If you're installing the panels to save money on your electric bill you might save some money, but there are no guarantees. If you're installing solar panels to reduce your carbon emissions and save the world, well, that's largely a lie.
Let's look at the carbon emission issue. In theory using solar panels or wind power lets power plants be shut down saving the fuel that they'd be using to generate the power you're now creating by using solar/wind power. In reality there's this thing called "spinning reserve" that totally negates any supposed benefit from solar or wind. Spinning reserve is power that the power companies must have available almost instantly to meet demand.
Conventional power plants generate power by heating massive quantities of water to steam. They burn coal, oil, or natural gas to provide the heat to turn the water to steam. As you heat water to steam it expands a ton. This rapidly expanding steam gets desperate to escape. When the pressure inside the pressure vessel builds high enough it gets vented to a turbine where in it's rush to escape it spins the blades of the turbine. The turbine is connected to a generator and the spinning of the turbine then turns the generator and you've got power. The steam then goes into a large, low pressure area where it cools, condenses back into water and then gets pumped back into the bottom of the pressure vessel to be turned back to steam all over again.
You don't just flip a switch and instantly convert massive quantities of water to steam though. To get a power plant from totally off to totally up and running takes hours of time. So to maintain spinning reserve power companies keep their power plants up and running just as though they were generating power even though they're not. They're burning the oil, coal, gas they would be if they were generating power, the turbines are spinning, they just don't connect the turbines to the generators until they need to. So, this means that solar panels and wind turbines, while looking like you're doing something are achieving nothing.
It's important to know this reality as the government to this point largely ignores this. They continue to give large subsidies for solar/wind installations despite the fact that in terms of reducing the CO2 they are completely ineffective and little more than large lawn ornaments. Now as long as the government continues to provide subsidies you can save money by going to solar. The big question is how long will the government continue to provide subsidies?
At some point a sane politician should assume power and take a serious look at what we're achieving by subsidizing solar power to the tune of billions of dollars a year. The reality is we're achieving nothing in terms of reducing CO2 emissions and those subsidies might just disappear. If they do, you're not going to save any money and all of those solar companies calling begging you to install solar panels, will be bankrupt. Now when they go bankrupt, what happens to the panels they own that are on your roof? That's kind of unknown and may vary from bankruptcy court to bankruptcy court.
Now, if you're still considering it to save money then you'll want to take a long hard look at your existing roof. If it's a conventional shingle roof that's more than five years old, you might want to give some thought to replacing the roof before going solar. Solar panels have a 25-30 year lifespan. Shingle roofs have a similar anticipated lifespan. Now if five years from now your roof starts to fail, to replace the roof you'll have to remove the solar panels first, then reinstall them after the new roof is in place. You'll also have to make sure the roof is structurally sound enough to hold solar panles. My 1927 house has sixteen foot long 2X4's as the roof rafters. It won't hold solar panels.
Telemarketers are pushing solar very, very hard these days, but as is often the case, anything that sounds too good to be true, is usually too good to be true. You can save money, if the subsidies stay in place, if your roof is structurally sound and stays structurally sound throughout the life of the solar panels, and everything goes right. You can also lose a ton of money if the subsidies disappear and you end up with a ton or so of scrap material parked on top of your roof.
I personally wouldn't invest in solar right now, but that's just me. There is new technology coming online from Tesla that's called their "Power Wall." This is a large lithium ion battery pack that hangs on a wall and stores energy from your solar panels and at least for the short term, provides the spinning reserve for homes using it. Now if enough homes go solar and add the Power Walls and the capacity of the Power Walls expands, then solar can finally live up to its potential and actually shut down power plants. But, we're not there yet. For now solar power is more for show than real world benefit. Now, that can change and likely will change over time, but we're not there yet.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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