Well. I finally heard back from my mortgage guy. He got me better deals than I could get from anywhere else, but he still was short $9,000 of the minimum I needed to do the solar installation. So...until the housing market goes up again or I somehow drastically increase the equity I have in this house I'll have to wait to get solar installed. It's sad, but it was likely to happen.
In November there will be a vote in congress to continue the solar incentives. If that fails then it's likely I won't be getting solar installed for a very long time, but everybody seems to think that it's a shoe in. I'm just so used to be ridiculously disappointed by all politicians that I can't really bring myself to believe it'll continue.
Showing posts with label financing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financing. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Solar estimates
I finally got through the final analysis of the current estimates last night. Here are the results:
One company came out and did an evaluation but never got back to me with an estimate. One company had a rep come out and basically told me that my roof needed work before the solar could be installed and even then they could only get a 2kw system installed even though I mentioned trimming back the tree next to the house. I'm getting the roof inspected as soon as I can to make sure that isn't correct. And I still need to verify a couple of things but this looks to be the end result.
Of the three companies that have been cooperative and helpful these are the numbers:
Rec Solar 8000W $25,000 including all fees and taxes but not including tax rebate.
IPS 9900W $38,115 plus taxes and fees (~3% of total) not including tax rebate
SRE 8000W $30,174 including all fees and taxes but not including tax rebate
So the question is still how much financing I can afford, but it's unlikely I'll decide to spend roughly $14,000 in order to get an additional 1.9kW of power. I'd love to have the additional power, but the payoff just isn't worth the expense, especially with all the great solar technology that is being invented right now.
I don't think I've mentioned the problem with the tree here, so here's a bit of info about that.
I have a black walnut tree about 10' from my south facing roof. It's not huge, but it does shade the roof where I want there to be solar panels. So it'll have to be trimmed severely, cut down or moved before I get the solar installed. I'd really rather not kill a tree that I don't have to kill, and I don't think I can afford to have it moved, so I'm hoping the amount it needs to be trimmed won't kill it and won't make it completely idiotic looking. However...black walnet isn't really a tree I'd have chosen to put in my yard. They don't provide enough shade for how big they are, they don't have leaves enough of the year, and they drop annoying nuts in the yard. On the other hand, it's kind of fun having squirrels running across the roof. That would annoy most people, but I think it's funny.
Shade is a tricky thing with solar panels. Each panel is made up of groups of chips. And then the panels are in groups like the chips. So, if you get a spot of complete darkness that covers enough chips it will shut down not just the chip that is covered but the group of chips it is in. If enough groups shut down, then the panel shuts down. If enough panels shut down, the the whole group of panels will shut down. So if you have even a small amount of very deep shade on the panels, there is a chance that from that chunk of deep shadow you could get a pretty significant percentage of your solar array to stop producing energy.
The reason this happens is that each subset has to produce a certain amount of power in order to trigger it's connection to the others. If the chip doesn't produce enough power to get beyond that threshold it never turns on and so no power flows out of it. That scales up in the same way all the way up to the entire array.
So now I am waiting for verification of a couple of things, then I have to start trying to get the financing and hope that the estimates don't change much or at all, and that they are accurate and I can afford to pay for solar. Otherwise...time to start saving up significant amounts of money.
One company came out and did an evaluation but never got back to me with an estimate. One company had a rep come out and basically told me that my roof needed work before the solar could be installed and even then they could only get a 2kw system installed even though I mentioned trimming back the tree next to the house. I'm getting the roof inspected as soon as I can to make sure that isn't correct. And I still need to verify a couple of things but this looks to be the end result.
Of the three companies that have been cooperative and helpful these are the numbers:
Rec Solar 8000W $25,000 including all fees and taxes but not including tax rebate.
IPS 9900W $38,115 plus taxes and fees (~3% of total) not including tax rebate
SRE 8000W $30,174 including all fees and taxes but not including tax rebate
So the question is still how much financing I can afford, but it's unlikely I'll decide to spend roughly $14,000 in order to get an additional 1.9kW of power. I'd love to have the additional power, but the payoff just isn't worth the expense, especially with all the great solar technology that is being invented right now.
I don't think I've mentioned the problem with the tree here, so here's a bit of info about that.
I have a black walnut tree about 10' from my south facing roof. It's not huge, but it does shade the roof where I want there to be solar panels. So it'll have to be trimmed severely, cut down or moved before I get the solar installed. I'd really rather not kill a tree that I don't have to kill, and I don't think I can afford to have it moved, so I'm hoping the amount it needs to be trimmed won't kill it and won't make it completely idiotic looking. However...black walnet isn't really a tree I'd have chosen to put in my yard. They don't provide enough shade for how big they are, they don't have leaves enough of the year, and they drop annoying nuts in the yard. On the other hand, it's kind of fun having squirrels running across the roof. That would annoy most people, but I think it's funny.
Shade is a tricky thing with solar panels. Each panel is made up of groups of chips. And then the panels are in groups like the chips. So, if you get a spot of complete darkness that covers enough chips it will shut down not just the chip that is covered but the group of chips it is in. If enough groups shut down, then the panel shuts down. If enough panels shut down, the the whole group of panels will shut down. So if you have even a small amount of very deep shade on the panels, there is a chance that from that chunk of deep shadow you could get a pretty significant percentage of your solar array to stop producing energy.
The reason this happens is that each subset has to produce a certain amount of power in order to trigger it's connection to the others. If the chip doesn't produce enough power to get beyond that threshold it never turns on and so no power flows out of it. That scales up in the same way all the way up to the entire array.
So now I am waiting for verification of a couple of things, then I have to start trying to get the financing and hope that the estimates don't change much or at all, and that they are accurate and I can afford to pay for solar. Otherwise...time to start saving up significant amounts of money.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Solar related
I've got a rep from Standard Renewable Energy (formerly Sunflower) coming out to the house today to give me an estimate, then next week someone from Namaste Solar will be out. After that I'll be making an appointment for Independent Power Systems to come out for an estimate. I need to find out financing options from all of them since the housing market here is so messed up that I can't get enough money to do the solar install out of a house refinance at the moment. So...if none of the solar companies can give me financing that is affordable, I'll have to wait until my house is valuable enough to get me a big enough home equity loan to pay for it. But at least I'll have gotten the specific estimates from the companies and know which system I want to be installed and by whom.
Hopefully the amazing mortgage guy I talk to is correct and this will be a short term dip here and my house will be back to it's most recent value in a few months. I wish my house were actually valued the way Zillow.com says it should be, but my tax assessment was as low as the current Realtor assessed value. As he pointed out, the foreclosure rate during the Great Depression was something like 34%, and even now at the worst its been in a long time, its about 4%. Of course, it appears the average house value in the US is plunging faster than it did during the depression...so maybe that 34% is just in the future yet.
Hopefully the amazing mortgage guy I talk to is correct and this will be a short term dip here and my house will be back to it's most recent value in a few months. I wish my house were actually valued the way Zillow.com says it should be, but my tax assessment was as low as the current Realtor assessed value. As he pointed out, the foreclosure rate during the Great Depression was something like 34%, and even now at the worst its been in a long time, its about 4%. Of course, it appears the average house value in the US is plunging faster than it did during the depression...so maybe that 34% is just in the future yet.
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