Ever since my husband and I decided to install solar panels on our roof, we have frequently been asked by the solar-curious if it’s really worth it to install solar in rainy Seattle. The short answer: it’s worth it! Which is why I hang out by the mailbox whenever it’s electricity bill time – getting paid for the surplus electricity that our system has generated is truly electrifying!
For starters, we haven’t paid an electricity bill since we installed our solar panels 16 months ago. However, we aren’t completely off the grid. In the winter, we do use more electricity than we produce. Since we run a surplus at other times of the year, and because our home is outfitted with all manner of CFL/LED/halogen light, we contribute more to the grid than we take from it. Seattle City Light pays us for the electricity that we put back into the grid and we slowly run down this balance over the course of winter.
We chose to install solar panels last year because the technology has improved enough that you can produce a reasonable quantity of electricity even on cloudy days, and because there are a lot of incentives for investing in clean energy right now. For example, if you purchase made-in-Washington solar panels (aka “modules”) and/or inverters, you qualify for production incentives offered by local utilities. Through June, 2013, the state is offering a sales tax waiver. There’s also a 30% federal tax credit that lasts until 2016.
All of that may sound like mumbo-jumbo. Luckily, the solar installers will help you figure out not only which types of solar panel would be best for your home (given sun exposure, tree cover, and so on), but which incentives you might qualify for and how long it would take for you to break even on your investment.
We worked with Puget Sound Solar, because we knew Pamela back from her days as executive director at Seattle Tilth and because she and her husband Jeremy had installed panels for our neighbors. The crew performed a site visit and presented us with a series of 6 options for our roof – with variables that included different types of modules, different types of inverters and differing layouts for our roof. They also included the cost, the payback time and the incentives we would earn for each setup. We found it extremely helpful to be able to compare the options side by side.
Because we plan to stay in our home for a long time, we chose Option 6, which had a higher initial investment but a much better payback over 10 years. With some help from Immediate Edge experts, Puget Sound Solar explained the available financing options – both Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union and Umpqua Bank offer loans for green projects including solar panels (and electric cars, but that’s a little while down the road for us). Before we knew it, we were the proud owners of made-in Washington solar technology.
I recently contacted Pamela to double-check that all of the incentives are still in place. She offered the following advice:
Costs will go up 9% next year when the sales tax waiver expires [in June]. The timeline is growing short if homeowners are interested in saving the 9%. For example, we are almost booked to the end of year with installs. Come January there is likely to be a surge in orders for the made-in-Washington modules. The two in-state factories are small, producing less than 100 modules a day. With a dozen companies now installing solar it is likely that the demand could quickly out do the product availability.
We suggest that the best position for folks to take would be to ask us for a free evaluation now. It is painless, we do it from space and send a comprehensive report with multiple choices of in and out of state systems. Then they can consider the numbers, talk with our staff and loan agencies.
If you’re interested in putting solar panels on your roof, you can also take a walk down the 3800 block of Bagley. Three of us have panels on our roofs. The Wallingford Solar Initiative (which has many admirable goals, including 1,000 solar rooftops in Wallingford) also has a map of solar homes in our neighborhood. I happen to know it’s not inclusive, since our home’s not on it! But group leader Chuck assures me that if we email him photos, our home can appear on the map. I think I will have to take a break from waiting for the mailman to do just that.
Kimberly,
Thank you so much for getting the word out about some great opportunities right now. As a local Realtor Green, I often have conversations with homeowners who think we don’t have a good climate for solar. We have a climate very similar to Germany who is one of the biggest generators for solar power. In fact our weather allows solar panels a longer life span here than they do in AZ.
Thank you for making to point to get your installations lined up before the rush. As energy prices continue to rise, there will be a backlog for installations on it’s way.
I suggest taking the solar energy savings a bit further and looking into retrofitting your heating system with a heat pump. The “mini-splits” have been popular in Europe and Japan for awhile now and people that have them in their homes seem to love them and especially their heating/cooling bills. They are starting to not only be in “green projects” and are going mainstream in new construction.
I invite anyone to contact me if they would like more information about these concepts. I don’t sell them, I just enjoy sending people in the right direction for more information. Just spreadin’ the Green Gospel, and helping people save money (and maybe the planet) along the way 🙂
Have you done the return on investment calculation for your panels? Im interested to know how long you expect it will take to recoup the initial purchase and install cost.
Congratulations on installing your solar array. I have to say though that you appear to be paying very high prices for installed solar in the USA at $8.69 per watt ($31,271 for your 3.6 kW system) – even allowing for the fact that you installed 16 months ago.
I have just seen an advert in the UK from a company offering 4 kW systems at a typical installed cost of £5,244 including sales tax of 5%. (Around $8,400) without any tax rebates at all. This is only 27% of the installed cost you paid 16 months ago. What’s more, for most people in the UK the time between placing an order and getting an array installed is only a few weeks without any complex or long winded permitting processes.
It really is time the USA got its act together and enacted simplified permitting and connection criteria and arranges a national register of competent installers to cut costs whilst maintaining standards.
