Thanks for the interest! Not quite your neighborhood, but it is further north... 92129 zip, already well represented in PVO's team San Diego.
The new house has a nice SSE facing roof:
google.png
A single row of panels ought to fit nicely there along the southern eave, with very good visibility of the horizon, and no sources of shade that I've noticed yet.
There is an HOA, but other homes in the area have PV and solar thermal systems, so I don't expect it to add too much friction to the process.
The old house is being rented out, so the Davis should be safe for now. I am actually keeping the electric bill in my name... changing the account ownership would wipe out all the credits the system has accumulated since May, which would be sad. On the TOU plan, with my EV, it only really generates credits during the summer months, but for the tenants, I've shifted it back to the DR tariff. Without an EV, the system should be oversized most of the year, even if they want to run a window AC aggressively this summer. The true-up is at the end of april, but the monthly consumption should start going net negative by feb/march so that might be a good time to try cutting the account over.
As part of the process, the old house had to get a couple of appraisals. One of them ignored the PV system completely, the other included a $5000 adjustment for it. There does not seem to be much consensus on how the system should be valued. Very few of the houses we looked at while shopping had solar; we ran into one with a lease and one with solar thermal stealing the best part of the roof for PV.
I have SolarEdge installed on that house, with which I have been satisfied. What I've been able to learn from the panel level data has helped tremendously in my understanding of these systems, and as a single story house with shingle roof (with access to each of the panels directly), I wouldn't mind going up to replace an optimizer if needed. On the new house, two stories with concrete tile, I have no desire to do any work up there. I'd lean toward a lower cost string inverter (probably Fronius Primo if I bought today), and whatever black framed panels I can find for a good price. I would be tempted to DIY... when I joined the forum, I had one kid, now I have 3. Time has gotten scarce. I would not shy away from using the same installer (through ButchDeal's company), but I've learned of a few others through the forum and in other networks that should be capable of doing nice work for a competitive price. It is a longer run from the array to where the inverter will be (service panel is on the NE corner), so finding a conduit path that is unobtrusive will be important to me. Previous owners left coax from an abandoned DirectTV install all over the roof and swiss-cheesing the walls... yuck.
This house does not have an air conditioner, so the initial electric bills ought to be reasonable... I will get to see the true cost of charging the EV. Too many damn incandescents though...turning on my bathroom light uses more power than my whole house usually did before, and my workarounds to the power hog cable boxes won't work here (switching from Time Warner to AT&T). I've got a couple cases of LED's coming soon. Once I see what life is like through the hot months, I'll have a better idea of what size system to be looking at. Insulation (attic and wall) is *much* better than the old house, the difference between 1962 and 2003 standards, I guess.
The new house has a nice SSE facing roof:
google.png
A single row of panels ought to fit nicely there along the southern eave, with very good visibility of the horizon, and no sources of shade that I've noticed yet.
There is an HOA, but other homes in the area have PV and solar thermal systems, so I don't expect it to add too much friction to the process.
The old house is being rented out, so the Davis should be safe for now. I am actually keeping the electric bill in my name... changing the account ownership would wipe out all the credits the system has accumulated since May, which would be sad. On the TOU plan, with my EV, it only really generates credits during the summer months, but for the tenants, I've shifted it back to the DR tariff. Without an EV, the system should be oversized most of the year, even if they want to run a window AC aggressively this summer. The true-up is at the end of april, but the monthly consumption should start going net negative by feb/march so that might be a good time to try cutting the account over.
As part of the process, the old house had to get a couple of appraisals. One of them ignored the PV system completely, the other included a $5000 adjustment for it. There does not seem to be much consensus on how the system should be valued. Very few of the houses we looked at while shopping had solar; we ran into one with a lease and one with solar thermal stealing the best part of the roof for PV.
I have SolarEdge installed on that house, with which I have been satisfied. What I've been able to learn from the panel level data has helped tremendously in my understanding of these systems, and as a single story house with shingle roof (with access to each of the panels directly), I wouldn't mind going up to replace an optimizer if needed. On the new house, two stories with concrete tile, I have no desire to do any work up there. I'd lean toward a lower cost string inverter (probably Fronius Primo if I bought today), and whatever black framed panels I can find for a good price. I would be tempted to DIY... when I joined the forum, I had one kid, now I have 3. Time has gotten scarce. I would not shy away from using the same installer (through ButchDeal's company), but I've learned of a few others through the forum and in other networks that should be capable of doing nice work for a competitive price. It is a longer run from the array to where the inverter will be (service panel is on the NE corner), so finding a conduit path that is unobtrusive will be important to me. Previous owners left coax from an abandoned DirectTV install all over the roof and swiss-cheesing the walls... yuck.
This house does not have an air conditioner, so the initial electric bills ought to be reasonable... I will get to see the true cost of charging the EV. Too many damn incandescents though...turning on my bathroom light uses more power than my whole house usually did before, and my workarounds to the power hog cable boxes won't work here (switching from Time Warner to AT&T). I've got a couple cases of LED's coming soon. Once I see what life is like through the hot months, I'll have a better idea of what size system to be looking at. Insulation (attic and wall) is *much* better than the old house, the difference between 1962 and 2003 standards, I guess.
Comment