Solar Installers

[Red Arrow]

Anyone know if Homeowner's Insurance covers things like hail damage to solar panels?  What are the complications if the shingles need to be replaced due to hail damage?   I'm not really keen on the appearance since the front of my house faces south (the street).

[Red Arrow]

I talked with a Generac representative in Costco today.  They do not have an inverter output large generator, no surprise.  Another customer was also there who agreed that a lot of household things need clean electricity.  He suggested maybe using a Generic to recharge a Battery/Inverter backup system if the power outage exceeded the capability of the batteries.  Interesting thought.  Probably expensive though.

[patric]

Are you sure you got the units (KW) correct?  240V at 100 Amp service is 24,000 VA which is pretty close to 24KW.  (Electrical guys please add power factor or whatever corrections.  It's been a long time since I took Electrical Power Systems at TU.)  I doubt you can get that in solar panels for $4/KW X 24 KW = $96.  What about the batteries so it works at night?

There are some good arguments for some of the newer battery formulations in terms of safety and capacity. Tesla's batteries are going on a decade now.

https://news.energysage.com/home-battery-comparison/

https://solaroptimum.com/blog/2022/02/22/tesla-powerwall-vs-enphase-battery-a-side-by-side-comparison/

Some thoughts about hail damage here; you can probably skip the "What is hail?" preface...
https://www.engineeringpassion.com/can-hail-damage-solar-panels-homeowner-info/

[tulsabug]

There are some good arguments for some of the newer battery formulations in terms of safety and capacity. Tesla's batteries are going on a decade now.

https://news.energysage.com/home-battery-comparison/

https://solaroptimum.com/blog/2022/02/22/tesla-powerwall-vs-enphase-battery-a-side-by-side-comparison/

Some thoughts about hail damage here; you can probably skip the "What is hail?" preface...
https://www.engineeringpassion.com/can-hail-damage-solar-panels-homeowner-info/

I'm curious how well they'd hold up if Ming the Merciless sends Hot Hail.... 

[patric]

I'm curious how well they'd hold up if Ming the Merciless sends Hot Hail.... 

Or Roland Emmerich

[buffalodan]

Anyone know if Homeowner's Insurance covers things like hail damage to solar panels?  What are the complications if the shingles need to be replaced due to hail damage?   I'm not really keen on the appearance since the front of my house faces south (the street).

We have USAA and they would cover it once we disclose that we have them. I'm unsure about how hard it is to repair shingles around them, but USAA didn't see any issues with us getting solar panels. And same thing, our south slope is street facing.

[patric]

Anyone know if Homeowner's Insurance covers things like hail damage to solar panels?  What are the complications if the shingles need to be replaced due to hail damage?   I'm not really keen on the appearance since the front of my house faces south (the street).

At some point I will have to balance the geek appeal with the aesthetic as well, and some of the options out there have promise. Not everyone has a square roof.


https://solartechadvisor.com/triangular-solar-panels/

Beating up on Generac sitting on their laurels some more... until they re-tool with some technology from this century I would count them out.

EDIT:  Tesla is looking like an install date into 2023.   :-(

[patric]

I have gotten offers from Sunpro, Shine Solar, and have a call with Radical in an hour. For our house, it seems like we are really counting on the cost to borrow money being less than the costs of energy. Its about even over the 25 year lifespan, just depends on increases for PSO.

One company I spoke with seemed flabbergasted that I wouldnt want to invest in the extra equipment needed to sell my excess power to PSO for three cents per KW, and almost made it sound as if it were mandatory.
PSO's literature even hinted at require a second meter for that purpose, even though the smart meters we all now use are specifically designed to meter power exported from customers (Above where the meter displays "Delivered" is another indicator for "Received" and PSO can set it to behave a couple different ways, including charging you for the power you send them).

[Red Arrow]

(Above where the meter displays "Delivered" is another indicator for "Received" and PSO can set it to behave a couple different ways, including charging you for the power you send them).

What is their rationale for that?  I understand that they are supposed to maintain the infrastructure but at that point, so would you.

[patric]

What is their rationale for that?  I understand that they are supposed to maintain the infrastructure but at that point, so would you.

See option 3 from the GE manual:

kWh energy measurement can be accumulated in 4 ways:
1. Received only: Only the received energy is accumulated as a positive quantity.
2. Delivered only: Only the delivered energy is accumulated,
3. Delivered + Received: The received and delivered energy are added together,
4. Delivered - Received: The net energy is accumulated.

The regulations for exporting your excess power (net metering) are a cluster, and at least one installer looks like they wont install without it.

