David's Comments

Great post Kriss. I wonder how many past American Solar Challenge competitors are now leading the solar or auto industry? I know my cousin competed it in it college and now works on fuel cell cars in Canada. I bet all 3 challenges are filled with the future leaders of the solar, green building, and other related industries.

-David

That's great to hear. Last time I was on Maui I was curious why there wasn't more PV on the houses. Hopefully this will help!

Liz, you make some good points, and I think that it's always best to have a large study to refer back to when possible. But until that comes out, I've certainly heard enough anecdotal evidence from realtors to convince me that adding PV to a house adds value. For that matter, given two identical houses, one with PV and one without, I know I'd choose the one with PV due to the lower operating cost of the house.

I also do think it is fair to extrapolate from new home sales with PV to retrofits, unless there is evidence showing otherwise.

While I didn't cross reference all 10 sources that SunRun cited with their article, the fact that did site 10 sources leads me to believe that there is a growing amount of evidence supporting their claims.

@Recycle - Greenopolis has some great content. Have you considered writing posts for REW yourself? Similarly, you can actually write posts and embed related videos. Could be a good way to spread the word about the work you're doing. I know I'd like to see the Greenopolis recycling machines around San Francisco!
@Ken - Congrats on the PV and solar hot water systems! Love to hear it. And good to hear that Moms for Clean Air was able to have such a big impact. I wasn't until I heard the NPR story that it really occurred to me that avoiding childhood asthma alone was was reason enough to go solar. But it really is.

Thanks for the comments!
@GetSolar, yes, we generally recommend energy audits to our customers, particularly those who live in places where they have to do quite a bit of heating or cooling of their homes.
http://www.residentialsolar101.org/two-approaches-going-solar

@Johnalbert- Have you considered writing posts yourself about dynglobal? You do quite a bit of commenting and leaving your URL, but from what I've read it sounds like dynglobal does some interesting stuff that you could write about on REW.com.

Funny you should mention the height requirements for driving a Tesla. I'm 6'4", so when I got in I started chuckling when I noticed that my view was obstructed by the frame around the windshield. The car and the technology is amazing, but definitely made for people who are under 6'. Maybe even under 5'10". I'm not a sports-car guy anyway. I'd take a Volvo station wagon & a mountain bike over a sports car any day of the week.

That said, I'll look very closely at the Model-S electric sedan once Tesla releases it. Or better yet, if someone make an electric station wagon with a backup generator like the Chevy Volt, I'd be all over it. Especially if they made an all wheel drive option since I'm a skier. If I didn't drive on snow covered roads so often, I'd give up my AWD and gas car even sooner.

Matt, great post. We often get asked whether the price of solar panels is falling faster than rate at which the rebates are drying up. Ie. will I save money if I wait a few years before going solar. I've always talked around the question discussing the pros and cons of waiting since I never knew which was falling faster. Now that you've done the analysis using CSI data we'll actually have accurate, historical data to reference when discussing price trends.

As a side note, $8.05 per watt as an average price per watt installed for residential solar in CA strikes me as a bit high. I keep hearing about installers pitching $6 - $7 per watt for residential, so I'm curious as to how the CSI average for Q4 2009 was $8.05. Any installers want to chime in on this? Do some home installs end up a $9 or $10 per watt due to crazy roof materials, and therefore does that bring the average up?

Thanks, I'd have to agree. Now if only everyone, renters included could go solar! It drives me nuts that I spend all day promoting solar, but rent an apartment, so I can't currently go solar.

As a side note, it sounds like they're trying again with a new climate bill. I look forward to reading up on it.

Hi Tor, great post as always. Could it be that there are not one or two major players really pushing the PR side of solar thermal? I CA we're seeing & hearing all sorts of ads from SunRun, SolarCity, Sungevity on TV and on the radio (in addition to online). Whereas I don't think I've ever seen a solar thermal ad. Similarly, it seems like there are a few PV panel manufacturers and leasing / PPA companies that have huge PV installer networks. Does that exist for solar thermal? My quick glance at the solar thermal industry made me think it was much more fragmented without the same sort of national or international players that we see in PV. That said, I could be missing something since I haven't spent that much time looking into the solar thermal market.

Thoughts?
-David

Thanks for all of the comments. I just added the by line (I wrote it) since I hadn't realized that it wouldn't show up as having been posted by me.

Anonymous- you're right, error on my part. Bush extended the 30% federal tax credit as part of "H.R. 1424, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" I'll update that shortly.

As for eIQ, yes, currently they focus on much larger scale installations, but their technology, and similar technologies could work in residential applications as well.

Jennifer, I'll see if I can post more info about maintenance and repairs. The anecdotal evidence that I've heard is that many homeowners don't realize or forget that inverters currently have around 10 year warranties, which means that they'll likely need to be replaced at least once, maybe twice over the life of the panels. Other than that, hosing them down once or twice a year to clean them is really all that is required, unless your panels are likely to get really dirty. (ie. next to a freeway).

Bill, great to know about SunPods. I look forward to learning more.

As for the content being "advertising" in nature, our goal is to educate home owners who are just staring to learn about solar, so yes, I definitely include links back to our site if they want to learn more. But at the end of the day we're really just trying to spread the word about the fact that residential solar energy can make great sense for homeowners now and will continue to in the future. There's still a lot of education to be done and awareness to be raised.

And as soon as I buy a house and put solar on it I'll definitely do a write up on it, but with my current $29 a month PG&E bill, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me yet.
-David