 2026, and the panels should
easily go another 20 years or more after that, so they’ll be producing free,
clean electricity at that point. Again, I can’t say this enough, the warranty
period is not the end of life for the panel. But here’s that wrinkle I brought up earlier about
my specific return on investment. I’m not going to be living in my house in 2026. I’m not going
to be living in this house a year from now. My wife and I are building a new, modular, net zero
home this year and will hopefully be moving in early next year. That means we’ll be selling our
current home with the solar panels before they’ve returned on the investment, which means we’re
only about halfway into that payback period. Am I going to lose out on that money? Am I going
to have a hard time selling my home with solar panels on it? On that first point, no, I’m not
going to be selling my solar panels at a loss. A home’s value actually increases with
solar panels. It’s not that different from doing a kitchen or bathroom renovation.
And solar panels are very popular in my area. Energysage has a great article that details the
impacts to a home’s value. According to a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which used
data from 8 states over an 11 year time period, you can expect to see $4 per watt of installed
solar capacity added to the value of your home. In my case, that could be a $38,000 increase. To
me that sounds too high. But according to Zillow, they saw homes with solar panels selling for 4.1%
more. And the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reported seeing an increase in home value by $20
for every $1 reduction in annual utility bills. That math would work out to about $30,000 for
my house, which isn’t that far off from the first study. The bottom line: the more money
your solar panels save you on electricity, the more it increases your house’s value.
I won’t have to wait too much longer to find out if that holds true, so stay tuned
to the channel if you want to hear how it went selling a house with solar, as well as a
ton of videos around my upcoming house build. So do I still think getting solar panels for my
home was worth it. That’s a big yes. For my goals, which was saving money on electricity over
time and ensuring my power was coming from a clean energy source, it ticked all the boxes. Our
system cost $20,727 after the Federal Tax Credit. By the time we leave this house, we’ll have
received about $6,000 in SREC payments. About $1,500 a year in electricity savings, so add
another $6000 on top of that. We’ll have whittled the payback down to about $8,000 by the time we
leave. And if the $30,000 increase in value holds true, the return on investment will have been well
worth it … but that wasn’t my only goal. Again, I did this for some energy independence and to
ensure I was getting energy from a clean source. Would I recommend that you get solar? That’s
tricky because I don’t know your goals, where you live, or what costs are in your area, so you’re
going to need to do that evaluation for yourself. But if you are thinking about it, don’t wait much
longer. If you live in the US, the Federal solar tax credit is going to be dropping from 26% to
22% in 2023. Solar installers book up fast, so you really need to be scheduling installers now to
ensure you get the panels installed before the end of the year. I’ve been getting quotes for my new
house and installers are already booked up through August and into September. So start looking today
and evaluating if it’s the right choice for you. And on that note, you should check out EnergySage
for great articles and reviews of solar equipment. I’ve found them to be an amazing resource
when researching my current installation, as well as my next one. I also used Energysage
to find my installer on my current house. If you live in the US, check out my Energysage portal to
find installers in your area and get quotes. Full transparency, this is an affiliate program, so I
do get a small commission if you use my portal. But regardless of that, I love Energysage and find
them a great resource. My favorite part of finding an installer through them is that you’re not
giving out your phone number to get deluged with dozens of calls. All of the quotes are delivered
to your Energysage account and are presented in a way that’s an easy apples-to-apples comparison
between installers. I strongly recommend it. So what do you think? Do you want solar for your
home? Jump into the comments and let me know. If you liked this video, be sure to check out
one of these videos over here. And thanks to all of my patrons for your continued support
and welcome to new producers Michael Maxie, Greg MacWilliam, and J. And thanks to all of
you for watching. I’ll see you in the next one.