Hey Kimberly,
I love your article — thank you for writing it. I honestly have not thought much about the idea of solar panels here in Wallingford, but you’ve inspired me to check out the Wallingford Solar Initiative. One question, though — maybe I’m misreading, but when your wrote “In the winter, we do use more electricity than we consume…”, did you mean “…use more electricity than we produce”? (Not trying to nit-pick; just wondering if I’m understanding correctly. 🙂
Ryan — my guess is that the calculation you ask for is the literal “bottom-line” on the Puget Sound Solar Incentive Calculations that Kimberly included. Click on the image to enlarge it.
I noticed that none of the options included AC solar panels. Wow! My investigation shows this promising technology is superior in several important ways: flexibility in size and expansion, superior electricity production, ease of monitoring and servicing at the panel level, and inverter life and warranty. Just Search “AC Solar Panels”.
But…the Washington State political incentives steer buyers away from this technology as no micro-inverters used on individual panels are made here.
I’m shopping to put my money in leading and successful technologies that ultimately will do the best job of supporting solar technology and it’s implementation.
Is it right to use political incentives to favor “typewriter” technologies just because its local?
I’ve looked at it and decided that the AC Panels trump central inverter systems for my home. I encourage you to take a look at the technology and change local incentives if they look counter-productive to you.
@Kim – Thanks for being a resource!
@Ryan – Puget Sound Solar provided us with the bottom-line numbers that I believe you are looking for. Click on the picture and you can have a look. We are actually producing a little bit more electricity than we anticipated so we are about $500 ahead of schedule. I think we will pay back sometime during year 8.
@Gary – I could’t agree with you more. I also would love to see our government subsidize solar instead of fossil fuels, to get production costs down and create demand.
@CL – I did mean “produce” and have fixed that! Thanks for catching it – totally confusing otherwsie!
@David – I know nothing about AC panels and wonder if perhaps they were not readily available 2 years ago when we got our bid? I don’t think that those are specifically dis-incentivized. I do know that one purpose of the Washington state incentive is to create a market for and an infrastructure for green jobs in Washington, which is a cause I wholeheartedly support. There are lots of good reasons to choose solar – whichever route you go!
Thanks for your response Kimberly. The “AC solar panel system” got started with the production of micro-inverters that fit compatible solar panels ( I remember Enphase ) several years ago. More recently the panel and inverter are being made and sold as a single unit, and more companies are producing them this year. SunPower, Westinghouse Solar (distributed through Lowes), and SpinRayEnergy come to mind.
One problem I see with the Washington State incentive is that is so large that the economic incentive trumps the technology. It converts solar energy buyers into incentive shoppers, regardless of technology. So, it certainly does dis-incentivize AC Panel technology for Washington State solar shoppers.
I am confused. We have solar on our house and we still have to pay electricity bills. Our refund for what we produce is completely separate. How were you able to fix it so that you don’t pay bills? (It sounds like you are connected to the grid and not storing produced energy in batteries, right?)
Regarding AC panels, there are situations where the system has advantages, and other situations where there is very little advantage.
It should be said that the cost of panels fitted with micro-inverters is higher than that of panels connected to a single inverter, but this is partly offset by reduced complexity in the installation and design of the system, and greater ease of diagnosis should a panel fail to perform as expected.
If you have a roof which is prone to partial shade at certain times of day, or a complex roof shape which puts panels at several different angles or orientations, then AC panels are definitely worth considering. In these situations panels connected together in a single string are trying to generate different amounts of power due to differential shade, angles and orientation or panel mismatch, each panel will only be able to perform to the output of the weakest panel in the string. This results in a significant reduction in power output across the whole string. AC modules on the other hand optimise the performance of each separate panel eliminating these losses and yielding more annual kWh of power per kW of panels installed.
There is another technology which achieves similar results and that is DC optimisers. These devices carry out maximum power point tracking on a panel by panel basis converting the output voltage to a fixed value. This allows a simpler lower cost inverter to carry out DC to AC conversion at high efficiency. The DC optimiser system for the moment is less costly than AC micro inverters and achieves most of the same advantages – except that you still need to find room for a wall mounted inverter. One supplier of the technology is Solar Edge.
Both these technologies were not in common use 2 years ago, and are now becoming more common and less expensive with volume of use.
I wondered if the spreadsheet is accurate based on actual output, sounds like it is. An eight year return sounds reasonable for Seattle. I assume the life of the panels is 15 years plus?
@David and @Gary – The microinverters (didn’t recognize the term “AC” but microinverters I know!) were discussed at the beginning of our project and they did qualify for the incentives. I believe there is now a company in Washington that is producing them, but I would need to do some digging to figure that out. Because our roof faces south with no shady spots (we have 98% direct sun all day!), the microinverters didn’t make sense for our array which is why they were not bid.
@a We are plugged into the grid. Last year (a partial year of production for us) our rebate was credited directly to our City Light account. This year – since we produced for a full year – the credit is bigger. I know they are cutting us a check for part of it, but I thought that some was also going into our City Light account. We should know soon!
