What You Can Learn From My First Year With Solar Power - Streets.mn

Oct 21, 2024

We got solar power in 2023, but I swore I’d wait for a year of data before evangelizing in print. That day has come!

Highlights first:

A bit about me: I’m a former journalist, married to a lawyer, and I live in Minneapolis. Thanks to my wife, I get to spend money — but I was a hand-to-mouth freelancer, so I’m painfully careful about it. Let’s put it this way: I have 32 years of Quicken records.

I also believe climate change is the gravest threat to my newly born grandson. If I’m going to crack open my wallet, it’s to reduce my carbon footprint.Some numbers:

The last time we paid Xcel was February 2024. Our 16 420-watt panels produce twice what we used before solar. We “oversized” so we can electrify our house. We don’t yet have an electric car, heat or hot water. We added an electric heat pump a month before solar, getting central air for the first time.

Buyers often focus on payback. Ours is roughly 20 years, if you divide $20,000 solar by $1,000 savings. You’ll probably be paid back quicker. Our installation was more complicated and therefore more expensive; 10 of 16 panels went on the garage, requiring a trench through our backyard. A neighbor’s perfect south-facing roof took two days to install; ours, six.

We could’ve sought lower bids. You don’t have to go with our installer, All Energy Solar, which is competitive but not cheap. But then, the electrical inspector might not tell you, “You used All Energy? I almost don’t need to look at it.”Despite sleek panels and cool batteries, it’s about the labor. All Energy uses its own electricians and installers; their robust customer-support staff was made for obsessives like me. I’ve general contracted two full home renovations, and All Energy was simply as reliable as anyone I’ve used. When trenching took days longer than estimated, they didn’t raise the price. Our inspector mentioned fly-by-night outfits from the South that breeze in on a hail of doorknob hangars, leaving shoddy work.Inventory your own psychology going in. We weren’t going to be stupid financially, but we valued quality and trust and were willing to pay for it.

A disclaimer: If you use All Energy and tell them you read this, I’ll get a referral payment. They didn’t put me up to this. I mostly care about you getting solar if it works for you. If you call and don’t mention me, no guilt. If you use another installer, great — what’s best for you. But if you want to drop my name as sort of a tip-jar thing, that’s appreciated. It won’t raise your cost. It will shorten my payback.

In 2022, I asked a friend who worked in the business for recommendations. “All Energy,” he replied, adding one other company.

All Energy had signs all over my neighborhood — Harris-Walz levels. They responded to my email right away. I heard from the other company a month later. I didn’t wait.An All Energy rep interviewed me via Zoom on April 3, 2023. A few days later, their drone was over my house. I signed a purchase agreement April 10. By May 12 we had an engineering plan.

Why a month? It’s a big project!

Then there’s the power company, which signs off on everything. This might be the most excruciating part. You’re jerked from the warm bosom of All Energy to the cold reality of a utility that doesn’t love what you’re doing. Xcel requires an interconnection agreement to make sure you don’t fry the grid; All Energy prepares the filing. The utility gives itself 20 business days — a month to you and me — to deem it “complete.” They wound up taking three months, until mid-August, for reasons I still don’t understand. Then they gave themselves another five business days to email for my signature. From there, it moved quickly.

By September 5, 2023, the system was in. It took another two weeks for electrician tweaks and inspector sign-offs. On September 20, new smart meters told me exactly how much my house used and how much the panels generated. One problem: None of the juice went to the house or the grid. Xcel had to flip some last switches, called “commissioning.” I waited eight excruciating days to play with my new toy. I sent my first 16 kWh to the kilowatt commons September 28.

The first year has been uneventful. No service calls. No screw-ups. Replanting a 75-foot-long 6-inch strip of our lawn and garden sucked, but we knew that going in. The panels are silent, and so is the battery. You stop noticing the wall of boxes and pipe. Xcel had three brief outages, and every time the battery kicked in seamlessly. Because I’m a geek, I enjoy getting the production and use numbers every day. Well, most days. Sunny days are even happier because LOOK AT THAT METER RUN BACKWARDS. Winter? Sadder because snow-covered panels produce zero.

Sales folk will tell you snow slides off panels relatively quickly. It will — if your roof is steep. Our garage pitch is quite shallow, so the snow and ice stuck around like a bad party guest. Winter production was the big reason All Energy’s prediction missed — off 25 percent November through March. The rest of the year was 4 percent more than predicted.

Estimates aren’t perfect. If you’re payback-obsessed, understand your installer’s assumptions. Then back out 10 percent as a cushion.

