Creepy Solar Power Enthusiast Roaming Neighborhood at Night

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Rant = ON.

I signed up with Sungevity, the solar power company and it recently went live. OK, they put a yard sign in front of my house, and I suppose that encourages strangers to want to talk to me. But why would someone ring my doorbell at 9:30pm on a weeknight hoping to ask me some questions about the system? It's not just me, right? That's kind of a weird thing to do, right?

If the stranger in question reads this board: Maybe you should leave a note with your phone number or email address instead? If you don't have any paper with you, well, you know where I live and you could always come back later.

Rant = OFF.

Before anyone asks, I paid about $2,900 upfront for a 15 year lease with no additional monthly payments. They also gave me a $500 iPad as a special promotion, so the net cost was more like $2,400. My thinking on lease vs. buy was that, 15 years from now, I won't want to be stuck with what will (hopefully) be very outdated technology.

I haven't gotten my first post-solar electric bill yet (it's due next week), but things look very promising. I've had the system live for 3+ weeks and I'm averaging over 100kWh/week. That should save me close to $100/month at current NSTAR rates which means the system pays for itself in 2-3 years.

And I swear this isn't why I wrote this post (really!), but if anyone is seriously interested in using Sungevity, please use my referral code when visiting sungevity.com. I think we each get $500 if you sign up. My code is 75403.

Comments

[ron_newman]

I added the tag 'utilities', but I'm not sure what this post has to do with 'recycling' .

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

Glad you seem to have had a good experience with them. I have had a miserable time with them, they seem to understand flat roofs not at all.

[antimony.livejournal.com]

...We had a creepy solar power salesdrone come to our house (he had enough literature that he seemed likely to be legit, just failing hard at not creeping us out), but not a curious enthusiast.

[nathanjw]

I'm about to turn my system on (I went with SunRun), and I'm curious about your math. How do you get $100 from 400 kWh per month? Current NStar rates are about $0.16/kWh, not $0.25.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

I'm curious how big (in watts) the array size you have is. 100KWh/week suggests something around 4KW ((100 / 7 days) / average of 3 hours solar insolation per day). If so, $2900 is an incredible price for something that size.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's possible he grew up in a non-urban area where one doesn't have to eyeball strangers to figure out if they are an assault risk.

[eileen newman (from livejournal.com)]

If you're looking for info about solar installations in your neighborhood, EnergySage.com has a great database of case studies that's searchable by zip code at https://www.energysage.com/project-search . There's a lot of info and a lot less intrusive than ringing doorbells late at night. Disclaimer: I work with EnergySage, but I thought this was a case where a commercial plug would actually be helpful.

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

As an update, I just got my first bill containing a full month of solar netting. Last month, my meter ran up 545 kWh. This month, the net usage was was 44 kWh. Even at 16 cents/kWh, that's a savings of over $80 this month alone. w00t!