Could your home qualify for free solar panels? Instead of paying an upfront cost, you'd buy solar power by the kilowatt hour off of your own roof, so it can be the same or less than you pay now. A solar PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) is the way you buy your utility power now, by the kilowatt hour)
There's quite a few variables. Your roof's solar friendliness, the solar insolation in your zip code, your energy usage (the higher, the better the economics), what you pay your utility now, and the clean energy incentives in your state and city. You have to be a homeowner in California, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or Hawaii and have one of these utilities, that allow renewable electricity competition:
CA: PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, LADWP, SMUD, Banning, PWP
NJ: PSE&G, REU, JCP&L, ACE
PN: PECO, PPL
MA: National Grid, NSTAR, WMECO, UNITIL
AZ: APS
CO: XCEL
HI: HECO, HELCO, MECO
Homes with high energy bills typically can switch to solar for zero down, because it is cheaper to make solar power on your roof than pay your higher utility rate per kilowatt hour. Then, virtually everyone will pay less monthly over time with a solar power purchase agreement, saving between $30,000 and $300,000 over 25 years, compared with doing nothing. The more energy you use now, the more you save by switching to solar.
It is free to find out. There is no risk to finding out just what your savings would be: it takes 15 minutes, and it's free. You could make clean power for decades for little or no upfront cost, and pay less monthly than you pay now for electricity.
If you'd like to get a locked-in quote, a local site check with one of SunRun's Installation Partners in your area, can come out for a technical look at the roof, which is free - so that he can finalize the numbers and lock in a low monthly SunRun rate.
Then, after you see the numbers, you decide. But if you want to go ahead - he can get you started before this chance ends!
Yeah, this chance could end! I am not kidding.
Congress could pull the incentives that make this possible now. Good clean energy legislation in some states allows competition with your utility, that works in our favor, now. But there are utilities and fossil energy industries chomping at the bit to turn clean energy legislation around, and not in our favor. Tax incentives for long term investors are threatened. Rebates are dropping already as more people get solar.
So that's why you shouldn't delay.
susankraemer@futurefriendlyhome.org
