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Welcome to our Homestead friends today we’re going to talk about the top mistakes made when buying a solar power system for your home let’s go [Music] so the reason I really wanted to touch on this today is because if these mistakes are made then it could really turn you off to the idea of solar and we’ve had such a positive experience with it I want you to have the same thing so one of the first mistakes made is not researching your equipment well enough and for long enough there are so many things out there that you really need to dive in and understand how good some equipment is how bad other equipment is and how many choices there are and that’s especially true if you are going to do it yourself and if you’re going to use an installer don’t just go with the brands that they sell research different installers research different equipment to find out what’s best for you because they could be suggesting things that are inappropriate for your specific situation so an informed buyer is a better buyer now some installers will work with you on equipment that you do purchase ahead of time but a lot of them won’t they will suggest their own equipment and that’s a positive in one regard is that they are licensed to work on and fix that specific brand of equipment and that could be a good thing but you need to make that choice they could suggest the Ferrari or the Mercedes of inverters when all you need for your situation and your budget is the Ford more Chevy or Honda or Toyota whichever one now these all kind of go together but the second mistake made is not buying the right type of system for your house and your situation there are really three types of systems out there with a few variations but there’s a grid tied system a pure grid tied system a hybrid system or an off-grid system you need to understand that with a grid tied system if the grid is down then your system is not working now a hybrid system is a little bit different it is grid tied but when the grid goes down it switches over to using a battery backup at your home and the solar panels at your home directly so so those hybrid systems always need a battery backup because additionally if the sun goes down the grid is out then you’re still not going to have any power and the third type of system is the system that we have and that is an off-grid system our system essentially works like a generator it is a solar powered generator I have a battery backup and this is not connected to the Grid at all and this is a system I recommend because in most places you can do it yourself now the third mistake that is made is over or underestimating your power usage and that’s usually when you are working with an installer so you really need to do your research ahead of time and understand your power needs for your specific home and the amount of sun you get in your area because that will directly translate to the number of dollars that you spend on your system so understanding what your house uses can be done in several different ways you can look at your old Power bills and kind of get an estimate of what you’re using per month can also use an electricity monitoring system like this Emporia View we’re going to be doing a video on this really soon and it’ll help you understand every tiny little load in your house and its fluctuations every single day and like I said before a better informed customer is a better buyer and you’ll save money in the long run now the next three go hand in hand and it’s actually something you really got to look out for so when using a Solar Company you want to keep your eyes peeled for what’s called a PPA or a power purchase agreement and essentially what that is is a long-term lease and in some cases it’s a lease for up to 30 years in my opinion you are never going to get any money back you’re not going to see a savings at all if you do something like that that company is just renting space on your property or on your roof and here’s the crazy part about it the federal tax credit you hear about you don’t get it because you do not own the equipment they’re the ones who get it and with that type of equipment on your house you could potentially have an issue sell selling it as well because a new owner may not want to take that over or the Solar Company may want to take back that equipment if the new owner doesn’t want it that’s why I researched for over a year and a half on our system before I decided to do it myself and again of course that depends on your area and you potentially might not save a thing off of your power bill if you’re paying a large monthly payment for the equipment it could be more than what your electricity bill was before so watch out along with that if you are trying to sell power back to the grid if you think you can make more power than you use and you want to sell that back to the grid many jurisdictions will allow that there’s over three thousand power companies in our country right now but you need to understand their specific rules each power company is different in what they accept for net metering so either a grid tied system or a hybrid system will support net metering and when you look looking at those agreements with your local power company I want you to understand that some will allow your credits to expire at the end of the year some will allow them to expire at the end of the month and if you don’t use them they go away so if you’re generating a lot you’ve got to use them some are a little funny so you have to do your research ahead of time a good Solar Company will help you with that but a better informed customer is a better buyer like I said before and you need to understand if it’s appropriate for you in your area and the third and last part of this segment is to not fall for silly marketing tricks please don’t take the free TV or a gift card because those are tiny little fractions of what a solar system would cost and they’re really not a great incentive and they’re not a good incentive especially if you’re not getting the system that’s appropriate for you we’ve installed two different systems here on our Homestead click on the playlist at the top of the screen to see how we installed all of them I’m very happy with all of the equipment that we bought from signature solar and if you’re interested in that there’s links to all of our stuff in the description below signature solar carries your Porsches and your Mercedes they also have the Toyotas the Fords and The Hondas they have off-grid systems hybrid systems grid tied systems so they have something for everybody so the next thing that’s misunderstood is the federal tax credit and recently Congress just approved it or re-upped it to 30 percent for the next 10 years from 2022 to 2032. so when I did this last year I got 26 percent totally cool but now you can take advantage of 30 but I want you to understand that it’s a tax credit so whatever tax you owe it lowers that amount that you owe and it could be zero but you’re not going to get money back it’s not a tax rebate so make sure you understand that and if you’re going with a Solar Company they understand that as well so the last mistake May Aid and not many people think about this at all is your roof so you should not put a solar panel system on your roof if your roof is 10 years old or older that’s because you’re going to need to replace your roof potentially quite quickly after you install the system and you don’t want that to happen now a good Solar Company will know that and they will ask you how old your roof is and you can have a new roof installed at the same time as your solar system is going in and you can get a federal tax credit for that piece as well but you will need to coordinate that really tightly and in my opinion I don’t like solar systems on roofs but if you are in the city then that’s probably the only place you’re going to put it out here we had the opportunity to put a ground Mount system in additionally our roof was way too shaded to put the panels on the roof and I didn’t want 400 holes in my roof and consequently Lee you cannot put solar panels on a roof that is brand new you have to wait at least a month or two months for those asphalt shingles to adhere to one another and bond to one another if you don’t do that it’s going to damage the roof but of course if you have another type of roof like a metal roof that’s not a problem that’s it don’t make those mistakes because I don’t want you to get turned off from this great option for generating electricity for your house and we want you to be well informed before you buy anything now click on this video right here which talks about some common cost myths associated with solar have a beautiful blessed day we’ll see you next time bye foreign [Music] …