Solar power for my house

I recently found out there is a company already doing solar power installations in my area called REC Solar
so I called to talk to one of their sales people. I'm definitely planning to go with solar power on my house, but I had expected the price to be quite a bit larger than it is, so I'd expected it to be several years down the road. However, with this information and a call to my brilliant financial guy, it turns out that there is a good chance I could get this done right now without destroying my finances. So I'm very excited about this. I'm calling today to get the installation estimate done which will give me more specific information.

Here's the info I have from REC Solar so far.

He said it sounded like I was using about 600 kWh electricity per month, which turns out to be drastically too low. But with that as a base, he said that a 3 kW system would provide about 2/3rds of the power I use. Apparently that's about what they shoot for in their installations. I said I wanted at least 100% solar because I was expecting my electricity use to go up in the future due to switching to an electric furnace. He said that was good planning and that I should mention it during the installation estimate. Anyway, here are the cost figures he then gave me (these are very general estimates).

3 kW
$23,000 cost - $13,000 rebate - $2,000 tax credit
6 kW
$16000-$17000 after rebate - $2000 tax credit
9 kW
$22000-$23000 after rebate - $2000 tax credit.

10kW is the largest installation I believe they do, and I might end up needing to get that. Either way, while that's still a lot of money, even the most expensive system from REC is about 1/4 the price I thought I was going to have to pay. Hopefully I'll find out soon.

warranty 10 year from rec on the installation
25 year warranty on panels (this includes specifics like 90% of original power generation at 10 years, 80% at 20 or something like that)
15 year warranty on inverter


The way I understand this to work at this point is that the solar panels will be installed on the roof (happily I have a good quality fairly new roof) and the power then run through an inverter and connected to my main house panel. I remain attached to the local power grid and I'm apparently not allowed to use any sort of power storage devices while attached to the grid.

The panels generate electricity during the day, likely a lot more than I use, and the power company pays me at some very low rate for whatever power I put into the grid. Then when there is no electricity generated by the panels, or when I use more than the panels generate, I pull electricity from the grid at the normal ridiculous power/kW price. Happily electricity is almost always more expensive during the day than during the dark, so the difference in cost will be somewhat in my favor. Still, it's very likely that I'll have to pay the power company money every month anyway. We'll see how that turns out.

There are many questions I still need to ask, details of the installation, options for equipment, shading, all kinds of things. One I need to know is if monitoring software/hardware is included in the installation. I'll definitely want a good power monitoring solution. I have to assume that when I have to get the house re-roofed that the solar will all have to come down and be re-installed. That seems like a fairly significant future cost. I suppose I should consider getting a bio-diesel generator also for times when the grid and it's dark.

If I'm really lucky I'll be able to get a refinance that gives me enough money to install the solar, fix the other small electrical problems, change some things about the plumbing, and get the rock and tile work done that I need. But that might be asking too much.

More as the story develops!