My Experience Hooking Up Rooftop Solar Electric Panels

The moment of truth came today. A technician working for the solar energy company  visited our home today to do the pre - inspection test and turned on my new 3 kilowatt rooftop solar panel electric system. After flipping three switches my meter began to spin backward. Awesome! As the air conditioner unit kicked in it began to creep slowly forward and as a cloud passed over back to its usual forward speed. As the cloud passed and the central air turned off the meter resumed spinning backward, reversing my electric bill. This month I am actually looking forward to my electric bill to see how much of a difference it will make. The system I have is supposed to make about $40 worth of electricity per month and since my bills run around $120 it will give me about a third of my electricity, carbon free. As electricity rates go up the value of the monthly solar will go up.

Getting to this point was a bit of an ordeal. The city that I live in in Texas offers a very generous rebate for solar power systems, over half of the cost. In addition to the city there is a $2000 federal rebate.

The first step was the evaluation by the city. An engineer in an office somewhere simply clicked on Google Earth, looked at a photo of my roof and if it faced the right direction or had any trees shading it. It turned out we were just inside the parameters for a south to west facing roof and we were approved. Next the solar company sent out an estimator who measured our roof. He mentioned that my shingles were quite loose and that it was quite possible that I would be needing a new roof in a couple of years. I asked what the cost was to come and re-install the system and he told me about two thousand!

I had been wanting a metal roof for some time, for the insurance discount and fire safety as well as energy savings and we decided to go ahead and replace our asphalt shingle roof with a standing seam metal roof at a cost of $8500. The insurance discount would be 20% so we would eventually get our money back but we would not have to worry about the solar panel system having to be removed for another 30 years.

After the roof was installed, which was a terrible, noisy affair, the solar power company arrived and began installing the panels. Each panel array has six brackets and there are nine panels to each point is a roof penetration. The contractor sealed each roof penetration with a high tech sealant guaranteed to last 20 years so we should not have to worry about leaks.

After the panels were installed they ran conduit down to the electric meter and installed a disconnect box and inverter. They were able to place the inverter, a costly piece of equipment, inside the garage, sheltered from the heat of the sun to protect it from damage. The installation process took about one week from start to finish.

Our total cost for  the solar energy system, out of pocket, was $5,400, not including the cost of the metal roof. We expect to see payback in about eight years or less, especially with rising energy costs. My wife and I are very happy so far with the system. It reminds us of when we lived on a sailboat in the Caribbean and solar panes provided much of our energy.  It is too bad that more cities around the nation are not offering similar rebate programs.  If more people purchased photovoltaic solar energy systems for their homes, it is very likely that the cost of solar panels would fall because of increased demand.