We did a lot of research on this, and quite a few months considering doing it and have talked to a lot of people in our area that have already gone to solar over a year ago. One family in Skaneatlas has been over a year with there system and there electric bill is the basic service charge of about $18. a month. They went with a paid up lease so have no actual monthly lease payment.
We are going with a 20 year lease and will be paying well below what we are now paying for electricity through National Grid. The lease includes any maintenance or repairs to the system for the whole 20 years and is insured so any thing that might happen is covered under the lease. There are no batteries, we are still on the grid. When the system makes more electricity than we use it is pumped back into the grid through our meter which has already been changed to accommodate this through National Grid. It works like a "point for point" bank and we draw from that when the system isn't producing enough electricity.
Everything is in a written contract and we know what our monthly paymt. will be for the next 20 years, which is a lot less than our $200 a month budget pymt. now to National Grid. It is better than paying the yearly increases through our power company and will save us about $20,000 over the life of the lease. In the last 20 years our costs have just about doubled from what they were back in 1994 for the same usage. At that rate of increase it will be about double what it is now over the next 20 years. It just makes sense to lock in our costs with the lease. It costs us absolutely no up front cost for installation, or panels, or equipment,or anything. We make our first lease paymt. after the installation is complete and the power company gives the go ahead to power up the system which will take them about a month to do their inspection.
Our system is quite large because of the usage that our electric bills have shown over the past year of usage. It is suppose to be finished in 1 week, but may go over a day or so depending on the weather. Right the crew that is doing the installation says they are right on schedule or a little ahead if anything. It is a local company doing the installation and the company, Sungevity Solar, is out of California. They take a picture of your house and design a system with all the info. that they ask you to provide and them send the local company to your house to do a feasibility inspection of the roof, shade, location of the inverters and so on. So far everything is being just as was described to us in the beginning of the quote process.
Solar is definitely not for everyone but for us it makes solid sense. Like I said we have talked to many people in and around our community and that have already gone solar and have had nothing but positive feedback. By the way not all of the people were Sungevity customers, but from competing companies that we found just by driving around randomly and stopping and talking with people that have solar arrays either on their house or on the ground. So it isn't that we were just going to people that Sungevity wanted us to talk to.
All in all we are very confident that we have made the right decision. The tax incentives in New York are some of the best in the country, but are coming to an end next year. I believe that New York State is among the highest in conversions to solar.
Will keep you posted about how things progress.
