Solar homes
 

Has anyone put solar panels on their home and if so who installed them and how do you like them? Has anyone put on solar shingles on their new house, they look like shingles but have solar cells in them.

Ditto on this, I'm interested in hearing from those who have these solar systems. I've seen many of these in TV, so I hope some of you will share your knowledge on this.

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on solar and how rapidly prices are dropping. Also mentioned was the fact that solar equipment production and installations still need to be government subsidized to be viable.

I just completed a study for a company to install a commecial solar electrical system using a very large factory roof area. Conclusion was that the payback was almost 10 years, even with government help and the local elect co buying production at above average rates for the first 5 years. And, we couldn't get a close estimate on what the maintenance costs would be for the system or the underlying roof. Also of note were the various sales claims of how much the technology has changed in the last 2 years and is expected to change in the future. What you buy today will probably be junk tomorrow, even though the payback period is 10 years!

A neighbor of mine has a solar heat collection system for his pool which works very well. BUT, it cost big bucks, they have had roof leaks because of improper installation and the roof rats love to chew on the small plastic tubes, thus causing "leaks" in the system which requires an expensive repair.

My opinion, solar for the common household is not yet here.

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We have a solar heating system for our pool and it does work very well. Have had it over 2yrs now and did have one leak at a connection which was fixed for free. That has been our only problem. Cost for our system was just under $4K and when I did a return on investment analysis our break-even came back as 4 to 5yrs.
On the other hand we did look into a whole house solar system and that price was close to $50K with a return of about 20yrs. Since those estimates were back in 2008 I suspect the cost might be lower now.