To Solar or Not to Solar?

This week, I did some things I normally would not do.  I made a major purchase, and then I canceled it.

I'm trying to do a number of things with my house to make it a better place to live, more affordable, and also more sellable should I need to downsize at retirement, which I currently hope will be in less than ten years.  

One of those things has always been getting solar panels.

My home doesn't have south facing roof space, it is oriented east/west and I have a lot of trees.  I had a solar company come out around the time I purchased this house from my husband and his ex which was in the mid-teens.  That company basically told me that the solar could not be super efficient given my roof orientation and tree situation.  They said at the most, a rather expensive solar installation would recoup about half of the power I pay for now.

I now have an electric car, and charge it at home, so my electric bill has gone up a bit, and I was hoping that solar had gotten better / more efficient, so I did a questionnaire at Energy Trust of Oregon that sicced some companies on me.  One of them told me over the phone that they didn't recommend solar for the same reasons that I had heard before. One of them didn't end up connecting. The third was a very charming and hard charging salesperson who was very adamant that solar would work just fine for me.

Before I knew it, I was happily agreeing to a project to install a lot of panels all over my roof, possibly on the metal awning at the back of the house (facing east), and paying for it with a down payment that came from a HELOC I got for home improvements earlier this year and a substantial 25-year loan at somewhere around 8 percent interest.

Then after I finished with the solar company and set up their first site visit, they told me to call the loan company and have them walk me through the terms. The terms of the loan kind of obviated the benefit of the tax credit they had told me I would get, because the loan people will jack up the payment unless I use the tax credit to pay it down. (I was hoping the tax credit could help me with other expenses, since my husband died in 2024 and in 2025 I will have to pay a lot more in taxes at the single rate.)

I went over the loan terms and then I went and read some reviews about the company and their loan servicer, which mostly were people lamenting they had not understood these loan terms, or that they hadn't meant to sign something, but then it went into effect and they couldn't get rid of it. I think what happened is that someone sued the loan servicer and/or the solar company so now they have this requirement to walk you through the loan terms so you can't claim you didn't know.

One of the things that was explained was that I had 3 business days to cancel the loan. I thought about it. I talked to my son/tenant.  I thought about it some more. I realized that I had been rushed into this by the enthusiastic sales pitch and that the real situation was not going to work for me. So I canceled it today.

The loan servicer did not give me a hassle, but of course the solar salesman wanted to change my mind, and I hate those sorts of conversations, so it was an unpleasant phone call, but I held firm, because I am too old to get into messes out of politeness. So, no solar for us right now. I wish things were different and that this sort of project could be done through some sort of government application so that people aren't at the mercy of many different solar companies and finance companies who offer such complicated financing, because I still think it would be cool to retrofit existing homes to help with our energy crisis, our aging grids, and climate change.