Choosing a Solar Installer: Four lessons we learned
Considering residential Solar Installation Partners
Lesson 1: Consider the Unique Features of Your Home and Property
As we began thinking of going solar and choosing a solar installer, we realized our home was kinda weird, and certain features might impact our solar efforts.
Before we moved in and renamed it Thunderbird Disco, our property was called Shanti Bagh (“audience with a tiger”). Established in 1976 by a Dutch couple named Claire and Lionel Metz, it included two smaller ponds (built by Lionel), one of them heart-shaped (aww), plus a rickety playset (cute/dangerous), two outbuildings (intriguing/scary), some aged passive solar panels (nonoperational), and an inground pool (f*ck yeah bro).
A massive maple tree grew through a hole cut into the home’s back deck, and a dozen other trees stood guard like ancient sentries at each corner and cutout of the perimeter. The Metz’s clearly wanted to disturb the land as little as possible, and what resulted was a strange Z-shaped floorplan slaloming around the trees that had lived here first.
It was the maple tree growing through the deck that gave the house its aura. Though insurance companies advised us the tree was a liability—its hidden roots potentially infiltrating the foundation, its limbs dangerously splayed over the roof—I instantly felt the tree was protective and totemic, not malicious. As we strolled the land and inspected the deck with our real estate broker and best bud Harmony Thurston, her three-year-old son Cooper gave the maple a hug and named it Bobo.
We love Bobo, but he caused some issues when we first considered going solar.
The key here is that certain solar installers are primarily roof-mount installers, while others have more expertise in ground-mounting solar panels. Knowing your property—and what’s possible on the roof vs. ground—and knowing whether an installer can do BOTH is an important baseline to establish.
Lesson 2: Research Solar Installers, Solar Co-Ops and Solar Incentives in Your Area
To dip a toe in the water, our first step was joining Solar United Neighbors, a DC-based nonprofit co-op aimed at making more rsolar projects happen. I’d learned about them from the C-Ville Weekly April 2019 issue on energy and climate change, the cover story stating plainly, “We’ve Got Work to Do: Lagging behind, Charlottesville aims for more ambitious climate goals.”
These no-commitment solar co-ops pool collective buying power to get the best deal possible on residential solar installation, and I recommend looking into them, even just to understand more about the process. I’d by now been a homeowner long enough to understand that everything was interconnected, our home and property a half-hidden ecosystem where even thinking about one project triggered analysis of its ripple effect on a dozen other systems. And above all, in a grid-down situation, I felt that power was the tip of the spear, the trunk around which all the other branches of survival hung, a place to start.
So I joined the co-op, which amassed 40 or so residential homeowners interested in solar, and then issued a request for proposal, eventually culling down to two vendors who provided pricing at a significant discount, plus attractive financing.
Ultimately, the co-op selected a company that I won’t publicly drag here. They offered a rate of $2.06 per watt (typical rates were closer to $3.50 or $4 per watt at the time). With financing and the 26% government tax credit (in 2020) it basically worked out to a wash: a modest 6.9 kW system would cost us a monthly financing payment of about $100, while supposedly offsetting about $100 worth of our monthly utility bill. After 20 years we’d own the panels outright and if it meant paying our shitty utility company Dominion Energy less money, I was into it. Here’s a screen grab of their initial proposal…
Lesson 3: Do Due Diligence on Your Installer
This company was owned by a guy named Joe, and I did initial research on him, watched his YouTube videos and read a book on preparedness he’d co-written with his wife. Joe had been a defense contractor following the Iraq War and saw firsthand what happens when a foreign military presence takes control of essential systems like food and water distribution, electricity, transportation and telecommunications. After he got home from the Middle East, he learned all he could about solar and other preparedness tactics and eventually hung his shingle. He also became a born-again Christian.
I saw him as a potential guru for the Tiger Project writ large. An expert who’d had similar impetus to do similar work and who’d even written a similar book with his wife! When he came to the house to give a full analysis and talk about the panel layout, the most objectionable thing he said was:
“You’ll obviously have to get rid of that maple tree.”
