The Long Road To Solar

My long march to getting solar energy installed on my house in California continues it slog towards the final day when it gets turned on and we jump for joy. It all started last Fall when SolarCity was heavily promoting its new program for leasing a solar energy system. I was not in the position to buy a system for my house so the idea of leasing the system and putting down a modest down payment ($1000) and being able to basically pay the same amount each month for the lease and my electric bill as I am currently paying for the electricity straight from the utility had some real merit to me.

Fist off was the arm twisting with my wife. She is very green too but I had to explain the program a bit in order to get her on board. But she got it and we signed on. We got our house inspected in measured to start the design process.

Then the bottom dropped out. You see SolarCity was funding all of this lease financing through the same Wall St financiers that were going down in flames at the end of last year. Bummer for them for sure. But way bigger bummer for us consumers. So all planning and engineering got slowed way down. The folks at SolarCity were always nice when I inquired as to the delays. But it has gone on for months.

Meanwhile we decided to seal our roof so that it would last for the life of the solar system we install. We got together with Blue Turtle Roofing and had them install a cool roof for us using the “Wet Suit” technology which is basically a rubber suit applied to your roof which is then covered with solar reflective paint to give you great insulation for your house. We noticed a 7-10 degree difference in our in house temperature after adding the new coating to our roof. Nice.

So we were now in the stage where we hoped the install would happen soon. But today came the word that we are still a ways away from it happening. We will have another engineering inspection next week so that the rest of the design work can be done to our project. We may need some rafter upgrades in our house so that needs to be planned out. That was good news. But our rep at Solar City also told me the bad news as well. Due to the financing issues money is still tight and we are not slated to get our solar system installed until November of this year. I am still looking forward to it happening, just wish it could come sooner so we could take advantage of the summer months’ sun.