[MA] Solar recommendations in MA?

[PastyPilgrim]

I moved from my apartment with free EV charging to my first house (with decidedly not free EV charging) over the summer and have been enjoying my $400-500/mo electricity bills. I'd love to start pricing out and figuring solar options. Are there any solar installers that anyone would recommend that they had good experiences with? Any other solar tips (e.g. capacity, incentives, battery/no battery, etc.)?

If it makes a difference, I live in the north shore.

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[Yodahoo]

I installed a 9.25kWh array on my house in Reading and use it when I can to charge the Rivian. I love having solar... but there are some issues. Among them: 1) I'm rarely home during the peak sun hours mid week (the solar ends up powering the house and excess is sent back to the grid) and 2) when I charge at home, the Rivian draws 11kWh so it always exceeds peak solar generation. Solar production on it's best, clear day is a bell curve... meaning most of the time it is either ramping up in the morning toward my max 9.25kWh or ramping down in the afternoon. You can reduce the power draw of the Rivian so that it won't exceed a certain power level, but that's a losing battle.

What would be helpful is having battery storage, that way excess solar is captured vs. sent to grid (which the power company pays a meager $0.04/kWh for), and it could later be used in the house or put into the Rivian. I suspect batteries will continue to come down in cost, which is good news, and like the solar system itself, are also subject to tax incentives. If you decide to hold off on a battery, be sure that the system design takes into consideration the physical space for one to be added later.

I used RevoluSun, which has changed names to Solaris Renewables. They were pretty good to work with.

 

[racekarl]

Ditto to everything @Yodahoo said about it being challenging to be home during peak times and to match charging power to generation, and that selling power back to the grid is a losing proposition. If I had more time on my hands I could could write some sort of app that used the solar inverter and EVSE or Rivian APIs to adjust the charge curve to match solar power, but I have not been that invested in it. Setting the charge rate in the Rivian manually to be somewhere in the ballpark works well enough for me.

That being said, with savings, incentives, and SRECs my 10kW array paid for itself in under 6 years. We used New England Clean Energy because we installed as part of a town-wide program and they have been good to work with and our system has been trouble-free.

 

[PastyPilgrim]

FWIW, I do work from home, so I utilize power during the day and my truck is generally plugged-in during the day. I mostly use it on nights and weekends.

I could see it being complex/annoying to try to coordinate Rivian charging with solar output though. Maybe this is crazy, but presumably there isn't a simple solution to that, right? First thing that comes to mind is whether an electrician could put a switch between the charger circuit and solar inverter where, in general, the charger circuit could only draw power from the solar inverter and not the grid, but have the ability to flip a switch and draw from the grid if really necessary.

 

[p3ck]

What we really want is a DC charger for the truck that takes the current power generation from solar and does the typical voltage adjustment (reduce amp, up voltage) to be able to charge the truck with whatever level of power being generated.

 

[racekarl]

FWIW, I do work from home, so I utilize power during the day and my truck is generally plugged-in during the day. I mostly use it on nights and weekends.

I could see it being complex/annoying to try to coordinate Rivian charging with solar output though. Maybe this is crazy, but presumably there isn't a simple solution to that, right? First thing that comes to mind is whether an electrician could put a switch between the charger circuit and solar inverter where, in general, the charger circuit could only draw power from the solar inverter and not the grid, but have the ability to flip a switch and draw from the grid if really necessary.

It seems like it should be feasible to cobble together a DIY solution using something like IFTTT or similar and the hardware you'd already have. The solar inverters mostly have an API that reports power output, and some EVSEs have a corresponding API that could allow you to control charge amperage. It's also possible the Rivian API could be used for this (not sure though, since it's currently only possible to set the charge amperage from inside the truck). You set up an IFTTT connection to the corresponding APIs and have it periodically check the solar output and adjust the charge amperage to match.

 

[Magicbus]

We have solar and it has heated and cooled our house for 3 years. In MA we have net metering where your meter runs backwards when you produce more than you consume, so the excess you generate on sunny days covers times when you consume more than you produce. Because we are using 100% excess generated power to charge out R1T we don’t worry about off-peak charging.

I would highly recommend our installer except they cover the Cape and Islands. They analyzed a years worth of electricity usage and their estimate for our needs and the payback period (4 years) was spot on. I would make sure anyone you select does the same.

 

[jshaff]

We used Great Sky out of Arlington. Coming up on 1 year installed now, payback time with incentives is going to be 5-6 years.

 

[md2023]

Agree with other posts. I got three quotes and went with Tesla (once battery storage factored in, it wasn't a difficult decision) and they were very good, especially with respect to the logistics, permitting and work with the local electric company. The battery storage is a plus given the size of the Rivian battery. Solar alone almost never covers a charge. December and January were tough but power is already picking up in Feb.
We don't have net metering but are paid a set rate for power we send back to the grid. Actual pay back will take a very long time (we don't have an ideal angle to the sun). Did it more for the environmental impact.
Ma and federal tax incentive helped a lot.

 

[narmstrong79]

When I got solar installed in 2016, i used these guys to find options and get quotes. https://solarrewards.energysage.com/l/1NICHOLASAR68/

 

[PastyPilgrim]

I did a good bit of research on solar and spoke with a number of installers. Ended up going with Great Sky and it should get installed this summer! I'll report back on whether the experience was positive or negative.

Regarding incentives within MA:

• Batteries qualify for HEAT loans (0% interest, 7 year duration, so there's no reason not go through HEAT if you haven't used your HEAT loan cap for something else like HVAC)
• 30% federal tax credit
• $1000 MA tax credit
• ConnectedSolutions for batteries: If you allow the power company to use your battery during peak times in the summer they'll pay you (depends on how much power they draw from you, but they say the average opt'd in battery generates $1500 per year, which would help offset the cost of the battery)

I went with 27x REC panels (11.5 kWh array) which GS projects a 4 year cost recuperation on given how ideal my roof is for solar.

I also went for 1x Powerwall 3. A PW3 only has enough juice for like 8 hours of my average power usage (but in the event of a power outage I wouldn't use high power circuits like for my Rivian charger, dryer, electric heat, etc., so realistically longer than 8 hours), but without a battery, you can't use your solar array when the grid is out. So my rationale is that the most common outages (minutes to hours) will be handled by the PW and for longer outages (days+), I'd still have power during the day with solar and for all/most of the night with my battery. Basically 1x PW3 mitigates almost all of the outage risk for minimal cost despite not covering a substantial amount of consumption.

GS is charging 50k for the full install, which will be about ~33k after incentives and the potential to offset costs more via ConnectedSolutions.

 

[Magicbus]

Nice. We have the same sized array. Covers our heat pumps 100% to heat and cool. The R1T should bring us almost to break even (eat up our credit) each month and on target for the 4 year payback. We didn't do a battery... yet.

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