Looking for home solar advice

[bemulligan]

My main advice is to have your roof checked by a roofer before you decide to go with solar. We bought this house in 2018 and the home inspector said the roof was in good condition so we went ahead with solar in June of that year. Now, the roof is leaking because it was installed incorrectly. A roofer would have caught the problem. I am getting quotes of $10k to $12k just to remove and reinstall the panels when we have to re-roof.

The solar has been great. We have a 12kw array and it covers almost all of our yearly power cost. Just be sure about your roof.

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[craptacular]

As others have said, start with www.energysage.com. You should get a range of quotes you can sift through based on price per watt and equipment used. My system was originally quoted with my current energy usage of approx. 20,000 kWh per year. I received 6 quotes from $2.40 watt up to $3.82 watt before the tax credit (although that was an outlier as the rest were all between $2.50 - $2.79). I considered Tesla, but they were averaging $2.65 watt for a solar only system without any powerwalls (I think you are required to have at least 1 powerwall now). I know Tesla used to price match official quotes (not sure if they still do), but I wanted the ability to select my system based on the panel and inverter used. I went with SolarSME at $2.50 watt (they later matched the $2.40 watt quote I received) because they are using 440 W panels with Enphase IQ8A inverters. All the other quotes were for 370-415 W panels. My initial quote was for a 29 panel 12.8 kW system but I told them about my future EV, pool, garage AC usage (estimated 38,000 kWh per year) so they designed a 60 panel system which dropped to 57 panel 25.08 kW after the site inspection. All those quotes will initially use a Google Earth image to design the system layout, but that will change when you move forward and have a site inspection done. I also received my quotes before the inflation reduction act passed, so I think prices have gone up since then but SolarSME is honoring the prior quote. Hope this helps and good luck with your system!