What should I know Before Going Solar?

so Ricki this last video we did on solar proved to be very passionate for a lot of people so we thought why not put together a list of things you should consider before going solar so the first thing is solar financially viable for you in your situation so let's talk about that exactly the first thing I would recommend is go to your utility company website and download your bills definitely the last 12 months but maybe even a couple in between in like really high it may be summertime and winter time to get an average and get an idea of just how much you're spending to know if the numbers work out so the second thing is find out how much you're paying flood tricity because we've found from our viewers that there's quite a bit of variation we live in California where the prices are really high and other people like in Texas who have choice in their electric company they have really reasonable prices right so how much you're spending will really determine how cost-effective solar rays so once you know how much you're paying electricity the second part of the equation is find out how much sunlight and sunshine you get where you live right so we check our description we have a link to a great little calculator international by the way anybody live in the world put your information and they'll tell you how much daylight you can expect but more importantly Sun hours which is not the same as daylight right so right that's why you need to use that calculator so next what about options for paying for this stuff - financing so there's obviously cash you can write a check be done with it and you're paid that's great if you have the money that's a gold doubloons the Dubs axe I believe they do take both of loan subject that is true yeah the second way is and astringents dollars about these options but they might offer a zero interest option which is what I did so the problem there is it'll either be 12 or 18 months so it'll be a shorter term and so that means for getting a $20,000 system that's gonna be like $1,000 a month but what I did is actually just paid a little bit here and there and then when I got my tax return the end of the year I just closed it up okay but if you don't pay it in time interest will accrue but that could be a good option for you so the next option is they'll take your bill and they'll tell you okay you're paying this much well we'll cut the bill by a certain amount and we'll take that extra you've saved and that'll be your loan amount so there's no extra money out of your pocket to have to budget but instead of just throwing the money to the tooling company you're paying for your own property your solar panels that's that can be a really good option especially if finances are tight or if you don't want to really spend any more money than you're already spending okay the last option is the solar city model which is you don't actually buying solar panels and they're not your property so instead a company like Solar City will come and install panels on your property and they'll be your utility company so they'll probably give you a more affordable rate than you're paying and that'll be a fixed rate there's no tears nothing like that and you don't have to worry or have any headache of owning the panels or maintaining em or anything else all you do is just have a little bit of savings you're not gonna save all of it because again you're after you paint some but there's no out-of-pocket either and again ask your installers they might have other packages and options as well so next thing is your location and your house optimal for solar so let's talk about that a little bit so when we say is your house optimal what we're talking about is do you have a south-facing roof if you're in the northern hemisphere or a North facing roof in the southern hemisphere right and if you do that that's a good thing if your house is orient in a way that the panels are tougher they'll go over this with you but that kind of stuff matters so optimal is what you said and anything less than that more work will have to be done to get those panels in the right orientation what about trees and let's talk about that so the ideal situation would be if you have a house kind of the big field there's no trees around a of no shading that would be the ideal situation okay and if you do have some shading we'll talk about that in a little bit but the idea is shade is a killer for a solar panel for that right you don't want any kind of shade so if your house is surrounded by a big forest solar might not really be a good option unless you're willing to cut down trees right I mean that's that's a theology and some people do what about looks yeah so my house actually the south-facing part of my roof is on the back so from the road you can't even see the panels right so that kind of stuff matters too if you're worried about how solar panels will look on your property you have to consider that based on how your house is oriented will it be in the front of the back will it be visible will not do you care right that's all it doesn't matter do your neighbors Karen do you care about them like if their opinion matters to you you might want to yeah talk to them but just consider that as well and the last thing as the angles of your panel will depend on where you live and so the further you live from the equator other southern hemisphere the steeper the angle the panels will be install that and again this doesn't really matter the installers know this but you can double check their work and kind of get an idea so will again have a link to a resource in our description where you can put your area where you live and they'll tell you the ideal angle and remember that summer to winter the Sun will change where it is in the horizon and so what they'll normally do is install it right in the middle and call an average yeah okay so you're decided that you want to really go to the next step what kind of solar panel should you consider so the spectrum of efficiency pop it goes from around