[patric]

A vetoed scheme in Florida we have to watch out for here:

HB 741, allowed public utilities to "impose additional charges to recover lost revenues resulting from residential solar generation that exceeds the public utilities estimate," (an) amount was "speculative and would be borne by all customers."

The bill would have required that solar customers pay all fixed costs of having access to transmission lines and backup energy generation as determined by the Public Service Commission, but the solar customers would not have received any benefits for reducing the utility's electricity demand.

It was ... a defeat for Florida Power & Light, the state's largest electric utility, whose lobbyists wrote the first version of the bill.

Under the proposal, starting in 2024, many homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar would have started receiving fewer financial credits for selling excess energy back to their electric utilities, a practice known as net metering, and utilities could ask state regulators to impose new fees on all solar customers.

Florida is one of 47 states that allow households and businesses that produce power to sell it back to the grid at a set rate. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line.

FPL — and legislators who supported the bill — argued that arrangement is unfair to customers who don't generate their own power but continue to pay for the costs of maintaining the grid that rooftop solar customers also use.
But solar advocates countered that all utility customers benefit from the private investment made by homeowners and businesses who install or lease solar on their roofs because the investment alleviates the need for the electric utility to purchase or generate expensive fossil-fuel-generated energy.

FPL has long been one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns, but in 2020 it also invested millions into groups with untraceable, anonymous donors that launched attacks on state and local politicians.

According to reporting by the Orlando Sentinel and confirmed by the Miami Herald, FPL executives worked with operatives tied to a series of "dark money" nonprofits, one of which figures prominently in the Miami-Dade state attorney's investigation into a scandal involving a "ghost" state Senate candidate.
Under the scheme, a candidate with no political background was on the ballot as a no-party option in an effort to confuse voters and dilute support for the Democrat in the race, helping Simpson maintain the Republican majority in the state Senate.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/04/27/desantis-vetoes-net-metering-bill-opposed-by-rooftop-solar-proponents/\

EDIT: It seems Oklahoma was one of the first states to pass this:  https://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar-surcharge-bill-becomes-law-17335

[patric]

ADT (Sunpro Solar) was supposed to come and give an estimate.  The sent this puzzling message instead:

I regret to inform you that we are no longer offering services for backup batteries. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you,

Courtney Burris
Retention Agent
(o) 866.450.1012
goadtsolar.com


EDIT to add... I called again and spoke to someone else who appeared surprised at the response, and got an email confirmation of a new appointment for today. When no one showed up again I asked about our missed appointment and got the same canned response from Courtney above.
It seems ADT was under the impression I only wanted a battery, so some genius kept cancelling my appointments and not notifying me of that.

[patric]

Almost ready to sign a contract for an Enphase solar setup when I found a horrendous security flaw in the 24/7 internet connection that Enphase requires.
It seems that any function of the smart switch must be routed thru the Enphase corporate server located somewhere in the cloud (China), and that the smartphone app doesnt actually do anything other than send requests to the server.
The clue:  If you even hear the word "monitoring" start asking a lot more questions.

So back to square one (assuming I dont want to toss a lot of money into a new plaything for Russian hackers).

[patric]

...and if you are hoping on backup power starting your outdoor air conditioner unit, you would need to severely over-rate your power supply to compensate for the inrush current (Locked Rotor Amps) or use a soft-start attachment to tame the compressors appetite.

Not cheap (after Okla taxes I paid $316 for mine) but much less expensive than installing the kW you would need otherwise. One example:

https://www.industrialstores.com/media/industrialstores/product/attachments/14751542312010ECT-79.pdf

[patric]

The hoops PSO makes you jump thru to connect to their grid AND sell back your excess generation (Net Metering) appear to discourage anyone from investing
in a solar backup system.  Homeowners may consider just doing away with Net Metering (and their second meter) if thats the only way they can use their own generated power in an emergency while maintaining the safety of PSO's people and equipment.  The PSO document below is terribly out of date  given the capabilities of state-of-the-art home solar generation:

https://www.psoklahoma.com/lib/docs/business/builders/PSO-CompleteGuidetoInterconnection2021.pdf

Thats a shame, because Net Metering appears to have so many benefits for not only the customer, but also PSO and the stability of their system.

"OG&E's own cost of service study, in which net metering customers were evaluated as a separate subclass, actually showed that it cost less to serve them than other residential customers and that under current rates, OG&E recovered a greater percentage of the cost of service from net metering customers than
from other customers.  In layman's terms, net metering customers were subsidizing other residential customers."

https://www.sierraclub.org/planet/2017/03/oklahoma-regulators-reject-anti-solar-anti-efficiency-rates