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Who's gone Solar

mikev said:
Who did you end up going through?
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West Coast Solar out of Brentwood. I try to keep my money local and in the hands of small business so I'm paying a little bit of a premium to use them.

Walk the walk and all that.
 
Neighbor has a huge oak tree that blocks ~70% of the sun on my roof that does not clear the palm trees on the other side until about 9am. The roof is facing perfectly for it and at the right angle. :(
 
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mean dad said:
West Coast Solar out of Brentwood. I try to keep my money local and in the hands of small business so I'm paying a little bit of a premium to use them.

Walk the walk and all that.
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I talked to West Coast last week and was really impressed with their phone presentation and nearly went with them.

Our neighbor down the street went with a different company a few months ago and really liked them so we gave them a call and ended up going with them instead. The personal recommendation and a slightly lower estimate was what swung us but I thought West Coast was good too.
 
mean dad said:
West Coast Solar out of Brentwood. I try to keep my money local and in the hands of small business so I'm paying a little bit of a premium to use them.

Walk the walk and all that.
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Left them a voicemail (the number in this thread) on Friday, haven't heard back...
 
That's mildly surprising. I don't know the guy but he seems like he takes care of business.

I just shot him a text and told him to get back on the ball.
 
I sent them a message through the website last night. Also sent a message to Ilum Solar that came recommended by the local electrician. They replied last night in like 30min.
 
West Coast called. Darren is tops, seems like the kind of person I'd want to work with. Name dropped Kev so he gets booster if we work something out.
 
Did some thoughts on my break even...my electricity bill is effectively zero, but that cost $18,000. It appears i was doing $200 a month in electricity before, so that's like a 7.5 year break even...but that was based on costs before recently so I guess as energy costs rise my break even actually decreases?
 
HappyHighwayman said:
Did some thoughts on my break even...my electricity bill is effectively zero, but that cost $18,000. It appears i was doing $200 a month in electricity before, so that's like a 7.5 year break even...but that was based on costs before recently so I guess as energy costs rise my break even actually decreases?
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Per math, yes :teeth
 
West Coast said that PGE increases their rates 10% every year, but I dunno. If ten years ago you spent 150/mo in 2013, then it'd be 165, 181, 200, 220, 242, 265, 292, 321, 353, and 389 in 2023. And maybe that's about right? If you spent 200/mo in 2016 and it took 7.5 years at that rate, then it'd be shy of 4 years at today's rate. But then 18k in 2016 is 22.5k today, which is shy of 5 years. No matter how you look at it, there's a curve in there and energy costs are significantly outpacing inflation.
 
HappyHighwayman said:
Did some thoughts on my break even...my electricity bill is effectively zero, but that cost $18,000. It appears i was doing $200 a month in electricity before, so that's like a 7.5 year break even...but that was based on costs before recently so I guess as energy costs rise my break even actually decreases?
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Sounds like it. That's a benefit of owning solar. Protection against future increases.
 
You would be very hard pressed to find a better legal ROI than Solar and with a guaranteed positive return and the percent of return just goes up each year. These are double digit returns that can't loose as it pays off while still under full warranty.
 
Starpower said:
You would be very hard pressed to find a better legal ROI than Solar and with a guaranteed positive return and the percent of return just goes up each year. These are double digit returns that can't loose as it pays off while still under full warranty.
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Yep. Especially true as PG&E continues to work on devaluing the Net Metering Agreement, which I believe they have succeeded in doing.

Looking at rates of return and energy cost rate of inflation, I oddly have almost 14 years worth of monthly utility bills that I spreadsheeted when I was analyzing the value of going solar. I divided each month's actual kwh usage by the dollar amount PG&E charged for that electricity, giving me an actual rate per kwh.

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the entire period of nearly 14 years is 7.7%. That's pretty steep - triple what average inflation has been (until the last year).

I calculated an internal rate of return (IRR) for our solar investment to be over 13%. This is why companies are offering lease deals with no cash down to get you into solar. They're basically buying a huge return.
 
Elon came down from Martinez yesterday, did his roof inspection, gave me the green light, and said I'll have a follow up in about two weeks.
 
TwistedGRAY said:
Elon came down from Martinez yesterday, did his roof inspection, gave me the green light, and said I'll have a follow up in about two weeks.
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How long did he take?

Elon is scheduled to come over to my place next Wednesday.
 
I got my quote from west coast, they seem nice but I'm not sure they sell the equipment I'm interested in. Anyone having Sol-Ark or Schneider inverters installed?
 
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