Bust common myths about solar power! Learn about financing options and incentives that can make solar more affordable for homeowners.
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher and I’m here today with Brian Sadler, vice president at Solaris Renewables, a solar company in Massachusetts, providing premium Solar and storage technologies with exceptional customer service into designing, installing, and servicing solar systems in Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Maine. Today our topic is Busting Common Myths About Solar Power. Welcome, Brian.
Brian Sadler: Hi, John. Thanks for having me in. Let’s bust myths.
Upfront Costs of Solar / Free Solar
John: Absolutely. So yeah, so Brian, the first one that we want to talk about is upfront costs. So one of the things that I hear the most about solar is that it’s got a high upfront cost, a lot of money that you have to put down. Can you address this concern and explain any financing options, maybe some incentives that can help make solar more affordable to homeowners?
Brian: Man, I hear the opposite. All I hear about is free solar, free solar, free batteries…
John: Right. That’s the other side of it.
Brian: Everything is free. The governor’s given you everything for free. So there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Obviously we know that there’s really nothing that’s free. There’s a cost to that somewhere, and we see a lot of it in social media and online that is really pumping that this is a giveaway, it’s a free giveaway. And what it comes down to is that what they’re really trying to convey is they’re lead generation sites and they’re trying to get you to click. It’s a lot of clickbait, but what it comes down to is that there’s no upfront costs. So what they’re saying is zero down and a “free solar installation” that you then pay for on a rate structure.
Now these are usually what we call third party ownership options or leases or power purchase agreements. A power purchase agreement is very common, and that’s where you’re agreeing to buy the solar power that your panels create at a lower cost per kilowatt-hour than you’re paying the utility right now. And that usually has an escalator that goes up annually and would be less than what the utility is going up. So, in effect, it’s a win, but messaging it as free solar is obviously misleading. It gets around the neighborhood and the community and then it becomes a lot of confusion and gives our industry a bad name oftentimes, or at least creates a lot of confusion and people are really hesitant to understand how solar works because they kept hearing it was free, where in reality when people ask me, I say, “Yeah, we do the free solar that you pay for the next 25 years as well.”
So generally speaking, the barrier to going solar is very low. It’s no money down or a low down to go solar. And then there is a variety of financial mechanisms, the ones I was just speaking about, the third party options are one kind of group of mechanisms.
There’s also a variety of loans in the industry, and really the industry around the finances of solar has matured tremendously. So, the finance options have treatments for the incentive programs, be it tax credits or local rebates, and a variety of other local incentives as well, because they want to make solar more accessible as well, and they want to make it easy. And the idea of any of the solar financing is that you are saving money month one. So a lot of folks also ask, “Well, what’s the payback?” Well, if you’re financing, generally speaking, your “payback” is month one because you’re paying less for your electricity than you were previously.
Solar Panel Efficiency & Weather
John: All right, our next one that we want to talk about is efficiency, and specifically during all weather types. We know that solar power is great on sunny days, but we have a lot of cloudy days or even snowy weather here in New England. How are those types of days addressed?
Brian: So through the tools that we have, some satellite imagery, LIDAR, and then actual more recent mapping through planes flying overhead, we have some really quality data about where the homes are, what the site conditions are, and all of those coordinates lead to an average precipitation, average amount of cloudy days, average amount of sunny days. And that’s all modeled into the mix to guide homeowners and what their systems will do for a performance. It’s funny, because heat is one of the biggest detractors from production with solar panels. We want it to be sunny, but we don’t want it to be too hot because they actually become less efficient in really hot weather. Here in New England, it’s not as much of an issue, but the closer to the equator you get, heat plays a role. They’re more worried about dissipating heat, making sure that there’s good ventilation so that the product and the panels can produce effectively.
