This being the 350 Spokane blog, you’re probably thinking about some other benefits as well, such as knowing that you did a little something to solve the climate mess, or setting an example that

 encourages your neighbors to do the same. (Evidence shows  that when a neighborhood sees its first solar installation, many more typically follow.)

Let’s delve into a few important items to know when considering your move to solar.

Costs and Incentives

A Spokane-area largish, suburban home using around 15,000 kilowatt-hours per year will spend around $36,000 after taxes for a high-quality 12 kW system that cuts utility bills to nearly nothing. Given a sunny rooftop, 80% of that cost can be recovered with government incentives, leaving you a net cost of $7,200—which lowered utility bills will equal in about seven years, with huge savings beyond.

The basic drivers of financial return fall into four categories that, combined, typically recover system cost in just a few years and provide handsome savings thereafter:

1. The federal Investment Tax Credit: Pays 30% of your system’s cost, taken as a deduction on income tax. If that 30% of the system cost exceeds your taxes owed, you can save the remainder to deduct in the following year and possibly beyond.
2. Washington State’s Renewable Energy System Incentive Program: Pays 50% of your system’s cost, or makes payments for eight years, whichever comes first. For a residence using Washington-made panels, you are paid in annual checks at the rate of 18 cents per kilowatt-hour for the power your system produces.
3. Washington State’s Net Metering Program: Allows you to credit excess power fed to the grid against utility bills within the same fiscal year (which begins April 1), typically crediting high summer production against winter bills.
4. Increased property value: National laboratory studies show that solar power systems typically recover most or all of their cost in higher property resale value.
5. Protection against utility rate hikes: With utility rates rising over time at 2 percent or more annually, you can benefit by locking in lower costs with a system you own, especially if you plan to stay in your home for more than ten years.

As you see, it’s easy to confuse the two Washington State programs. However, they are very different incentives created at different times. The Renewable Energy System Incentive Program is a “production incentive” that pays you for all the power your system cranks out. The Net Metering Program is simply a law that commands utilities to credit you for excess electricity that you send back to the grid, using your summer surplus to cut your winter power bills.

“Aren’t the Incentives Almost Gone?”

Both state and federal solar incentives have been renewed in the past few years. They are alive and well, although due to decline each year and then disappear in 2021 unless renewed again—which may very well happen.

The most immediate deadline comes in June, when you’ll need to get your finished system in line for certification before state production incentives drop 3 cents per kilowatt-hour (from 18 cents to 15, if you use Washington-made modules) on July 1^st.

The 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit drops to 26% in 2020.

“Does this mean I go off-grid with a battery?”

Nearly all solar installations in metro Spokane are grid-tied, with no battery needed.

Why? Because Washington State financial incentives only pay for grid-tied systems, and because batteries remain costly. It appears that you can still capture the 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit if the battery is upstream from the inverter, but good, lithium-ion batteries for grid-connected home use still start at around $8,000, even after that incentive.

Also, we have no time-of-use electricity pricing in our state, unlike California and New York where it pays to store power when it’s cheap and discharge your battery when power rates are higher during peak demand hours. In utility speak, this “demand response” pricing is much discussed, but no one knows when it will arrive here.

Although one or two local companies build both on-grid and off-grid systems, most just stick to the grid because that’s where the state incentives are.

The Gear 

• Modules (aka “Panels”)

Nearly everyone in Washington uses ITEK 300s, because they are the only brand made in large quantities in Washington, and Washington State incentives pay you 4 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from panels made here. Bellingham-made ITEKs are quality products, warrantied 12 years for workmanship and 25 for power production (production degrades around 0.3% per year, so your modules are guaranteed to generate at least 80% of nameplate capacity at year 25).

• Optimizers

These small, rugged processors attach to each module, regulating voltage and communicating with one another and the central inverter. They mitigate shade effects, so that if a couple of panels get shaded by a passing tree shadow, that won’t fool the inverter into thinking that all modules should be throttled back to the same low production level—which used to be a serious concern for most systems.

• Inverters

Because your modules produce direct current (DC) electricity, you’ll need an inverter to “invert” that to alternating current (AC) for your household use and for feeding the grid.

Inverters come in two basic types: central and micro. One central inverter serves an entire system, versus microinverters that are installed in platoons spread all over the rooftop array, one to every two modules.

Years ago, microinverters were popularized to handle the shade challenge mentioned above. However, all inverters are somewhat delicate devices—most have an expected life of around 15 years—so hardier optimizers have largely superseded microinverters on the rooftop, handling the basic shade mitigation and communications chores. Connected to that network of optimizers on the roof, the central inverter is kept in a more sheltered environment like a garage or an exterior wall. Then, when the time comes, a single central inverter on a garage wall is far easier to replace than dozens of microinverters dying one by one on a roof, each requiring costly disassembly of array sections.

Also, central inverter monitoring systems tend to be much better, reliably connecting to the cell phone network rather than trouble-prone wi-fi, so you can view your system’s performance any time on a richly featured app. And some central inverters even include electric vehicle fast-charging stations at minor additional cost, eliminating the need for multiple devices on your garage wall.

• Racking Hardware

This is the catch-all term for all the rails, bolts, bars, clips, clamps and brackets that hold your modules in place on a roof or a ground stand. Often overlooked, these are actually very critical items that keep your system durable and your roof intact.

