Powering the Future: Solar Innovations for Businesses and Homeowners

All right, welcome to a live episode of The Homeowner Show here with the net, my buddy Alan Blair. And this audio sounds weird, doesn't it? Let's see here, let me bring it down right there. Woo! Man, hot audio. Let me see if I can get you in the shot here. You might need to scoot in there some, Alan. Like this way. This way, this way. Man, I can't get you in the shot. There we— there's your beautiful face. All right, thank you so much. I might break your camera. So we're here to discuss a little bit about solar, and it's growing in popularity in the US right now. There's a lot of incentives going on. Why has it become so popular in the

US? Recently? Well, I think people are seeing a lot of increased power bills. Their electricity bills are going up. The power companies keep going up. I mean, it never stops. Every time you turn around, it's going up. I have customers who said, well, last month I was paying $350, you know, about per month, and now I'm getting $600 power bills. So it's a, it's a good way to get away from paying high and growing power bills. Because you get solar and you have one payment and it never goes up and eventually you own it. We like to say you don't rent your home, you don't rent your car, so why rent your solar? Right, right. And are there government programs that are coming into play? I mean, are there

state programs? I mean, it makes a difference what state you're in. Yes, it does. But the federal program of a 30% tax credit is a full 30% tax credit. It's not a write-off, it's a credit. Right. So if you spend $100,000, let's say, on a solar system, you're gonna get $30,000 off your taxes for however many years. I guess you can push it out as far as 5 or 6 years. You can roll that out over many years, right? Yeah. You don't have to take it all in one lump sum. That's right. Okay. So if you've made, let's say you paid $10,000 in taxes, well, that's null and void. And then the next year you can

do it again. Okay. So, and like, what is the— Can you hit that on so we can see your faces? Oh, I'm so sorry. I never hit the— there it is. So sorry. Sitting here making audio, I forgot about the video. It's rude. But anyway, so I forget where I was going with this. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have with solar, I guess, would be? Because I know this is something you run up against quite a bit where like people come to you with a certain idea as to how it should work? Or so what are the biggest misconceptions you see out there? Well, it's a lot more complicated than people think it is. And I see this a lot online. For instance, this recent storm

where we had a lot of damage in our neighborhood of homes and garages and all this kind of stuff, people on there were upset because it was taking 4 and 5 days to get their power turned back on. And they were saying, oh, I'm thinking about going solar. And then there were smart guys coming on there and saying, oh no, that won't do you any good 'cause you can only power your lights with solar. Or, you know, solar works this way, Or that way, and they were dead wrong because they didn't, they didn't actually know. But some of, some of the misconceptions are, are exactly that. Um, people don't know what backup power does. Some say if you have solar, it doesn't do you any good if the power goes out because you're on the grid. That's not true either. If you have a

battery system, you have instant backup. And we now offer Generac generators too. So if your home has gas, you hook it right up to the new Generac, and then it backs up your system just like the batteries would. And it's actually a little bit more reliable. Oh, for sure. Yeah, and have you seen one where the battery and the generator are kind of working in tandem? I actually haven't seen that yet. Most people either get the battery— One or the other. They are really expensive. One or the other. And that's the thing about batteries right now. They're very expensive. I'm doing a lot of research on this because, you know, we don't have lithium mines in

America. That's what these batteries are. We have to go to Russia or Ukraine or South America or Africa to get lithium for these batteries, but worse, they're not environmentally friendly. So if you ever have to dispose of them, you can't properly dispose of lithium batteries. And I tend to not sell those. I like to push towards the generator, but if a customer wants it, of course, you know, right? But I'm doing research now, and I'm actually looking for a grant so we can do research on other forms of power storage that don't involve lithium. Is that like the only form of like home battery storage that we have right now is lithium? Unless you went to lead

acid, and those are way behind the times. Sure, take a lot more of those. And there's just as So, I mean, do you have any idea what you're supposed to do with those when they, you know, 'cause I mean, like they have like a 20, 30-year life on 'em, right? Yeah. Well, they typically do, but that's another thing is they may tell you it's got a 20 or 30-year life on it and it may not last that long. Right. That's why you wanna make sure from your solar company that you get a good warranty that covers all of it. Because if you've got a 25-year warranty on your battery and your battery goes down after 15 years, they've gotta come out and replace it. Yeah. Well, and I would hope that they have to deal with the