Here we have varying conditions, like you mentioned, cloudy days, rainy days. We have really hot and humid days, we have windy days, we have bluebird days in March, which could be the most productive days of the year because there’s no humidity, there’s no breeze. And you’ll see some outliers on your production data showing that, wow, the biggest day of the year was actually March 20th because there was enough sun and there were no other weather conditions to impact the production. But all those things are factored in, and we do see data throughout the years that shows, okay, a really rainy, unusually rainy spring or unusually snowy winter will impact the average data, an average production to a certain extent. But overall, the model is there for where your home or business is situated and that weather data, historical weather data to predict an accurate production model.
John: And as we’ve talked about before, you might be producing more than you need in certain months, like the summer or maybe occasionally on a sunny day in March or something like that. And then other days that are cloudy or rainy or in the winter you’re producing less, but it’ll all average out throughout the year.
Brian: Essentially, so we’re going to use those scientific factors to model what the annual production will be. And like you said, you might have some wins in some parts of the year, in some seasons, you might have a couple losses in another couple of parts of the year. But generally speaking, it comes out in the end to be really accurate modeling and folks are getting the production that they were told they were going to get.
Solar Panel Maintenance
John: What about concerns that people might have about maintenance that might be difficult to maintain solar panels? Is there a lot of maintenance that’s required on solar panels, and are there any ongoing costs associated with keeping them functioning?
Brian: Simply, no. And we’re fortunate in our part of the country that we do have some precipitation and we do have snow that will clean the panels. We don’t have a high dust volume here in the Northeast. If you’re talking about the Southwest, dust is more of a concern and there is some panel cleaning that you might need to do. But here, the biggest thing that we see is maybe a pollen bloom, like a significant pollen bloom, which will put a coating of pollen over the panels and that will play a role in the production in the short term. And folks do ask, “Hey, what do I do? My panels are yellow, they’re covered in pollen”, and I just want them to wait until it rains.
A good rainstorm will clean the panels off just fine and get you back producing. And so there’s no moving parts in the solar system, so there’s no wear and tear and there’s really no maintenance associated with a solar system. The only thing is, any service…so the electronics or the wiring, things like that, over time could require service if there’s a failure or disruption in the equipment. But that’s not common and there’s really no ongoing maintenance. We don’t sell any service packages or ongoing maintenance packages because they’re not really needed.
John: And even like you said with the pollen bloom or it getting dirty, you don’t even recommend that people get out their hose and try to hose it off. You’re just saying just leave it alone, wait for it to rain, it’ll rain, it’ll clear it off.
Brian: Exactly. Yeah. And as myself and our family, about eight years ago, we went solar and I bought this telescoping rod and I put a foam snow rake that you would clear your car off with on the end ’cause we have a ranch and it’s approachable for me to pull the snow off it. So I was religiously going out there and pulling the snow off and trying to maximize production. And then one day I forgot and I went out to do it and it already melted and I was like, “I am wasting my time.” So I haven’t done it since, unless it was a big…we get a big snow drifting on our house, so if we get a huge snow drift on one end, I’ll pull some of the snow off just for structural safety of the home, which people do if you have solar panels or not.
Generally speaking, the snow and the rain is going to wash the panels and it’s also going to be removed from the panels a lot quicker, given that they’re black. And they’re also on the places where we get the most sun, so snow melts faster and things like that. But as a new adopter of solar eight years ago, I didn’t fully know that yet. So I was trying to keep them as productive as possible and realized I am just wasting my time.
The Solar Installation Process
John: What about the installation process? Does the installation process take a long time? Is it going to be really disruptive to my daily life, or is that something that people should be concerned about at all?
Brian: No, that’s a great question, and a good thing for our listeners to know, is that we want to make this a turnkey process and we tell homeowners now that you really only need to be home a couple or a few times throughout the process. So, it’s basically for your site inspection with our project engineers, just so you can see what the final findings are and what the final design, wire management and equipment placement recommendations are, and then what your choices are for that. Then for the actual installation, typically most…I’d say the average is two to three days, and it’s mostly on the exterior of your home, with the exception of some work in the attic if you have an attic, and some work in your basement if you have a basement, or some work in your garage. So it depends on the setup. So it’s really not inside your living space, so to speak.
