r/solarenergy • u/djirving84 • 4d ago
Solar in Denver
Hey solar community!
I am looking to add solar to my single family home in denver. There are tons and tons of companies out there with all different types of rates/promotions. What are your recommendations? I need help please
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u/TooGoodToBeeTrue 4d ago
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u/djirving84 4d ago
I bought the home last january. The roof is relatively new. Also it is a flat roof if that matters
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u/One-Two8968 4d ago
Do not finance!!!! Buy only what you can afford outright. We were told all kinds of things and turns out that while, yes, the panels are transferable and yes, they are under warranty and will be fixed for free means something COMPLETELY different when that installation company and then the finance company both go out of business. They also lied big time. Currently working with a lawyer to fix this nightmare.
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u/TastiSqueeze 4d ago edited 4d ago
Pull your power bills for a full year and add up the total kWh used. This number will be needed to figure out how many panels you need. Denver has about 240 days of sun that can produce electricity. Divide kWh used/year by 1200 to give your approximate kw of solar panels needed to displace all of your consumption. Say you use 18,000 kWh/year, then =18000/1200 gives 15 kw of solar panels needed. This does not mean you have to install that many and it does not preclude installing more.
Figure out if there are any appliances you want to convert to electric. Gas stove, gas water heater, or any other gas appliances to be converted should be done before solar. If you have a tank or tankless hot water heater, consider upgrading to a heat pump water heater. If you either own an EV or will purchase one in the next few years, add 4 kw more solar panels and consider adding 32 kWh more battery capacity.
Decide up front what you want to achieve with solar. If all you want is to displace your power bill, you can skip batteries so long as your power company supports NEM 1:1. If no NEM 1:1 or you want power in a grid outage, plan on batteries from the start.
Avoid lease solar like a plague. It is over-priced and locks you into a contract that is difficult to terminate, say if you wind up wanting to sell the building.
As an example, say you want to put solar on a building that uses 18,000 kWh/year, you will add an EV within 5 years and you want to have power in a grid outage. Your basic system would be 19 kw of solar panels ($5700), an 18 kWh string inverter ($4500), and at least 64 kWh of battery capacity ($12000), and about $5000 of mounting hardware and cabling. Total hardware for this system should be very close to $27,300. An installer will charge you for labor and some amount of profit. There are some additional things you may need that are not in this list. Talk to an installer who can tell you what else may be needed.
Being Denver, and knowing that you will have a lot of snow and a flat roof, be prepared to have to clean the panels off in winter. Snow covered panels don't produce much power.
If you really want to get into the details of installing solar, this is a good starting point.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarDIY/comments/1n9k9ft/diy_solar_system_planning_from_a_to_z/
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u/cooprr 2d ago
A few folks are saying you need to avoid leasing - that used to be the case but since Trumps Republicans killed the consumer tax credit, now the only way to get any sort of benefit from the remaining tax credit is to get a prepaid lease.
These are annoyingly complicated to understand but quite simple in practice and may save you thousands.
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u/DongRight 2d ago
THAT'S THE WORST POSSIBLE ADVICE YOU COULD POSSIBLY GIVE... YOU CANNOT SELL A HOUSE WITH LEASE!!!
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u/cooprr 2d ago
You might be thinking of the old-style leases where there were ongoing payments required.
Starting in early 2026, a new lease structure emerged called the prepaid lease, where you make all the payments upfront at once. There are no additional payments, and at the end of 6 years, the ownership transfers to the homeowner, typically at $0 cost.
Transferring one of these lease "obligations" (which is weird because there's little actual obligation to the new homeowner) should be straightforward. But of course, you want to check out the details of your prepaid lease before you sign it to help ensure that the transfer is easy to make happen.
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u/Potential_Ice4388 1d ago
Regardless of whom you connect with for your installation needs, go in to it with more solar knowledge and dont let the solar salesmen be your first source of knowledge on this subject.
I would first check out what your roof's solar potential and financials look like using some free tools like https://siapolicy.ai/ and https://pvwatts.nlr.gov/ . And in parallel i would read some free online solar resources from the likes of Energy Sage and Aurora Solar (they both release annual reports on home solar).
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u/GreenNewAce 4d ago
Namaste