1) 30% Federal Tax Credit: If you have a tax liability, you can reduce or have refunded 30% of the installed cost.
For example, if you paid $25,000.00 for solar on your roof (battery backup and service panel upgrades too), you would receive $7,500.00 off your taxes when you go to file with the IRS at the end of the year. If you already paid the $7,500.00 in, you would get that amount refunded. But, if you had no tax liability for the year, you would get no refund in that year, but the credit carries forward to future years until exhausted.

2) Subsidy through the Washington State Renewable Energy Payment program.
This program has allocated all available funds to existing solar applicants. It is not known if new funds will be allocated as it would require an act of the state congress. Some utilities including PSE have opted out of the incentive program and no longer show as participants in the drop-down list in the online application to be waitlisted. The original intent of the incentive program was to initially subsidize solar until costs drop to the point where subsidies were unnecessary. We may have reached that point. Costs have dropped dramatically over the last few years and our company remained busy despite the apparent end to the state incentive. Note also, solar is sales tax exempt now, which was not the case in other years. There are programs for homeowners on tribal lands and some low income neighborhoods.

3) Savings on Electricity You Would Otherwise Pay.
There is a 3rd program that pays you indefinitely for the solar you produce. This is called Net Metering. It is a sharing arrangement with the utility. The electricity from solar travels to your service panel where it is first used by your home. Any additional energy travels through your meter to the utility electric grid and spins your meter backward. During the summer, it is common to build a significant utility bill credit which offsets lower solar production in the winter. This credit rolls over month to month. The credit occurs at the full residential rate. Technically, they don’t actually pay you for the electricity (rather your bill is reduced). In March, if you have a credit, your meter is set back to zero and you lose that credit. This might seem like a bad deal, but typically most customers have used up their credits by the time April rolls around or are very close to zero. We do have customers whose entire electric bill is defeated each month (except the monthly billing fee). Note: some jurisdictions such as Snohomish County PUD are installing digital meters that do not physically go backwards. Still, the credit for overproduced electricity is applied to your online account where it can be viewed with quite a bit of detail including your electricity usage down to 15-minute intervals.

The Future of Solar & Electricity

It’s possible a form of free energy will be developed in the future, which would mean an investment in solar would be wasted. But that seems unlikely. More likely is an increased demand on the energy grid and higher electric rates with the main drivers being electric cars and a trend for electric heat versus natural gas. For vehicles, the Prius and Tesla forged the way, but many other manufacturers have entered the EV market. When drivers plug in at home, this will burden the electric grid and cause costs to spike. The cost of electricity is still pennies on the dollar compared to traditional fuel, but if electric rates rise significantly, solar will be a hedge against potential price increases. It is a long-term conservative investment.

What about battery backup? We liken battery backup to having a home gas generator. It is a convenience when the power goes out to still have electricity and solar recharges the batteries during a power outage. The 30% federal tax credit applies to this as well. The truth is battery backup systems typically take more work to install than a solar installation and that cost could be anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 + depending on the size of inverter and number of batteries. But the 30% federal tax credit drops a $15,000 system to $10,500 once applying the 30% federal tax credit. We supply and wire these systems. We typically move the majority of the electric circuits into a “backup-up loads” panel. The batteries will power a refrigerator, many outlets and circuits with lights , TV, furnace thermostat, computer, router, and misc other loads. When the power goes out, you should be able to carry on as usual.

Battery Backup

Internet Monitoring

All solar installations automatically include internet monitoring. Our systems show detail down to the production of each individual solar panel. Other competitor systems may show only the aggregate electricity produced by a string of 10-14 panels in series. In our work, when a customer contacts us with questions about the performance of a system we installed, we want to log in and view each individual panel to give them immediate answers. We don’t have to troubleshoot often, but when it does happen, this sort of monitoring eliminates a lot of questions quickly. It is very nice to simply log into a website and see how the solar is doing. There is always a historical log that keeps data back to the inception date. The AP Systems microinverter products we install are intuitive and user friendly.

Where We Travel

We don’t travel, or really do anything anymore since we are permanently closed.

ABOUT SOLX

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