Let the Sunshine in: Should We Install Solar Panels on our Eichler?

We finally installed solar on our Eichler! It’s been 10 years of indecision and research. I’m writing this post because we’ve had a lot of questions from Eichler neighbors, other Eichler owners, and friends. I’ll be breaking the information into multiple posts. For this first post, I’ll walk you through our three top priorities for choosing our particular solar panels.

Aesthetics

We wanted solar panels to blend into the design of our midcentury, flat-roofed home. The first requirement was: “It shouldn’t be visible from the street.” Our goal is to preserve our Eichler’s clean simplicity and midcentury modern architecture since it’s what we love about our home.

It’s also incredibly difficult to renovate these homes because of their minimalist design. There are no spaces like an attic, basement, or crawlspace to hide wiring or construction. It’s just a very fancy wooden box that we live in. For that reason, we were hesitant to buy a giant solar array that would protrude from our one-story roof.

When we met with the three vendors (Highlight Solar, SunRun, and SunPower), Sunpower had the Invisimount system and the M-Series 425W panels that fit the bill. I liked that it would be as low as possible to the roof.

The plan was for the array to pop up about 6” above the roof and be installed toward the back of our house. We ran into problems with this (Eichler roof!), as I’ll explain in a later post.

Price & Cost Savings

The total cost of our solar panels was $23,500 after rebates. Solar is a big investment. If we had the money, we would have installed it earlier and gotten our return on investment earlier. It should take about 7-8 years for us to recover the cost of our solar panels based on (the total cost of our array / our average monthly electricity bill). If you’re moving into a home right now, the sooner you install solar the sooner you’ll recover your costs.

Luckily the Inflation Reduction Act was passed during installation and our rebate grew from 23%(ish) to 30%. The cost of our solar installation was:

TLDR: The total cost is ~$23.5k.

Base cost is $35k - (Minus the 30% federal solar tax credit + Sierra Club & Sunpower $1,000 rebate) = ~$23.5k.

> this includes the solar panels, installation, and a main panel upgrade from 100 amp to 200 amp to support the larger electricity load.

> Not factored in: $8k in roof repair. The solar panels are bolted to our Eichler beams so holes were punched through the roof to anchor them. We re-coated our roof to cover those holes. Luckily, this cost can be folded into the solar rebate since it is part of the construction. However, we were due for our 8-10 year routine maintenance re-coating of the roof, so I didn’t include this as part of the budget above.

Longevity:

Our neighbor Fredrik had a great point that when local solar installation companies get bought, warranties may be voided (thanks for the heads up on this one, Fredrik!). He’s run into an issue where the solar array he installed a few years ago is broken, and the company has closed down, so no one can fix his system. Unfortunately, he’ll have to reinvest in a whole new system which is a huge investment he has to make again.

Sunpower guarantees its panels regardless of who installs them. Sunpower is more expensive compared to other panels. The good thing is they’re based in San Jose, which means fewer supply chain issues and they’re consistently one of the highest-rated panels. I have a colleague from grad school who owns a solar installation company, and he only works with Sunpower panels. He donates used panels and installs them at underfunded schools in Sacramento and in Africa because they still work well after decades of use.

More sources of good info:

A huge resource was our absolutely awesome Fairhaven neighbors. We’ve watched our neighbors successfully (and unsuccessfully) install solar and I should probably just post the email thread with their invaluable advice. I’d say, if you have great neighbors in your area, they’re the best people to ask since they'll know nearby companies, installers. Here are a couple of the reasons we decided to start a solar installation in 2022 and what we’ve learned in the process.

I also did a life-cycle assessment study on Sunpower solar panels for one of my grad school classes and found out they are one of the longer-lasting, and therefore, the solar panels with a smaller carbon footprint. So going with those panels seemed like the best choice, and now it came down to choosing an installer.

So that’s the quick run-down! I’ll be writing more about 1) The company we chose and why, 2) How long it took, 3) How it works, and 4) Lessons Learned in future posts.