seventeen percent to twenty three percent that means of the amount of sun hitting the panel how much is actually converted okay and twenty three percent is as good as we've gotten and that number keeps growing you might be twenty five in the future but you'll pay for that extra efficiency okay so if you have very limited roof space like you have a smaller house and there's not that much room to put them obviously you want to get more efficient that way you don't need as many panels right and if you have more room maybe the opposite but do the math find out how much it'll cost per watt based on your system and you can go from there and again ask about the warranty make sure that your panels have a good warranty so that's the panels but there's also the inverters which is something that people don't often think about okay I don't think about buying solar they'll say Oh panels but there's inverters as well so your panels are making DC electricity you need to convert that to AC okay so you have a couple of an options here one and the most affordable is a string inverter which means you have ten solar panels or however many you have and they all go to one string inverter one master inverter okay very affordable they're great very common by far the most common but the problem there is if you have shading on one panel all of your output will drop so if shading is an issue you have trees and stuff the next to apply would make more sense for you the second type is a micro inverter and I have a brand called n phase which I definitely recommend they have a twenty five year warranty and what they do is they have little inverters on every panel okay so rather than have all your panels feed one master inverter you have micro inverters okay and shaytaan one panel will not affect the others got it so but they're more they're more expensive though so if you have a big wide open area probably don't need those a bunch of micro inverters because that cost will go up a try panel you'll need a micro inverter and that's another couple hundred bucks correct right so and then what's the third kind the third kind is kind of a hybrid of both and it's called a power optimizer okay so power optimizers are little units that sit on your solar panel and they condition your panel output before it goes to a string inverter and the idea is that it's better for shade than a string inverter but not quite as good as a micro inverter and in terms of price it's in the toilet in between - okay so ask about those find out what you're gonna get and make sure you're happy with it okay now this is one that's gonna probably get us in trouble but hey you got to bring it up right which is government rules now we're talking the u.s. of course different federal and local governments can vary around the world but let's talk about the US and like some of the federal rules that are in place right now in 2017 so here in the US the federal tax credit for installing solar has been extended through 2021 okay so what they're 2019 they're gonna remain at 30% so if you pay ten thousand you'll get a tax credit of three thousand right and now it's not a deduction that is a credit correct you owe three thousand at the end of the year you now owe $0 echt it's your money you're just keeping instead of giving to the government got it okay yeah and after 2019 they'll start to drop off so you still have a couple years left if here in the US and if your international leave us a comment we'd love to know what kind of federal programs are available over there yeah I'm sure we have a lot of viewers from all around the globe and we'd love to hear kind of what the different you know moves towards solar or away from solar are around the world it'd be really interesting exactly and I also asked about your local government whether it's the state or municipality if they offer any sort of incentives as well all right there used to be more common and those are starting to dry up but it doesn't hurt to ask and find out and we'll have a link for that information for the US so now now we get into capitalism right the utility companies they're in business to make money what are some of the things that they've been doing recently especially here in the US so this is by far the trickiest part about solar ok what we've talked about so far even the government plans are pretty straightforward you get solar you get a subsidy yeah but this is where it gets tricky and we're not even to try to cover all of them but find out based on your utility how solar works and they're gonna give you an idea but I would probably recommend you follow up and do your own research too because the laws can change and your solar installer might not give you the entire picture of exactly what'll change but when you go solar you'll probably go into what's called a net energy metering plan which means that rather than paying month by month for what you use instead they'll look at it more holistically over the entire year so maybe in the summer time you make a bunch of energy more than you use and then the winter you use more than you make and at the end of the year you kind of true-up and you pay what you owe got it okay now even if you do that you still the option to pay monthly which is what I do because my panels are very small and I don't make nearly enough and I didn't want to have to be hit with a big bill the end of the year so find out if you're close to zero then that's great but if your bill is like 50 bucks 50 bucks times 12 you don't want to be hit with yes it's none of our bill right right Christmastime right now I've even heard there's differences in how the credits are applied let's say for example we paid 20 cents per kilowatt hour here right they might not give you the full 20 cents per kilowatt hour when when you when you sell it back to them right if you the wholesale price which might be cheaper or lowest five cents so right it's important to know ask the question to find out exactly how your plan will work right and the good news is sometimes when you get in you'll be kind