Solar Panels After One Year

5 min readJul 5, 2022

Summary

The pricing and estimates from EnergySage and Nova Solar have been accurate so far, and after 18 months I am still very happy with my solar panels!

If your roof is expected to last significantly longer that the estimated time for your solar panels to pay themselves off, buy the solar panels!

Costs & Business Case

In late 2020 I used EnergySage to get multiple quotes and do the research. You have to give it information about your utility usage by looking at your electricity bill — our electricity bill averages $105 per month, for around 800 kWh per month.

Each vendor quote contained information like the system details:

Plus the financial breakdown for buying up front vs having a loan:

As you can see, if you buy the system yourself, it takes 11 years to recoup your upfront costs and breakeven. Since the panels are under warranty for 25 years, you’re then expecting to get free electricity for the next 14+ years. :-)

This pricing

included the 26% federal tax rebate which was running in 2020
did not include the money that you can make by selling SRECs (more info later on — it turned out to be significantly more money than I expected)
assumes that the cost of electricity will increase by 3% per year (based on historical estimates).

SRECs — Free Money

SREC marketplaces allow people with solar panels to sell “Solar Renewable Energy Certificates” (What are SRECs?).

My ~10MWH capacity system produces about 10 SRECs per year, which earned me more than $550 in 2021 after Virginia opened their SREC marketplace. I use SRECTrade for selling my SRECs.

I am assuming that SREC prices will drop in the Virginia marketplace over time (other states have significantly lower prices).

How I Chose My Installer

In late 2020 I chose Nova Solar over the other two vendors because:

they had the best overall reviews
they are a local company near where I live
they knew about the Fairfax County incentives (like stopping your property tax increasing by the value of the solar panels for five years)
they give a digital download of all the forms you need to file for rebates etc
I was impressed that the guy answering the phone for sales enquiries was the co-owner, and obviously really knows his stuff.

I could have saved around $1200 to go with a vendor who isn’t as well rated (but might still have been fine).

How They Work & Limitations

Smart Meters

To get solar panels, a two-way smart meter is installed. This allows your system to push excess electricity to the grid, while pulling from the grid whenever you need it. This happens as your production and demand both change on any individual day.

The bigger trends mean that at different times of the year you may be net positive or net negative. Here’s a typical example that was shared with me (I assume this is specific to Northern Virginia):

The two-way meter allows you to build up a credit with your utility company. (This is completely separate from your ability to sell SRECs — SRECs are just for the energy generation, they aren’t related to how you lend and borrow your energy via your two-way meter.)

I believe that your two-way meter credit cannot persist longer than 12 months. For that reason, in Virginia, you may want to configure your “Net Metering Period” with your utility company to ensure that you build up any credit near the beginning of your 12 month cycle, and use as much of your energy credit up as possible before it expires.

Power Outages

I was initially surprised to learn that my solar panels automatically turn off when there is a grid power outage. Apparently that is for safety, as the technicians can’t repair the power lines if everybody is trying to feed electricity to them. I believe the only way to have your solar panels work in an offline way is to have a battery system (though maybe a clever electrician would have other alternatives).

Batteries

Nova Solar have an excellent article explaining why you probably don’t want to buy a battery for your solar system: Do I Need Batteries for My Solar Power System?

My personal plan is to eventually buy an electric car and use that as our household battery backup. Since batteries cost $5k–$10k, it seems to make sense to have one battery system for both the car engine and the house. Not all electric cars support reversing their batteries to charge/run external systems (e.g. Teslas do not currently support it), so make sure you check if that is important to you.