My solar power system is a 4kW system and cost around $9,000, which I had on hand, so I didn’t have to finance it. That’s after the tax credit, so I actually had to write the check for around $13k and then wait to get the tax credit. I think even if I’d had to finance it, it would still have been a good deal.
There were other financing options available. One company we had quote for us offered their own loan program and also a leasing option. My dad had his system installed by a company that doesn’t sell or lease the system to you. They own the system that they install on your roof, and your contract is to buy your power from them at a fixed price that is lower than the utility rate. That one is a zero cost installation and a guaranteed savings on the electricity rates.
I’m glad I got mine. Unfortunately, I’m never going to know exactly how much I’m saving because it turns out there was a problem with my electric meter that had probably been broken for years. It was not measuring one leg of my electrical service. That means that for years I had not paid for part of the electricity I was actually using. And that usage was not being recorded. So when they scaled my system based on my past utility bills, it was smaller than it should have been. So the system has not offset my entire usage and entire electric bill.
Here is a year of usage. Green means I’m sending energy back to the grid, and blue is pulling energy from the grid.
Here is last year’s cost.
I’m on a net metering agreement, so the way the bill works is they keep track of how much I buy and sell from the grid, and once a year, there is a “true up” and the bill for the difference. I think my last true up bill was around $200. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea.
If I want to offset the whole bill, I could add another panel, which would cost about $1,100, and then my true up should be about $0. About a 5.5 year ROI.
I’m shifting some of my gas usage to electric, like my new clothes dryer is electric instead of gas. And I will probably get an electric car for my next car. So I might want another panel for those kinds of things. I might consider an electric heat pump for heating and cooling, but that’s a major cost, so that’s not happening right away. But at this point my utility bill is almost all for gas, so it’s tempting to cut the gas portion down.