of locked in to this new plan and any changes that happen will only affect future solar installs not yours so I'm actually locked into a 2011 plan from when I installed solar ok but find out exactly how all of this stuff works yeah all in most utility companies will have a website and you can sometimes it's some tough reading but it's in there and you should find it and if you can't find it just call them up they will get it to you which kind of brings us to the next point which is what about your bill like a lot of us have natural gas and electric and we look at the total but now all of a sudden what's gonna happen now that you have solar on your bill yeah the one thing is your fundamental bill structure is gonna change okay and that can be good or bad you got to find out exactly how that will change but for me I used to get a bill for gas and electric now I have two different accounts with my utility one for my gas plan one for my electric okay and there's things like time abuse which is rolling in based on where you live you might have that or not meaning when you use power in the prime time like 8:00 p.m. when people are home yeah it'll be at a higher tier or higher price than at 2:00 in the morning right and so time of use might come into play and that metering and all these all these variables can kind of factor into your final bill right you know and also you have base rates things that no matter what you do you'll always pay it'll be like federal blah blah blah and all these different little things you could use no energy if you're on a regular house and you'll still have a bill of ten dollars or something right so yeah those won't necessarily change you have to just find out though what exactly all those are so this is the part that might surprise people if your goal is to have a zero electric bill as long as you're tied to the grid that's probably not gonna happen so what some utility companies are doing is they're gonna charge you let's say ten percent based on your usage for retail pricing so you you use five hundred kilowatt hours you produce five hundred kilowatt hours and they are charging ten percent that's $50 a month they're gonna charge you five bucks right so of course that's a low number but the point is that and that's to cover their cost of maintaining the grid storage etc and ten percent is just a number we kind of made up but the point is that that's a place where they're going and the bad news is that those rates could go up over time so something to be aware of do they charge you a percentage and then one last thing is if you're getting an electric car an electric car charge or maybe you're getting the the 240 volt thing installed which cost some money ask about rates for electric car users because they will offer some probably some incentivized rates that might help you pay less yeah normally they'll give you kind of a flat tier so they'll say this is your electric car charging rate mm-hmm and it'll be fixed otherwise if you were on a tiered plan electric cars can take 30 killing hours every charge you might be using so much more power that your bills right so much higher so they'll kind of a count for that and give you a kind of a fixed price feels good but ask about that if you have an electric car yeah they'll let you know exactly what exactly and this gets into the next topic which is storage if you want to have a zero electric bill the only way is to get off the grid as long as you're hooked into their grid there will be some cost to you but to do that you need batteries and I don't have any batteries in my in my system I get asked that all the time and the reason why is because they're really expensive right now what I would want to do get the tesla powerwall and the tesla powerwall is about $6,000 what's the capacity of that yeah I think they hold about 13.5 kilowatt hours and their idea is since your panels are charging them in in the morning and then you're using it at night that if you use around 25 kilowatt hours a day in your home then that should do you that should suffice just one so for us we use and we have like a kind of a medium-sized condo we don't have too many crazy things we use about 20 kilowatt hours a day so then that would probably be yeah a power wall would probably get us through the evening if we were making energy during the day so yeah and now they have a 10 year warranty but again $6,000 a lot of money and in 10 years you have to get another one there might be some issues there the advice on all this stuff go slow because prices were dropping and outputs going up in capacities going up so we haven't hit rock bottom yet so go slow start small exactly I think this solar industry has gotten so much more affordable that we're getting to a point where solar panels are pretty affordable but batteries haven't really gotten there yet stay tuned we'll cover this in future videos but Tesla's gonna double the entire battery production of the world with their Giga factory and so I think in the next five to 10 years the battery revolution might happen and when that happens this is probably going to be more viable and Chris said you mentioned remember that you don't have to buy your entire system up front if they tell you all you need 25 panels to have a zero bill you don't have to do that that's gonna be a lot of money get half of that now because as the prices keep drop and you can always add on later it's a very modular and don't feel pressured or anxious about it and I will tell you the other thing and this goes for any sales people after you meet with them and you get all the numbers tell them I'm gonna do my research I'm gonna think about it sleep on it and I'll get back to you yeah you probably shouldn't make any decision that involves tens of thousands of dollars the moment you're talking to somebody because I think the little bit of perspective when you step away will help I agree so all the information do your research go to the links we've provided find out how much you could make if you're curious don't be shy you can