In the second part of the Solar Journey series (read Part 1 here) I'll be going through the steps required for you to get solar panels at your home. I've tried to get as detailed as possible so you have a good understanding of the process.

1. Understand the basics of solar
After months of research, I had already a good understanding on the basics of solar. Moreover, my engineering background allowed me to understand better than most the technical aspects of this project, which although not necessary for installing, served me well to make a more informed decision.
There are a lot of educational resources out there (check this one) that will help you understand the benefits of solar, but here are the basics:

• Solar panel systems are a great way for you to save money, no matter what your budget is. It is a good investment that will for sure add value to your property
• Solar power systems can produce electricity for 25 or more years, backed by warranty and they are practically maintenance-free (in my experience, most installers will offer at least 10 year warranty service on the installation)
• Solar panels can be installed almost anywhere in the United States and they are tied to the electric grid and do not require batteries to store power
• Net metering allows you to store energy in the electric grid. When your solar panels produce more electricity than you need, that energy is sent to the grid in exchange for credits. At night, you pull energy from the grid and use these credits to offset the costs of that energy. Yearly, you can produce enough electricity to match your home’s electricity use for the entire year. However, the amount of electricity your solar system produce will vary throughout the year. Net metering helps you account for these differences by crediting you for the excess electricity your panels produce so you can use it later. ​In simple terms, the total energy you produce in a year minus your consumption results in serious money savings (or even profits if there is a generation excess) in your pocket.

What I did not know is how long it can actually take to get the system installed. In my particular case it took almost 6 months from start to end. I’ve been told that it’s usually faster but as I will explain below it did take a bit of time to get everything setup.

Time needed: I spend an afternoon on this. However, depending on how in-depth you want to go, this can take from a few minutes/hours to days of research.

3. Get proposals
There are so many different options out there that offer solar panels, and you might run into some of them if you go to your local Hardware store like HomeDepot, Lowe’s, etc., Big box retail like Walmart, Target or Costco (like I did) or you might get referrals from family or friends. But, if you don’t know where to start, I would recommend checking EnergySage (you can use this referral link for additional savings) to get proposals from different companies. As I mentioned in my previous post, they offer great educational resources, easy tools to estimate your home’s eligibility for solar and it can really help you get a competitive offer.
I ended up choosing a company called SolarMax, which I would definitely recommend as I had a great experience working with them.
No matter what options you are interested in exploring, make sure to at least get a couple of different options to compare pricing and equipment offered.

Time needed: this was really fast. Within hours I had the first quotes in my email inbox and within 48 hours I had all the quotes. Depending on the area you live this could take longer.

​How to Start?

Early in 2020, my wife and I bought a 2 bedroom condo (1,200sqf) in Aliso Viejo (Southern California), right before the pandemic started. After years of renting, this was the first home we owned (or at least own a mortgage). One of the items in the checklist we had while home shopping was that the community we were selecting allowed solar installations (not all of them do!). After moving in, right before the summer, we knew we had to wait at least a few months to get solar, so we could go through some billing cycles and we could understand our energy consumption.

About 6 months later, during one of our visits to Costco Warehouse, a rep from the Solar company Costco works with approached me and he explained how the general process of installing solar works. However, he pointed out that their company doesn’t work with condos due to the complications of a shared roof.

That afternoon I went to Tesla’s website (yes, they also install solar panels) to get an estimate on the cost of solar for our new home and was surprised of how easy it was to get it started with very little information which only required your personal info, address and your average electricity bill. However after doing more research on Tesla’s systems I quickly found that their service, quality of installation and support had a lot of bad reviews. I also found many ‘solar’ blogs which pointed out that many of the bigger solar companies don’t usually have good reviews as they mostly subcontract installers to do the work for them and lack the level of detail and trust smaller local companies often do provide.
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After much research, I found a website called EnergySage which seemed very promising. They have educational content and can get you quotes from multiple vendors. Basically, you provide your information, address and energy bill details (you can even upload a copy of your electricity bill) and they’ll post that as a request for installers in your area to provide you their offers. It was really easy and fast.

Within 48 hours I had received 6 different quotes. Their website allowed me to do a side by side comparison that included information about the offered equipment, the system size (generated energy capacity) and pricing, with return of investment calculations. They also offered information about financing or leasing options.

With that information in hand, I was ready to start my journey to solar which I will describe next. Since this is a large investment and it is process that usually takes several months to complete, you want to be as informed as possible on how everything works and what steps you will be taking.

In my next blog post, I will describe step by step how the process works.

In the meantime if you want to start exploring your options, feel free to use the referral link below:
http://www.energysage.com/?rc=e1.wc2ls2

See you on the next post (read part 2 here)!

Growing up in rural Guatemala (Central America), I always felt close to nature and enjoyed all kinds of outdoor activities together with my family and friends. From an early age, I learned in school about basic earth sustainability concepts and some of the problems that threatened our planet resources, but I don’t think I ever really understood the importance, magnitude or urgency of the problem until a later phase of my life.  Having experienced up close the devastating effects of ‘Hurricane Mitch’ in the late 90s, I felt for the first time the true power of nature and how hopeless most of our communities are when facing a catastrophe of this force.

​During my early 20’s, I had the opportunity to expose myself to documentaries such as Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” film, which inspired me to educate myself better in the climate change challenges our planet is facing and led me to start taking individual actions that will reduce my carbon impact. But it was with major global events like the 2015 Paris agreement, the 2016 U.S. elections, and the past year climate crisis global movements, that I finally decided that individual actions were not enough and that I could no longer sit on the sidelines and just wait for someone else to take action.

This is why I decided to join the Climate Reality program so I can get the knowledge, tools, and access to the network of global leaders so we can all work to accelerate the progress on the climate crisis fight and achieve the goal of keeping Earth below the 1.5 degrees temperature increase and create a more sustainable world that we can pass on to our future generations.