Insist on the good stuff: solar-specific hardware from a reputable manufacturer. Good rails are built to secure wires for decades in special channels, with purpose-designed clips rather than breakage-prone zip ties in order to keep wires from falling loose and abrading against rough shingles or edges. Better rails are also anodized aluminum rather than steel, to reduce weight and strain on your roof.

At right: Fully flashed, bolted footings on a rooftop, ready for installation of rails and then modules. On common composite shingle roofs, full flashing kits are vital, keeping water off of roof-penetrating bolts and preventing leaks for the roof’s life. 

The 12 kW Sweet Spot

For larger residential and small commercial buyers, 12 kilowatts is a common target for system size in Washington, because this is the maximum size eligible to receive state production incentives at the very attractive 18-cent residential rate; if you cross the 12 kW threshold your compensation drops to just 8 cents per kilowatt-hour as a “commercial-scale” system.

12 kW translates to 40 Washington-made ITEK 300-watt modules, each 5’6” x 3’4”, so it takes some roof space to accommodate a system this size, and don’t forget that your installer will need to design around vents and obstructions.

What Makes a Roof Great For Solar?

You want an unshaded south-facing roof plane, although east and west facings are adequate, paying an 18% penalty in production. Forget about north facings altogether.

Tilt matters less, and flat roofs are generally the only ones requiring stands to achieve the proper angle.

Shade from tall trees and neighboring buildings is a greater challenge.

As much as we enviros love our trees, don’t forget that they compete with you for solar energy. And, because solar power systems are designed to last 30 years or more, it’s important to evaluate not only the trees you have but also the trees they’ll become. That little fir or poplar in your south yard could soon be a sun-hogging monster, so this may be the time to replace it with a lower-growing tree such as a Japanese maple or any number of fruit varieties. A good rule of thumb is that a good solar site should have no shade between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm on a summer day.

When to Go To Ground

If you have land, you may be thinking about putting solar modules on ground-mounted stands.

The usual reasons for ground mounting an array are cosmetics and size: some people just don’t like the look of solar panels on their roof; others need large arrays that won’t fit on a roof. It’s also nice to be able to brush off snow, although short, cloudy winter days make this less important than many think.

At the residential scale we aren’t often talking about robotic trackers that follow the sun, which require constant professional maintenance. Rather, we mean fixed-mount or adjustable arrays affixed to a steel framework. “Adjustable” means you can manually change the tilt a couple of times a year or more to capture up to 15% more energy.

The ideal candidate for a ground-mounted residential array would be someone who lives on acreage, with heavy annual electricity consumption of more than 30,000 kwh. Although some suburban mansions fit this description, the more usual case is a rural home with an electric heating system and outbuildings, where annual electricity needs can sometimes exceed 60,000 kwh (more than five times median household consumption).

However, ground mounting solar adds 15-40% to cost, and it generally requires a more sophisticated installer with real expertise in stand construction. You’ll also need to think about trenching for a buried cable connected to your electrical service panel, which can get costly with runs of more than 200’, due in part for the need to buy heavier wires to reduce line loss. So, you usually want an array site relatively close to your main electrical service panel. If the array is at all large, you may also need to upgrade that electrical panel.

That said, going large with a ground-mounted system can make excellent sense for someone with high electric bills, especially if you plan to stay in the house for a decade or more.

The Biggest Decision You’ll Make in Solar

 Many solar buyers tend to focus on the gear: “What kind of panels am I getting? What brand of inverter?”

To be sure, those are important considerations, but they skirt the larger issue: whom you hire for the installation.

Solar installation is a fine craft that combines electrical expertise, carpentry and roofing, along with the rapidly evolving discipline of system design. Nearly every installer in Washington installs ITEK 300 modules, but the way they install them varies widely, and will matter a great deal in a decade or two. Did the installer use microinverters that are now failing one after another? Are unflashed roof bolts leaking moisture? Are cheaply built racking systems rusting? Are poorly secured wires popping loose and rubbing rough shingles?

A standard home rooftop installation takes a couple of days, not a couple of hours. It pays to look at an installers previous projects to check for good roof flashings, high-quality anodized racking gear (not the plain steel bars you see in things like shelving), and snugly secured wires.

NABCEP certification is a good indication that your installer knows their business. The North American Board of Certified Energy Professionals provides the country’s leading solar industry installer credential, requiring rigorous training and adherence to high standards.

Why You Should Feel Good About Those Incentives

Not to belabor the obvious, but you may have noticed that the renewable energy industry is locked in struggle with the largest and second-most-subsidized industry on Earth: the fossil fuels industry. Only the arms business gets more taxpayer handouts than the $200-$600 billion per year that coal, oil and gas have received for many years running; now mostly from developing countries, with around $20 billion from the United States. The national governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Nigeria, Venezuela, Indonesia and numerous other countries are indistinguishable from their national fossil fuels companies. That’s not to mention the millions of lives and many trillions of dollars spent in bloody Middle Eastern wars by many nations for a century, primarily over control of its oil.

Worse, this largesse is for a mature, fabulously rich industry that also happens to be at the heart of our climate disaster, and which engaged in outright fraud for more than forty years, suppressing its own longstanding findings that fossil fuels are indeed cooking the climate, while funding huge media campaigns to deceive the public.

By contrast, solar and wind energy receive only a tiny fraction as much despite being new industries as well as our best hope for solving the climate mess before large parts of the world become uninhabitable.

When you go solar—and when you vote for solar funding–you’re doing a favor for yourself, your country, your world and your grandchildren.