reach out to us as a lot of our commenters mentioned my bill is so low it would take me 50 years to recoup the price so that's where you have to figure out how long we'll take and if your return on your investment to get the money back is six or seven years maybe it's worth it right if it's 20 years you probably shouldn't do it no and just to kind of wrap up because people are wondering this right now 2017 just the raw cost of panels what are we talking for a 300 watt panel yeah so the the cost of the panel might be around $300 for a 300 watt so a dollar a watt for a channel itself nothing else what other costs are there yeah so then you would need if you want the micro inverter wrap which is what I would do that might be another 150 bucks for each panel yeah so now we have micro inverters that brings the price up even more right per watt what else what other costs are there so all the materials all the rack and ties and all the installation hardware that goes into it that's some cost wire and all the brackets and all that kind of stuff and then of course the permitting and stuff with your junction box okay so there's a little bit cost there and then the labor itself I mean let's face it these that's where these guys make their money they're probably not making much money on the hardware right right so in the at the end in 2017 were we're gonna say an installed system is somewhere between one three and four dollars per watt yeah roughly and that's a really kind of a broad ballpark so 3 to $4 per watt installed roughly and that's in you know in the u.s. in California but if wherever you live if you've got a lower or higher rate or around the world we'd love to hear it in the comments because of the way we don't have good data on that and it's it's a ever changing landscape so let us know in the comments but that should give you an idea of what to expect and what it should cost if your installers give you a quote and you do the math you know divided by you know extras ought to be way higher than that if you're if they're you want to charge you five dollars per watt you can tell them that's too high and No thank you I'll keep shopping around but like everything else get two or three quotes compare them and get an idea and if they're all really close to each other then you're probably getting good numbers but if there's quite a bit of spread keep shopping keep shopping and look around and if you know anyone in your area that's gotten them recently talk to them that would be even if you see a neighbor that's got them on the roof so just say hey are you were you happy cuz they'll give you the the nitty-gritty and kind of help you figure out what's what's best well one more thing really quickly I remember one of the commenters mentioned is hail damage mmm so there's weather and natural disaster elements too so if a hurricane or Canada comes through night destroys your panels are you covered ask that question especially if you live in the Midwest right or in cold places where there's snow and hail we don't have those issues here but we have wildfires I mean but the thing and the thing is if they're not covered under warranty for now for disaster and what about your homeowners insurance fine call your homeowners insurance because that's a big deal it's a good point um and the other thing we forgot to mention was snow some people talked about areas where there's a lot of snow we don't know we've never seen snow we don't know so if you have solar panels and you have snow how do you deal with it are there automated things to blow off the snow or what heaters let us know because we just we don't know it's a blind spot for us but we'd love to hear your experience in the comments below okay because you might think if there's snow you shouldn't get solar but there's probably places in the world where there's snow in the winter but there's really nice good sunshine during the rest of the year and so yeah we'd love to know I'm kind of curious yeah I'm really curious that's one we never thought of because it's California so yeah I would say Chris our goal was not to answer every question you have but to give you a lot of questions you should ask we feel that if you have all this information and you ask these questions that you will be well informed with a good decision a very big investment a lot of money and if you have insight on cops or other things based on where you live let's continue this discussion if you tweet at us at tuba DaVinci or use the hashtag let's talk solar maybe we can get a lot of information from different people and we can get a better idea based on where you live yeah well put it we'll put it somewhere but thank you guys so much for tuning in we hope this was informative yeah as always comment we left in the comments good romance you've gotten some crazy comments and can be honest I love them all they're all throwing the ball thank you guys even the ones that think they're hurting our feelings we love them because some of them are just it's it is never a dull moment when you're doing comments I put it that way we have five or six related videos coming out in the next couple of weeks and I think you got your department to love them if you like if you watch this video odds are the ones we have come you're gonna like as well so hit that subscribe button and we'll catch you guys soon and remember they're only photons and electrons right that's it

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 598,649

Rating: 4.8187814 out of 5

Keywords: questions to ask before buying solar, considering solar?, what to ask before going solar, going solar, should I get solar, solar company, considering solar, solar companies, going solar reviews, is solar worth it, best way to pay for solar, going solar at home, solar panels worth it, going solar worth it, is solar power worth it, solar worth it, are solar panels worth it, solar installation, solar panel reviews, solar buying guide, go solar, solar home, off grid

Id: mBsG4laZyEA

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2017