Home solar systems are beautiful. Just ask anyone who has one. Modern, sleek, and efficient, they signal a shimmering, rebellious independence and--as anyone who’s crunched the numbers knows--home solar makes financial sense.
“Our market these days is 100 percent economically driven decision-makers,” said Marc Cléjan, the founder and chief executive of Southampton-based GreenLogic, the East End’s largest solar installer.
The boom in rooftop solar across the globe has led to more competition, innovation, and lower equipment and installation costs, all of which are driving the smart money to home-solar electric generation.
“The math just works,” Cléjan said of comparing the choice to remain on utility power versus switching to the sun.
American solar installations reached a record high in 2015, making solar energy the biggest source of new electricity generation last year. Although wind is the fastest-growing sustainable power source worldwide, in the United States it is solar, which has benefitted from tax credits and rebate programs.
Home system costs have dropped by an average of five percent in 2015 alone, according to industry experts. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and designers are scouring the market for ways to attract consumers with cheaper, better ways to save, building more handsome systems, and finding nifty approaches like batteries to be more fully energy independent.
This spring, Tesla rolled out a sleek, handsome Solar Roof that both converts the sun’s energy into electricity and serves as a roof tile. Combined with Tesla’s new compact Powerwall battery unit, the complete Tesla roof-and-battery system enables homeowners to juice their batteries by day and tap them when needed, during periods when the sun is not shining or in the event of an outage.
In a typically slick marketing campaign Tesla is banking on its stunning, compact, efficient designs. But the jury is still out. Tesla, Elon Musk’s company that also manufactures automobiles and has a showroom in East Hampton, is entering into a crowded and competitive market of rooftop systems and in-home battery backups. The cost of an installed Tesla Solar Roof is reportedly higher than the combined cost of installing a conventional roof and building a standard rooftop solar system. And several companies already offer discreet, sleek low-profile panels, challenging Tesla on style.
As for Tesla’s costly batteries, their main competitors are other battery-makers and fuel-powered generators—but mostly the electric grid itself. Under advantageous net-metering deals, homeowners with home-solar systems for the most part choose to remain connected to utilities like Long Island’s PSEG, essentially using the utility as a battery backup, for an annual hookup charge of about $12 per month.
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