The doorbell rings, and you open it to find a friendly young salesman with great news— you could start saving money today, with no upfront cost.
Over the years, it’ll save you tens of thousands, has an incredible warranty, and, the best part— If you sign today, they can knock $2000 off, because they were in the neighborhood.
Plus, it’s completely risk-free because you can cancel the contract within 3 days if you change your mind. What a windfall, because this is a complete no-brainer!
Or is it?
For as long as I’ve been in solar (long enough for my hair to turn grey), people have wondered about the validity of solar. Does it work? is it efficient? Is it a good investment? Or, is solar just a complete scam?
It seems too good to be true.
A little backstory
I got started in solar in 2012 because I wanted to do something that I found meaningful.
I thought, if I’m installing solar panels every day, even if I’m installing them for [insert evil corporation here] , I’m still reducing the our carbon footprint, and contributing to something “good”. At the time, solar was not commonplace. It was early-adopters, and misinformation was prolific (although maybe less prolific than today).
I heard that the manufacturing process of solar panels was so energy-intensive and toxic that the panels will never actually offset their own carbon footprint. What I thought was meaningful work was actually a farce.
My boss later reassured me that solar panels actually become net-positive (from an emissions standpoint) within 3 years of use (*phew*), and this is now less than 1-year, thanks to improvements in manufacturing and panel efficiency.
Jump forward a few years to 2017, and I was getting Virtue Solar off the ground. I was working from home, in a tiny home, and I got a call from a new lead (great!).These were hard to come by. He was interested in solar, but wanted to know how we recycle our panels. He said if energy was supposed to be clean, it would be a mockery if they couldn’t be disposed of in an immaculate fashion.
I said that recycling services exist in Germany and California (both mature solar markets at the time), but that Virginia was still a fledgling, and almost no solar panels here had reached the end of their life-cycle.
That was silly, he argued— because what if a tornado hits a field of solar panels? Is there no process to recycle that?
Well, I said, what service is there to recycle the materials from a home that was destroyed by a tornado? Or a gas reactor, or a nuclear reactor? None that I am aware of.
Towards the end of the call he told me that he wasn’t actually interested in solar, but he was a lobbyist for the nuclear industry. This was an eye-opening conversation, but I came to realize that it fit the theme of so many critiques of clean energy. For wind-energy, it was bird-migration. For solar, I hear they are unsightly, they contaminate the ground, solar panels are great-big-blinding mirrors that will send any driver within a half-mile radius careening into a ditch, and so on.
Lobbyists and interest groups hold solar to an unattainable standard. You’ll see these ideas and issues if you look to your local communities. There are now bans on solar farms in many counties.
Mountaintop-removal is held to no such standard. Dominion dumps coal ash into our rivers and hardly anyone bats an eye. I’m not aware of any wildflower planting mandates around other power stations, but they require it on lots of solar farms. The tactic is to delay it, to make solar strive for perfection, which it can never do.
Let’s get back on track.
So what about you? With the chance to save thousands, or perhaps be taken for a ride, is solar the right thing to do?
I’ve got great news. After 13 years of working in solar and earning a master-electrician’s license, I can confirm— Solar panels do convert sunlight into electricity. 🎉🎉
Solar panels do, in fact, work.
But I know that’s not the problem.
The problem is the same as that of a used-car salesman (sorry to any maligned salesmen out there). Can you trust this person with the too-good-to-be true pitch?
And the answer is maybe. Probably not. But maybe.
I spent a lot of time defending solar’s reputation earlier, but the truth is that solar has come by its image of being a scam all on its own.
Solar panels work— but people are greedy, and so are banks, and lenders, and well, maybe most of us.
If you’re offered a 0% or 1.99% loan, you should probably google “solar dealer fees”. Your loan amount is probably 30-40% more than that system is worth.
On top of that, not all salesmen know when their numbers are wrong. Incorrect assumptions (estimated solar production, wrong electric rate, assumed rate increases, etc.) can mean the difference between you saving $50 every month, for forever, and being on the wrong side of a $50,000 loan. And sometimes those are made in good-faith.
There’s unfortunately no shortage of horror-stories like this—
They told me I would save thousands, but my electric bill stayed the same, and now I pay $100 a month on a loan, for nothing
I’ve read a lot of these from solar customers nationwide (not from our customers, thank God.) It’s become such a problem that SEIA is developing a licensing standard for solar sales, to try to correct these issues. It won’t stop it, but it’s a start.
A lot of bad companies went under in the last two years (interest rates torpedoed the door-to-door model), but it’s still a problem. We’ve seen companies sell systems for $70,000 that we would sell for $25,000. And we aren’t the cheapest company in town.
So what do you do? How do you do the right thing, and offset your footprint without getting ripped off?
Flip a coin.
No, I’m kidding.
Get 2-3 quotes from local companies
Big companies, especially those with door-to-door salesmen, have big overhead, big margins, and less quality control (in my humble opinion). Door-knocking salesmen are often outsourced or contracted, working on commission, and unsurprisingly, they are just salesmen. They are not experts in solar, or in 3D modeling & shade analysis.
Tools exist to make extremely accurate production estimates that factor in shading, weather, wiring losses, panel efficiencies, heights of trees, and so on, but:
- Not everyone uses them
- They take longer to use, i.e. it’s more difficult to mass produce proposals & contracts
- Not everyone knows how to use them properly.
Don’t rush
Pressure is the tool that bad companies use, because they know if you get other quotes, they’re screwed.
Ask on Reddit.
If you’re under pressure to sign, and you need another opinion– Post the details on Reddit. If your quote is crazy, you will quickly discover that /r/solar will mock the hell out of it. They’ll also talk in circles about what equipment and micro-adjustments they would make, but there will be little disagreement about whether or not your quote is reasonable.
Make sure you know how much the system costs
This may seem silly, but a lot of those folks who got fleeced out of their savings for a solar system were sold only on a “monthly payment”, without ever knowing the size of the loan. We don’t recommend financing for most folks, but it can make sense for some (and indeed, save money from day one). But this is not true for every system.
Read reviews, and go with your gut
Good luck out there ❤️