After years of wanting to, finally this week we're having solar panels installed on our house! My wife has been the main impetus, making noise about reducing our carbon footprint, but I've been interested in solar for a long time. The issue has been price (naturally).
More below the fold...
So what changed? Basically, we stumbled into a fantastic deal. A company named Rec Solar was doing a "group buy" in our area (Central Valley, California). When a number of households sign up, the company is able to offer a better rate. Our total out of pocket is just over $8000, an amazing savings compared to what we've seen before. The hardware (panels and inverters) are guaranteed for 20 years. A really good feature of the deal is that we are guaranteed a certain minimum power output for our system, and this will be tracked month to month by the company. If our system's output ever goes below the minimum, the company will do what is necessary to fix it.
Another factor in the low cost is various rebates, from the State of California and from (thrice-damned) PG&E. Even better, the company handles all collection of the rebates for us.
The panels will be installed tomorrow. The workmen doing the installation say we'll be generating our own power by the end of the day tomorrow! Couldn't be more jazzed.
I'd advise anyone looking to go solar to ask around solar companies about group buys. That's what made it possible for us.