Posted on 09/01/2022 8:13:36 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Homeowners adding solar panels study energy savings and break-even costs, but they should also call their insurer: Some increase premiums and some cancel policies.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – As electric bills surge and the federal government offers generous tax incentives for renewable energy investments, more and more Florida homeowners are seriously considering rooftop solar systems.
But in calculating system costs vs. electric bill savings, many would-be solar owners are neglecting to consider how a solar system will affect their home insurance bill – or how difficult it might be to find a company that will insure them at all.
And with insurance premiums skyrocketing for all Florida homeowners, solar customers who can obtain coverage might also find that the price increase will wipe out any energy-cost savings they expected from going solar.
“It’s a big deal and a lot of folks don’t realize that many carriers don’t accept solar panels,” says Dulce Suarez-Resnick, vice president at the Miami-based agency Acentria Insurance.
Oakland Park homeowner Holy Strawbridge learned this the hard way. She installed a modest 8,000 kilowatt system atop her home about two years ago and recently signed up for coverage with Edison Insurance Company. After the insurer sent an inspector to her home, she received a letter canceling her entire policy.
“I was shocked,” Strawbridge said. “I’ve never filed an insurance claim and I’ve lived in this house since 2001.”
The reasons cited in the cancellation letter sent by Edison: Her solar panels are ineligible for coverage due to the age of her roof (11 years) and because she has a tile roof.
Those aren’t the only reasons insurers won’t cover rooftop solar systems. Insurers who do business in Florida offer a wide variety of reasons for refusing to insure homes with them.
(Excerpt) Read more at floridarealtors.org ...
The info was pertinent because they didn't want to insure some people because their net metering connections might back-feed into the grid and hurt a lineman. Those systems are auto-switched to prevent that.
Idiots with generators have hurt a lot of line workers.
Any solar experts on the forum. I live on multiple acres. Can I put panels say 300-400 feet away with a Dc storage shed then convert to AC to run to the house with minimal loss? I do not want panels on the roof when I have field behind the house.
I misspoke. Plywood seems to be the better application for roofing. That said, many of the older homes I’ve seen being re-roofed had neither.
Well, our service or distribution charge is $35 and is a flat fee no matter how much you use and so...
I had thought our situation was similar to yours but I went so far as to talk with the system engineer to learn their method.
I recall when the phone usage balance rolled forward endlessly based on the increment you purchased in a similar way.
What you describe, an monthly closed balance, makes payout easy. No money actually changes but the utility acts as a bank for you. There is no need at all for battery storage and you can actually “make” money for excess capacity.
What are your rates?
I bought a 25 year old house in NH that had a Velux skylight on the south side of the roof. It is supposed to be one of the better brands.
In the winter the snow would melt off the glass and then the water would run down the roof and refreeze at the eves. Eventually creating an ice dam.
It also got very difficult to close completely in the late summer. I had to get up on the roof and push it back into the frame. I sold that house ten years ago. I told the new owners not to open that skylight and if it was up to me I would have taken it out when I replaced the roof.
Probably less insulation around that area which allows the house heat to reach the shingle area.
I wouldn’t insure a residence with an 8000 kilowatt solar system either.....
We don’t have a lot of hail in Florida but every now and then we get some nasty high winds...
Interesting—I have never opened the skylight—maybe that has helped mitigate potential problems.
Since Alabama has already had the solar fee for years (no net metering), I chose to get an inverter with the zero output option (sometimes called "no report"). Basically I don't put power onto the grid, I don't get paid the tiny amount for selling my excess power, and I don't get charged the large flat monthly solar fee just to get paid a little bit back. Most importantly, by not putting power onto the grid I don't become what the solar regulations refer to as a power provider --- with all the red tape that comes with it. In a way I'm glad Alabama never had net metering because it kept me from falling into a trap of extra regulations, including the large solar fee I'd have to pay for the privilege of being regulated.
That's also why my solar system doesn't have to shut off whenever the grid power goes down. As far as my power utility is concerned, I'm just an average power consumer like everybody else except I pull a lot less power from them. Just like my neighbor can use his backup generator when the grid goes down, I can use my solar system when the grid goes down.
In some states they have even more regulations for people who put power onto the grid. Some require you to turn over control of your inverter to the power utility. Nope. That's not my cup of tea.
Even if you don't go solar there are a ton of energy saving things you can do. I did those and they are probably as important as the solar system. Things like replacing both my A/C and gas furnace with a variable speed heat pump (and heat strips for the few times it gets too cold here for the heat pump). I also added insulation everywhere and caulked gaps. I replaced my natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater (all electric, but I usually have it running in efficiency mode which uses its built-in heat pump to heat the water tank). The air intake of the water heater has hot air ducted in from the attic (might as well utilize all the heat that's in my attic as free heat for the water heater). During the summer months I direct the water heater's air output (cold air) into the house's living quarters so that my home A/C (the variable speed heat pump) doesn't have to run as much (might as well put that cold air to use too). During the winter months I flip a wye lever on the output duct to direct the cold air into the attic so that my home heat pump doesn't have to work harder to warm the living quarters.
It may be an insulation problem. Meaning that you do not have enough of it and the heat is coming through the roof. This is a common problem with older houses. I added a foot of bonded cellulose insulation to the attic of my current 1972 house.
When we bought it ten years ago it only had 5 1/2” of fiberglass in the attic. I bought two pallets of bonded cellulose from Lowes and spent a day blowing it in my attic. My wife fed the bales into the blower. I crawled around the attic in Tyvek overalls and a mask.
I figure the ROI on that was 2 years or less in lower heating/cooling bills.
Actually, that is from “Zen, and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Yeah, that raised an eyebrow for me too. “8,000 kilowatts” (8-Megawatts) is more than 3 full-sized wind generators (bird-a-matics) at 2.4 MW each.
That’s why I don’t typically trust what reporters say about “sciencey” stuff. Most don’t have a clue.
I have home and wind (including hurricane), but not flood. Fortunately, I’m not in a storm surge zone, and I live over a crawl space.
Even adding insulating curtains can help in the summer from keeping the heat out and in the winter for keeping the heat in.
I noticed a big difference in my kitchen/family room when I added them to my 6’ sliding door and a 6’ wide casement gang window.
These both face east. So, in the morning in the summer we close them until about noon. In the winter we close them when the sun goes down.
Precisely
We had 50-year-old wood shakes on our first little house we bought. There was no substrate. Just one-inch thick by about six-inch-wide batten boards with air gaps between them that the shakes were nailed to. The roof, even that old, didn't leak. The insurance company didn't want to insure wood shakes for fire risk. So we replaced them with shingles. We had to put a substrate (OSB in our case) over the batten boards before installing the shingles.
Well. Sounds like another government program and trillions of more dollars to insure solar paneled houses.
I put mine in a field also about 100' ft away and ran the DC to the house. Sounds like what you have planned is the best way for that long distance.
You could put micro inverters on each panel and run a/c straight to the house. More expensive, though.
Thanks for having some direct knowledge on the issue. I am still amazed there wasn’t much roofing infrastructure on these older homes..
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