“The one growing through the deck?” I asked. “Everyone loves that tree.”
Too much shade on the roof means no roof-mounting…
“There’s too much shade on your roof,” he said. “That one’s gotta go.”
“But…that’s Bobo,” I said. Joe looked at me the way anything practical looks at sentiment, like I’d just told him I was afraid to turn on a lightbulb because it would hurt the wire filament.
But the idea of cutting down that maple—the talisman of Thunderbird Disco—was a lot to handle. Maybe this was the reality of the Tiger Project: that sacrifice would be necessary, favoring the practical over the aesthetically or spiritually pleasing.
Either way, Joe seemed like a knowledgeable guy. I gave him a copy of my book and had him sign my copy of his.
“He seems like a knowledgeable guy,” I told Kate that night. “And progressively-minded.”
“What makes you say that?” she said. “He’s a defense guy and a born-again Christian.”
“Yeah, but…he does solar and—”
“Have you stalked him on social media yet?” she asked. I hadn’t. I took to Facebook, and found on his public-facing profile not only pics of him at the driving range or playing at parks with his five children, but also links to articles supporting InfoWars and Alex Jones (His post: “In order to keep America great, we must have free speech…”), QAnon videos (“Not sure if all these conclusions are accurate, but this is definitely worth a look…”), memes of prison yards (“Perfect Home for Liberals, A Gated Community!”), and Kanye in his MAGA hat (“I swore off secular music when I got saved and born again. But I am officially a Kanye West fan again!”). The feed culminated with a video of Joe in his own MAGA hat railing against the “Democrat scumbags” that want to take his guns.
I don’t feel bad sharing any this since it’s right there on his public profile and he’s clearly super into free speech.
My kneejerk reaction was to find a different contractor-installer who more closely shared our values and beliefs and political leanings. Someone I could work with on the install and discuss our grand visions for Thunderbird Disco.
But the more I thought of it, and the more I talked to Kate, we realized this was the wrong attitude.
“If we do this, we’re going to be working with plenty of contractors that don’t share our views,” she said. “Isn’t that the point—to find a bridge between notions of Us and Them?”
Okay, that makes sense, I thought.
“Fuck Them,” I said out loud.
But I lay awake that night, thinking of how this could work, the essential need to confront the reality of the prepper community in its truest form. And, despite some obvious differences, I agreed with Joe on some things: the notion that we can’t rely on police or government to keep us safe, for instance, that they might be the most dangerous forces in a grid-down scenario. To refuse working with him on political grounds would mean retreating into the same echo chamber I was trying to avoid.
Also, his price was really good.
Lesson 4: Beware Financing Schemes and Ensure You’re Comparing Apples to Apples
Joe offered a rate of $2.06 per watt but here’s the thing: he also charged an additional $1 per watt for installation, which is a nice way of saying the price per watt was misleading (more like $3.06 per watt). Many installers quote an all-in, turnkey price per watt that includes installation, permitting, etc. LESSON: Make sure you’re doing an apples to apples comparison (go deeper into the cost of solar here).
There was also some pressure from them to secure financing from a particular lender, and THIS is where a lot of unscrupulous solar installers make their money. Researching a lender is a more involved process than we can get into here, but a lot of them prey on unsuspecting folks looking to install solar, and hide a lot of shenanigans in the fine print.
My advice: instead of financing the solar panels directly through a potentially problematic lender, look into getting a home equity line of credit (HELOC) from your bank or community credit union. This gives you access to some relatively “cheap money” (low interest rates), which you can use for a variety of home improvement projects, pay back over time, and feel a bit more confident that you’re not getting overtly screwed over by a fly-by-night operation.
Joe’s company ended up overextending themselves, had trouble communicating, they got acquired/restructured and then jacked up their price. We backed away.
So then we signed with SunDay Solar instead. They offered a great all-in rate of just over $3 per watt and I had the opportunity to work with friends—the owner’s daughter Eli and her husband Ben are buddies, and Ben’s brother Tim sold me the system.
Next up, here’s how we figured out what we could afford…