When I decided to install rooftop solar at my Truckee house in 2023, many of my friends asked if it would “pay for itself.” It’s an interesting question, and not one that’s easy to answer.
My system, which included 15 rooftop panels, an inverter, and two Tesla backup batteries, cost a little over $53,000 to install. I’m out of my league when it comes to all things technical, so I relied on my installer to plan the system and usage, but the battery backups have made all the difference for me.
I initially wanted the batteries to avoid the inconvenience and cost of dealing with power outages, which seem to have become more frequent in recent years. But what I realized as I began using the system is that the batteries not only save the contents of my fridge and freezer in the event of a grid outage, they allow for energy independence, which has become kind of an addiction for me.
My house is new construction, and very energy efficient. The building code required all LED lighting, which uses shockingly little electricity compared to the old bulbs. I also opted for spray foam insulation in almost all of the walls, so even on a super windy day, the home feels pretty airtight.
Going Green: There’s an App for That
Before I built this house, I was pretty clueless about my energy usage. I was living in a home heated with baseboard electricity, and all I know for sure is that unless we made a fire daily during cold months, my Truckee Donner Public Utility District bills would approach $500/month.
Today, I monitor my electrical use so closely that I can tell you it takes approximately 1.3 kWh to make coffee in the morning, which entails using an electric grinder and an electric kettle.
To put that number in perspective, generating 1 kWh of electricity with fossil fuels would require burning 1.14 pounds of coal, 7.42 cubic feet of natural gas or almost a tenth of a gallon of petroleum liquids, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Beans aside, that’s one pricey cup of coffee.
The battery backup allows me to generate power whenever the sun is shining and store it for later use. I have the system set up to pull from the solar panels during the day, and switch to using the batteries for my energy needs after 5 p.m.
And the cool part is — there’s an app for that. The app has turned energy independence into a game with the winning card being the ability to get a bill from the utility district with zero electrical usage on it. I’m still billed the monthly base rate of $27.47, but it’s been really fun to take nothing. Truth be told, I’m addicted to it now.
App Addiction Changes Behavior
One Sunday last month, on the heels of a multi-day snow storm, my batteries were close to hitting empty (they go into a reserve mode when only a small percentage of power remains), so I waited an hour to make coffee to refrain from pulling electricity from the grid. The sun rose at 7:03 a.m. that morning, and by 8:10 a.m. I had sufficient kWh in my backup batteries to start the kettle.
The app allows me to see how much electricity my solar panels are generating in real time, and it stores the data. It’s true; apps do create addiction.
I’m proud to say I’ve gone 2 months in a row now with almost no draw from the grid. The app says 0.2kWh, and TDPUD bills show an average of 30 to 40 kWh a month. Not sure why there’s a difference, but to put that in perspective, the average home uses about 30 kWh of electricity per day.
I’ll admit, I didn’t start out as someone who was intensely energy conscious. In fact, I had no idea how much electricity the average home requires before this. But the app has turned it into a kind of game, and hence, my addiction has grown.
The average house, according to EIA, consumes 899 kWh of electricity per month. In January and February of this year, my home used 202.4 kWh of electricity, and according to my app, 100% of that came from solar power. During these same two winter months, I also fed 1146.2 kWh back to the grid.
Giving Back Feels Good
Last year, while still in the process of learning how my system worked best, I exported 7,988 kWh of electricity to the TDPUD’s grid. That’s the equivalent of powering another whole home for almost 9 months. My son, who now lives in the house with the electric baseboard heat, was so impressed that he asked if I could “bank” it for his use.
I’m not alone, according to the TDPUD, but I am sort of an outlier.
In 2024, solar generators like me gave 1,356 MWh of electricity back to our local grid, which equals 170 times my contribution. To put that number in perspective, that’s slightly less than 1% of all electricity that users consumed from the TDPUD last year.
Most of the utility district’s solar accounts are net zero, said Steven Poncelet, TDPUD public information and strategic affairs director. But viewed in the aggregate, solar generators in our region consumed about four times the amount of electricity than they gave back to the grid.
a 30% solar installation federal tax credit.
Battery Backup is Key
If you don’t have batteries, there is no way to store the solar power; it’s use it or lose it. And when the sun goes down, there is no solar.
The same is true for the TDPUD. Unlike other California utilities, the TDPUD is not currently throwing away any of the solar it receives, Poncelet said, but as yet it has no way to bank it.
“Energy exported from residential solar does offset other local loads, but if the load generated by solar exceeds total demand, then that solar resource would have to be curtailed or lost,” Poncelet said. “This occurs often on the California grid where energy markets go negative due to excess solar on the grid and not enough customer demand.”
He said that the TDPUD Board funded a study to explore adding storage to the local distribution system and is currently evaluating the most favorable configuration for battery storage.
Solar Does Work in Truckee
Despite evidence to the contrary, there are a number of people locally who are convinced rooftop solar does not work in our mountain environment. I have a steep pitched roof, and at the advice of my installer, I designed it specifically for solar with standing seam metal beneath where the panels are mounted. Flat roofs, or lower pitched roofs, will not shed snow off the panels as quickly.
It was an expensive endeavor, but I was able to take advantage of the 30% solar installation federal tax credit in effect through 2032, assuming the current administration doesn’t axe it.
So, does solar pay for itself?
If I had no solar panels, based on an average consumption of 30kWh per day, I’d be spending about $2,500 a year for electricity. The TDPUD pays solar generators $0.063 per kWh, roughly a $500 credit in my case that I’ll receive in April, for an annual savings of about $3,000 per year.
Using round numbers again, let’s say the cost of the system after the tax credit was $37,000. Assuming the cost of electricity does not increase in the coming decades, it would take me 12.3 years at current rates for the system to “pay for itself.” But that number does not factor in the invaluable benefit of having power when the grid goes down — friends come to my house for power and pizza, and the contents of my fridge and freezer are preserved. Nor does it account for the environmental savings of having solar.
Not Everything Can Be Measured in Dollars and Cents
As we are seeing with the warming of the oceans and the change in global weather patterns, climate change is real. And it’s caused by methane and the burning of fossil fuels.
Viewed from that perspective, the clean energy I’m giving back to our community each year over a decade amounts to 6,400 gallons of petroleum liquid unused, 593,600 cubic feet of natural gas saved, or 91,200 pounds of coal not burned.
It’s not going to save the planet, but it does make me feel like I’m doing my small part to help. Like Poncelet told me, “When you’re faced with overwhelming circumstances, all you can do is act individually.”
So, does my solar system “pay for itself”? Absolutely!
“Today, I monitor my electrical use so closely that I can tell you it takes approximately 1.3 kWh to make coffee in the morning, which entails using an electric grinder and an electric kettle.”
How did you determine this? It seems very unlikely and probably wildly wrong. My grinder is 100W, my kettle is 1000W, so even if both of them ran for an hour it still wouldn’t amount to 1.3kWh…