We want to make sure it’s obviously a great experience and we want to be as least intrusive to homeowners and businesses as we can. We find that homeowners thought it was maybe more intrusive than it really was and found, “oh, this was no big deal”, and sometimes they’re even at work and they would give us access and then go to work, then come home, and things like that. But I would say that the average install takes two to three days. It depends on the complexity and the size and that it’s very minimal disruption to the homeowner and the property and the building as a whole.
Damage To Your Roof
John: Do you ever get people asking about damage to their roof with the installation, that having solar panels on my roof is going to somehow damage my roof or reduce the life of my roof?
Brian: Yes.
John: How do you respond to that?
Brian: Absolutely. We have those questions every day from potential clients and from existing clients. So from potential clients, they are concerned like, “Oh, we’re going to be putting a bunch of holes in my roof”, and that’s why we have one of the strongest roof warranties in the business and we use the equipment that we use and we have the roof experts installing this. So we want to make sure that we’re, first of all, overcoming those concerns by performance. And we’ve been installing…we’ve done thousands of solar systems, with different equipment over the years. We try to stay tried and true, and we don’t switch our equipment often at all. We’ve had two in 12 years, we’ve had two different types of mounting and railing partners that we worked with. And so our teams are real experts in the equipment and the techniques, and we’ve had zero roof leaks.
We get calls on roof leaks every week because we are typically the last folks up there, so “it must be the solar guy”. So we get calls all the time and we honor those requests by sending out one of our roof experts to go and diagnose a situation. What we find every time is that it’s generally another piece of the roof that just had a failure. So we see a lot of chimney flashing or pipe boot failures, skylights. I’ll just let you know if you have a skylight, it’s going to leak at some point. So we get those calls constantly and we go out and we diagnose and we show that, yet again, it wasn’t the solar installation, it wasn’t any of our penetrations because these penetrations are made not only with care and expertise, but they’re with products that are designed to support the solar system and be roof penetration. So they’re waterproof and they’re not going to leak as long as you’re doing it correctly.
John: Are there any issues that you could potentially have with high winds and getting underneath the solar panels and pulling my roof up or anything like that?
Brian: So again, with the equipment we use we have not experienced that. So we do need to adhere to engineering and code, so we have certain wind zones all throughout the country and in our region. So we need to make sure that the proper equipment is used to adhere to those wind speeds, and these are usually over-engineered. So if you’re in a 110 mile an hour wind zone, we’re going to engineer it and install it to at least, if not above, that wind speed, which means that the system would be able to withstand sustained 110, 125 or 150 mile an hour winds.
We have hundreds of solar systems that are right on the ocean or on lakes and up on more exposed hills, like in Worcester County we get a little bit of elevation there and some of these systems are more exposed to wind, for instance, but we have not had any, not even one panel that has been removed or blown away or disrupted by wind because of, again, the equipment that we use is really robust and we want to make sure that it can withstand not only the wind load, the snow load, but also the expansion and contraction of our wide temperature variations here in this region. It’s going to be 140 up there in the summer in a smoking hot day, and it’s going to be zero on a winter day. So we want to make sure that the equipment we use is going to withstand that.
And like we tell a lot of our customers, the advertising we’re looking for is not our van parked in your driveway, fixing your solar system. It’s that you had a great experience, it’s doing everything that you thought it would do and then some, and you’re so happy that you want to share your experience with your family, your friends, and your neighbors. It’s a great idea to go solar and you should talk to Solaris Renewables.
John: All right, well that’s really great information and I hope we were able to dispel some of these myths and encourage people to install solar panels. So thanks again for speaking with me today, Brian.
Brian: Awesome, John. Thanks for having me.
John: And for more information, you can visit the website at solarisrenewables.com or call 781-270-6555.