The older I get, the more often I find myself apologizing to my mother.
This summer, I told her I’m sorry for the number of times she had to turn off lights that I left on in our home when I was growing up.
Bedroom lights, bathroom lights, basement lights. Day and night. All on, all the time, all costing her money.
Like so many things, it wasn’t until my husband and I bought our own home — and had kids — that I realized how irritating this was.
Aside from turning off lights multiple times a day in hopes of a lower electric bill, I didn’t pay too much attention to our actual energy usage until May, when Vivint Solar called.
With encouragement from my friend Chris Weymont and two other people who installed solar panels in my neighborhood, we dove in.
“Check this out!” Weymont wrote to me on Facebook in June, sending me a copy of his $0-due bill from Dominion. He hadn’t paid for electricity since his solar power system started generating energy in February.
A longtime environmentalist, Weymont first started working with solar while working for the Peace Corps in Africa. He eventually moved to Alexandria and bought a home.
“It feels really rad to put solar panels on our roof,” he said. “There were some bumps along the way, but we’re very happy with our system and it’s really a cool thing seeing that we’re building up energy credits on our bill.”
How Solar Works
Vivint Solar designed two systems for us — one using just the south-facing roof on the front of our home, and another that also used an east-facing roof on the back. The second of those two options was designed to come close to entirely replacing our Dominion electric bill — and close to getting those $0 statements that Weymont sent me.
Several other solar power companies are also working in Alexandria, including Tesla offering solar roof shingles and systems, SkyNRG, BlueStar Solar and Celestial Solar Innovations, to name just a few. The City of Alexandria and Fairfax County both offer “Solarize” programs that can help homeowners save money, as well.
By the middle of June, our 34-panel solar system sat atop our home. It was fully operational by early July, after Moore & Wright completed some tree work to allow more sunlight to hit the panels and the City of Alexandria and Dominion inspected the system.
Our system collects solar energy during the daylight hours to power our home, and sends any extra power back into the grid. At night, we draw power from Dominion like everybody else. The theory is that the extra power we send into the grid during the day is equal to or more than the power we use at night.
But Isn’t Solar Expensive?
Our Vivint Solar plan called for payments of less than $200 per month until the system is paid off, with $0 down. If we sell the home, we can transfer the contract.
The $37 difference between our flat-rate, monthly Dominion bill and our Vivint Solar contract should be entirely offset by property tax reductions from the City of Alexandria’s Solar Energy Equipment Tax Exemption program and by federal tax credits. (Act on this quickly, as some of these credits are expiring soon.)
Through Virginia’s Solar Renewable Energy Credit system, which started this summer, we also have the opportunity to earn money by selling solar certificates (similar to selling carbon offsets). In addition, the system increases the value of our home by as much as 4 percent, according to Zillow.
We did not buy a battery back-up system that would have charged batteries with solar power during the day to supply us with off-grid power at night, on rainy days and during power outages. Adding that would have been a hefty expense that was not in our budget. (The estimate for a Tesla Powerwall system for our home was $23,000.)
Are there drawbacks to going solar? Some people argue that large solar farms take up land that cannot be used for other purposes, like grazing cattle or farming, according to the Renewable Resource Coalition, a nonprofit organization. “The environmental impacts associated with solar power are land and water use and pollution, habitat loss and use of highly hazardous materials in the manufacturing process,” according to the group.
But we’ll also be saving the environment in other ways — in July, our carbon offset was close to 500 pounds of coal or 50 gallons of gas.
As of this writing, it’s too soon to tell if we’ll have to pay an electric bill next month. But on several sunny days in July, our system generated more power than we used.
In the next few years, we’ll be replacing our old hot water heater, furnace and air conditioner — which are all on borrowed time — with more energy-efficient systems. A few new windows will also help our home be much more efficient.
Until then, I’ll be channeling my mother.
“Why is this light on?!”
