It’s Earth Day (and my 36th birthday!) and I thought it was only fitting to discuss our home’s new solar panels today! A few weeks ago, I briefly shared that we had solar panels installed on our roof and I was inundated with questions about it.

How much did they cost? Did we buy them or lease them? Which company did we go with?

It turns out a lot of you are also interested in solar energy and I thought it might be helpful to share our experience and why we chose to add solar panels to our home.

I will admit, I am far from an expert on this topic, so I’ll mostly stick to sharing my own personal experience. I’m sure the costs and process will vary greatly, depending on where you live, so this is just my experience as an Illinois homeowner.

Why We Wanted Solar Panels

Like most people, we are always looking for ways to be more eco-friendly and nicer to the planet. Our daughter is obsessed with outer space and often talks about things that make the earth sad (like littering or driving when we can easily walk), so it’s a hot topic of conversation in our household.

A few years ago, my brother added solar panels to his home and highly recommended them to us. He purchased the solar equipment and took advantage of a federal tax credit to reduce the overall price. His electric bills are basically nonexistent at this point, thanks to his solar power.

While we were intrigued by the thought of adding solar panels, we weren’t ready to pay a ton of money upfront to add them to our own home. Because we will likely sell in the next few years, it just didn’t seem like a wise financial decision.

Nap Time Visit

Fast forward to mid-March when a young man from the solar company, Sunrun, was canvassing our neighborhood. I loathe solicitors but thought it was a delivery and opened the door. The entire house was napping (even Finn) and I was a little irritated that this guy taking the precious moments of my quiet time to try to sell me something.

He ended up being incredibly kind, knowledgeable, and passionate about climate change. He shared information with me about adding solar panels to our home and I thought it sounded too good to be true. He mentioned that the solar panel installation would be free and my ears perked up. In the end, he left me with some information and I thought that was the end of it.

Before we proceed, a quick note that this is in no way sponsored by Sunrun. They have no idea who I am and I just wanted to share my Sunrun review and experience with all of you.

Doing Some Research

I ended up doing some research to look into Sunrun a bit more. They’re the largest residential solar installer and most of their business is in solar leases. This means you rent the panels for a monthly fee. Solar-as-service is similar to any monthly payment like cable or internet.

After doing my due diligence, I found that they were a reputable company with good customer reviews and they service a large portion of the country.

Crunching The Numbers

Now, this was where I was very intrigued. This sounded cool, but how much was it going to cost me? Fortunately, there are many solar incentives, through the state of Illinois, to encourage people to use renewable energy.

The Illinois Shines program provides upfront funding for solar energy, meaning the installation would be free. Illinois also has net metering rules for solar energy. When your solar panels produce more electricity than your home uses, any excess energy flows back to the power grid and joins your utility’s supply. This is called net metering and your utility company (in our case, Comed) gives you credits for the solar energy you feed into the grid. This substantially lowers your electric bill.

Sunrun asked for a year’s worth of electric bills to understand our average bill and how much electricity we typically use. After doing the math, they determined that we would save about $400-$500 per year, even with our $60/month solar lease.

We loved the idea of saving money, increasing our property value, and doing something good for the earth. We decided to proceed with the process.

Inspecting Our Home To See If We Qualify

Next up, they had to send out an inspector to make sure our home would qualify for the program. This involved taking photos of our roof, inspecting our electrical panel, and looking at the support system in our attic. This only took about an hour and we got a call a week later telling us that we were approved.

They then submitted the plans to the city and we were quickly issued the necessary permits. All of this was handled by Sunrun.

The Design

Because our home faces east and we have an open side yard next to our property, our roof is prime real estate for solar panels. It gets continuous sunshine all day long. This also played a part in our eligibility for the program because they wanted to make sure that our home would produce enough energy.

After reviewing our setup, they sent us this design with 15 solar panels on the south side of our roof. Sunrun also offers Tesla Powerwall (a whole-home backup in case of power outages) for an additional fee. And they have electrical vehicle chargers too. We just went with the rooftop solar panels.

The Solar Installation

A few weeks later, we got a phone call saying they were ready to install our solar panel system. I was gone for most of the day, or else I would have taken pictures, but Finn said it was quick and painless. He stayed inside, working, while a team of contractors worked away on the roof. They had to turn the power off for about 30 minutes, but that was the only interruption to our daily life. Overall, the installation process took about 4-6 hours.

An inspector then came out a couple of weeks later to give us the green light to turn our new solar panels on.

The whole process, from the sales representative showing up at our door to turning the solar panels on, took about five weeks.

The Cost Breakdown

Now, we are waiting for our first electricity bill. We will get a bill from our power company, Comed, and also one from Sunrun, for leasing the solar panels. The Sunrun bill is $60/month and will go up 2% each year for a 25-year agreement.

We’re hopeful that the utility bill will come down substantially, especially during the summer months. If the solar panels don’t produce as much power as expected, Sunrun will issue a refund each month to make up the difference. As mentioned, the installation was free and all maintenance and repairs are covered for the lifetime of our lease.

There is an option to purchase the solar panels from Sunrun down the line. In general, buying solar panels results in greater savings over the lifetime of the panels. However, we didn’t want to pay the steep initial cost. If we wanted to pay for the panels, it would have been about $30,000.

We like the leasing model because we can switch to clean energy and pay the same amount for energy each month even with rising electricity costs.

Monitoring Our Energy Savings

Sunrun has a portal where we can monitor our system’s energy production. Since our panels were just turned on, I don’t have much data to share with you just yet. I’ll be sure to touch base after a full year of weather to share our average savings.

What Happens When We Sell?

The lease is transferrable to the next homeowner and Sunrun handles that process. Solar panels add value to your home, so we think it will make our home more desirable!

Overall Thoughts On Joining The Clean-Energy Revolution

I believe the home electrification trend is here to stay and I’m happy we were able to take advantage of these clean and cost-effective technologies! I would recommend looking into adding solar panels, whether you lease or buy!

If you’re local, shoot me an email at [email protected] and I’ll pass along the contact info for the rep we used. He was great!