Fortunately, winter production is at most a third of annual production — you make electrical hay in the summer. Veterans tell me this summer was below-average (rainy) so future years may come closer to that 7,000 kWh forecast.Panels do lose efficiency over time, but only a few percentage points. I don’t hear veterans complain about this. My summer kilowatt hours are only 16 cents apiece, so if you’re 100 short, it’s only 16 bucks. (Electricity is a few cents per kWh cheaper in the winter.)Your electric bill might be the most noticeable change. It’s longer, listing how much you send, likely ending in “credit,” not “payment due.” It adds up: As of September 2024, Xcel owes me $260. I’ll get an annual true-up check or the credit will offset wintry months where I owe.

We haven’t had our system long enough to experience regular maintenance, but a few notes:

Our greener-home journey began in 2007, when we ditched our asbestos-caked octopus boiler, a big dumb gas vessel that once burned coal, lit by a pilot light as eternal as JFK’s flame.

The new computer-controlled boiler boosted efficiency from 60% to 95%. My planet-conscious self was smug — until I realized wintertime survival depended on my electricity never going out. “Someone should build a battery backup for the computer,” I thought, but years of searching only turned up guys who daisy-chained car batteries next to the fieriest thing in their homes.Over the next 16 years, we had a few teeth-chattering nights; I eventually bought a cute gas stove for the living room. The stove didn’t depend on electricity and would cut the chill if we were in survival mode. So when I had a chance to back up my entire house safely and get a 30 percent tax credit, I jumped. The fully charged battery — a Tesla Powerwall, #sorrynotsorry — spits out 10 kWh, about what we use in a day. If we turn off non-critical stuff, we can keep our boiler, freezer and refrigerator going for three or four days. (Lights and internet also can stay on — they use next to nothing.)As we electrify our house, decisions will get tougher. Heat pumps are awesome, but heating swallowed 40 kWh a day when we played with it in November. In fact, the heat pump is the only thing excluded from the battery backup because startup draws too much. We stored a room air conditioner for summertime emergencies; it draws less.

Still, we’re not limited to the battery’s 10 kWh in a crisis. Solar panels charge the battery; this summer, production peaked at 36.6 kWh. Even with less sun, you could emergency-power your house for weeks.

I guess I’m an energy prepper. We haven’t had an outage of more than a day in years. The three outages since installation lasted 31 minutes total. Still, I’m not betting on continued reliability, with threats like climate change, public-sphere disinvestment, brain-dead energy sucks like bitcoin mines. Winter still exists.And here’s the battery’s best use-case: In an outage, solar can’t power your home without one. “Wait!” you might exclaim. “I’m generating my own power. Surely I can use it?”

Nope. When the grid breaks, the utility breaks that connection, for safety reasons. (They don’t want home brew coursing through lines they’re fixing.) Your panels still produce electricity, but the kilowatts go nowhere.

A solar-battery system is more dynamic. The grid can feed the house, but the panels and battery can, too.

If the grid fails, you still have power. You’re literally off-grid.

Batteries produce zero electricity, so provide zero payback. Think of them instead as a service, providing reliability, resilience and peace of mind. You might pay less than the $11,000 we did. We got a $500 rebate from Tesla, but Minnesota utilities are offering $2,500 to $3,500 in some cases. Even better, your lithium-ion slab may yet contribute to the bottom line.Utilities are experimenting with networked home batteries — known as a “virtual power plant.” They pay to rent all or a portion of your battery and coordinate power sent to the grid when they need it. You can still use your battery the rest of the time.Xcel is on the verge of time-of-day pricing, with lower hourly rates during low demand and higher at peak (7 to 10 p.m.). Battery owners can avoid the grid during pricey times and recharge during cheap hours (midnight to 6 a.m.), lowering their average overall cost.Right now, I use my battery only for backup, but it would probably power the house during the priciest three hours.

Today, when I send Xcel power, they pay me what they would charge if I were buying. It’s called zero net metering and incentivizes people to send as much power as possible to the grid.

Utilities hate it, claiming home solar is too expensive and wrongly timed. Solar-rich California recently slashed reimbursement rates 75%.

My battery is currently 100% backup; my panels feed the grid for the 16-cents-per-kWh bill credit. If I got 4 cents instead, I’d feed my home first. I wouldn’t earn the 4 cents, but I’d avoid Xcel’s pricier grid charge.

Effectively, California solar buyers must buy a battery or sell excess power for a deep discount.

The other policy danger, I concede, is speculative. Joe Biden got the federal 30 percent tax credit that makes solar purchases pay off; it’s law until 2032. As I write this, Donald Trump and Republicans are demonizing alternative energy and vowing to undo any Biden energy policy. I didn’t want to gamble on this or any election — a small reason I jumped last year.

Perhaps — hopefully! — you’re less fearful than me. Everyone has different motivations, resources and psychology. But solar really has brought peace of mind, and I can feel even more joyful when I look at my grandson.

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Pronouns: he/hm/his

David is a Minneapolitan, YMCA fitness instructor and former journalist at MinnPost, Southwest Journal, City Pages and Twin Cities Reader. Find him on BlueSky @dbrauer.