disposal at that point. Yes. 'Cause you're telling me like there's There's not really a good way to get rid of them. That's right. What are you supposed to do? Yeah, well, there's, there's some way to dispose of them, but from what I understand, there's no safe way. So I don't know what they're doing with these, except there is recycling programs where they take the lithium out of these batteries and recycle them. And that's really the only safe way to dispose of them, is to pull that lithium out before you dispose of the devices, and then that lithium can be reused. Right, right. Well, so what about one of the things that we've been hearing a lot recently is like real estate transactions. And, uh, I, I've, I've, you know,

and these are like internet rumors and things like that, but like, you know, real estate transactions from, from what I've been reading can be tricky with solar. And then there's other sides that say like, no, no, you just roll it all into the same thing. Um, how does that actually work? Well, there's actually a few options for that. If you have solar on your home, you can roll it into the price of your home, what's left over to pay, and then you take that equity and you pay off your solar, you know, and that's what most people do. Right. Now I've heard a lot of people and I've even met with some realtors who said, oh no, I want nothing to do with solar, you know,

because that's just a pain. It makes it hard to sell a home. But when you tell a person that's buying a home that, hey, this home has solar, and when you buy this home, you're only gonna have that monthly $10 or $15 fee because you got solar to your power company. Right. It will handle your power needs. And I found by doing some research that most of those realtors who don't really understand it just because they're not a green certified realtor. The Houston Association of Realtors has a program called Green Realtor Education. It only costs $99. Right. And it informs these realtors, you know, how to handle the sale of a home that's got solar. But even more important is they can sell them a home and offer them the solar, and they can get the solar

rolled into their mortgage, brand new solar system. So right off the bat, they're not paying high electricity bills because they get solar you know, rolled right into their mortgage. Well, I would imagine part of that education is looking at brands and types of microinverters and panels and all that kind of stuff that goes into it, like, and probably helps them identify like the differences between like a good system, a bad system, cheap system, all that kind of stuff. Does it? No, I don't think they do. Oh, really? Yeah, they just try to educate the realtors on what it means to sell a home that's got solar panels or sell them with a home. Like I said, roll it into their mortgage, and they're not as— they're not as concerned. And that's been a big concern with

me after I started looking into all these companies that I could work with to install solar. You know, I subcontract those companies. I found a really good one here in Texas, and they do more solar than any company in Texas, but they carry a more quality product. They don't subcontract their installations. They have their own installation teams. If any solar panel grade starts causing problems, they get rid of it and they don't offer it anymore. Mm-hmm. And I experienced that recently with a new customer, and she, boy, she was slick. We were on a call, on a Zoom call talking about this and talking about our quote, and she goes, oh, so you use the Aptos solar panels? Yes. And she was looking it up online while I was talking to her, and she goes,

wow, they've got some great reviews. reviews, and those obviously are good panels. People like them. And, and I said, well, you know, again, that's the kind of company I work with. They don't offer anything that's not a good quality product. And what you were saying about microinverters versus an inverter, right? Not too many companies do that anymore, but I've recently run across customers having problems and they have a single inverter running their whole system. And that's bad because if any one of the panels goes down, the whole system does, right? Right. And if the inverter goes down, the whole system does. Microinverters has an inverter on every single solar panel. So if one goes out, it's only one

panel. It's not the whole system. And we now have connectivity to solar systems of our customers. So even before the customer knows, we know, and we create a ticket and send someone out to replace it or repair it, whichever that it requires. Okay. Well, we've only got about a minute left here for the time that we've been given. What are some of the, the biggest advancements that you see in the industry coming down the pipeline? Well, there's tons of them. We're seeing more and more. I've been studying lately on solar shingles. I have customers that have asked about solar shingles because Tesla makes them. And everybody's always, yeah, yeah, we want Tesla because it's the best brand. It's not. They've just done a good job of branding themselves. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so

they're creating these, but the downfall on that is that they don't last as long. They're not as efficient. And if they last 10 years, you only get warranted for 10 years. And our experience so far is they cost just as much as solar panels and they're not as durable. That's good information. Well, Alan, thank you so much for sitting down with us. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening. Thank you everybody for tuning in and sending in all your comments and questions. We appreciate everybody joining in the show and we'll hope you join us next time. Thank you.