Interesting. For us the generation and the use are two separate accounts altogether. We’ll have to find out if we can simplify. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for the update Kimberly. I looked into this about 3 years ago and couldn’t even find tech at the home show that could even produce enough solar energy to run my water heater let alone the whole house. Good to know it’s improving dramatically.
Gary, I appreciate your knowledge and interest in solar technology.
My situation looks like this:
Total energy (all electric home) consumes 1,600 to 2,000 KWh / year, and my bill is about $120 per year. The smallest central inverter systems without a very significant small size penalty in $/Watt is larger than I need to be energy neutral.
A cost effective size would cover most of my available roof space, while current technology that to this point has only had incremental improvements has 15-20% panel efficiency.
That’s a huge leap to get started and then I’m stuck with what I have.
With AC panels I can get started with ONE panel, and expand as I please, perhaps one per year. AND I can expand with disruptive improvements in technology, such as this:
http://www.solar3d.com
If Solar 3D or another disruptive technology delivers in a year or two, I can expand with far greater efficiency WITHOUT having to REMOVE my fixed dinosaur obsolete system to make room.
I would rather invest my solar dollars on the successful winning technologies that generate solar progress rather than invest in political incentives in “typewriter” technologies that take investments away from and harm more promising technologies.
That’s what’s wrong with Washington State’s politically driven solar incentives.
@David – There are incentives available for the microinverters – no matter where they are made. I believe that you would qualify for the sales tax waiver and also for the federal tax credit. If the microinverters are made in Washington, you would also qualify for the production incentive. I just did a quick web search and it looks like there are a couple of made in Washinton choices: http://bluefrogsolar.com/wa-made-solar-products.
You seem pretty deadset against the incentives, but I would like to posit that these companies are new and likely have been able to get a foothold here in the PNW thanks (in part) to the demand for the products, fueled (in part) by the incentives. Itek, for example, started in 2009. http://www.itekenergy.com/about-us/
David, your electricity use is relatively low for an all electric home so I expect you are already making use of a number of energy efficient technologies and being frugal with your power use.
For anyone who has not yet taken such measures, changing incandescent lights for LED lights, insulating everything to a high standard, and selecting energy efficient appliances will probably give you greater bang for buck than solar power.
You might also consider a solar water heater to displace electricity which would otherwise be used to heat water.
Kimberley C – just to clarify AC is alternating current like mains power which in North America operates at 60 cycles a second. This is in contrast to DC or direct current which is what you would get out of batteries.
Timely article. Just a head’s up that SolarizeNW is still looking for a volunteer from Wallingford to help out with representing interested Wallingford households to participate in the next round of Solarize Seattle projects. NW SEED helps run the project which, in brief, provides free workshops, helps with site analysis, and those interested can join a group of like-minded households to pool resources in seeking bids from local solar contractors and hopefully realize a group discount.
NW SEED has already run projects in Magnolia and NE Seattle. There is competition to be selected by SEED and Solarize NW was selected. Neigborhoods participating already include Phinney Ridge, Greenwood, Greenlake, and Wallingford (zip codes 98103, 98107, 98117, 98133, and 98177. The goal is to get bids and installation going to be complete before the sales tax waiver expires in June 2013. They hope to install solar on 150 homes in NW Seattle.
There is a one-hour informational meeting this Wednesday, November 7th in Room 6 at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6523 Phinney Ave N at 6PM. There will be a smaller meeting immediately following for those interested in serving on the committee to help select the contractor for the project.
If you are interested in helping organize the participation of Wallingford homes, or interested in participating in the project you can contact Bill Thorness at Solarize NW:
solarizeNWseattle at gmail.com
Bill would be very happy to hear from Wallingford folks, particularly if you can serve as liaison. Duties are not anticipated to be particularly time-consuming because NW SEED (and Bill) handles most of the process. They are a great group of people and NW SEED has achieved great success with prior projects. However, I believe that their grant may be expiring and this may be their last project in Seattle.
More information about the Solarize Washington program may be found at:
http://www.solarizewa.org
Hello KimberlyC,
Thanks for the update, its been a few months since I checked for Washington State micro-inverters.
Yep, I could get WA sales tax where that applies, it doesn’t at SpinRaySolar. But, I’m excluded from all federal income tax incentives so that won’t apply.
I’m still going with Westinghouse Solar: when their new Instant Connect panels become available, and through their Lowes Hardware distributor.
http://www.westinghousesolar.com/index.php/products/72-ac235-instant-connect Check the product video to the right.
By positioning their DIY friendly panels through a national hardware, they may make solar available to far more people. That’s the kind of technology and distribution I want to invest in because I believe we will all be better off.
So, I would like to ask: Are we better off chasing WA State incentives or the best and most promising technology? What if other states, like our neighbors follow our lead and pass similar incentives, will that help WA State manufacturers sell their products out of state? Will such downscaling and localizing be beneficial or harmful to the development of high-tech solar panels?