Going Solar in Saxony Estates – The Full Version

This applies narrowly to my neighbors. I will go into more details about my experience getting solar panels in this post. For some quick Q&A, please check out my quick read version.

I’ve wanted to go solar for a long time. My primary motivation was to reduce my carbon footprint, but I also needed it to be a sound enough financial decision. In 2022, things lined up to make it possible.

I started with some light online researching. Google figured out pretty quickly what I was interested in, and soon I saw nothing but solar ads on my phone for months. The majority of these seemed to be for arrangements where a company would own and install the panels on your house. I researched that option a little bit and decided that it wasn’t for me, and so I looked for companies that would allow me to own the panels.

I found several companies that served the St. Louis area, and I ended up selecting Astrawatt Solar because of their strong online reviews and BBB rating, pricing that seemed in line with my research, strong warranty, helpful and informative website, and a very responsive and knowledgeable salesperson.

We bought a solution without batteries. This means that our excess electricity generated during the day goes back out to the grid rather than into batteries. Ameren provides “net metering” where they calculate the amount of electricity consumed from the grid vs. the amount we provided to the grid and charge us for the “net” consumption for that month.

This does mean that we are still out-of-luck during a power outage, but that was not the primary goal for me. On the plus side: I don’t have the initial cost, physical presence, or eventual replacement cost of the batteries.

The panels, the micro-inverters, and the labor all have a 25-year warranty, so I can expect the system to last for a long time. The warranty also has a production guarantee (measured on average over a year) that the panels will produce at least 90% of the quoted amount over the 25-year term.

Our out-of-pocket will be $16K for a 7.2kW system + $3K to replace our home’s original Zinsco electrical panel, which we were planning to replace regardless due to problems we were starting to have with it.

The total out-of-pocket is reduced by a rebate from Ameren ($250 per kW through December 31, 2023) and a 30% federal tax credit.

The tax credit was recently extended through 2032, but it is not refundable, so make sure you have sufficient tax liability to take advantage of it. There is no Missouri state incentive program.

Financing is available and convenient with lenders that specialize in solar loans and use the panels as the collateral. We chose to go with a 10-year loan to spread out the cost. The loan payments have the built-in assumption that we will pay our credits towards the loan; if we don’t, our payments will go up in a year.

The way we sized our system and how net metering works, we expect to produce electricity through the winter and have Ameren pay us for the electricity. During the summer, we will have a much lower bill, but it won’t be zero because we aren’t covering our full consumption.

Ameren only pays the wholesale rate (3 to 4 cents per kWh) for the electricity that we sell back, but we pay several times that to Ameren for the electricity that we consume. That led us to keep our system more modest in size.

The total process took about 5 months from decision to system on. A few weeks of that was delay getting the process started because we were out of town and couldn’t set up the initial home walk-through and project kick-off.

Astrawatt did a great job setting expectations and providing a project timeline, and my experience followed pretty closely with the timeline they shared with me. It took a couple months for plans to be drawn up, approved, and to get the necessary permits. Saxony Estates and Manchester don’t have any specific regulations around roof mounted solar panels, so it was primarily St. Louis County.

Once the permits came through, the installation was scheduled pretty quickly. A truck dropped off solar panels one day, and the next day a crew showed up to install everything.

The power to the house had to be out for most of the day to accommodate the panel replacement (and waiting for Ameren to come back and turn it on). The panel installation was delayed over until after the weekend due to a mix-up with the plans (St. Louis County required the approved stamped plans and the on-site crew did not have that copy).

The panels are mounted on a frame, and the panels themselves actually sit an inch or two above the roof. The wiring goes through our attic and down some conduit on the outside to the micro-inverter panel and rapid shutdown switch mounted on our outside wall near the meter (and outside from our electrical panel).

This system uses micro-inverters for each panel so that a single failure doesn’t take down the whole system. And the system is tied into our home WiFi and a cloud-based monitoring system which lets us monitor our system health and production. With the micro-inverters, it is easier to spot problems with a specific panel.

After the system was installed, we had to wait for final St. Louis County inspection (within the next week) and then for Ameren to come inspect the system and install/configure our meter for net metering. The official timeline for Ameren to do that is a month or more, but they were out within a week.

Across this process, coordination and communication was generally pretty good from Astrawatt’s project management team. However, there were a couple of times where they didn’t seem to have the latest from St. Louis County or Ameren, and it we lucked out that someone was home when someone came by.

I really enjoy watching our dashboard right now during the winter, because it shows us as net exporting and “100% energy independence.” The weather has been cloudy this month, so we are a bit below the production that I was expecting, but I am hoping to see that evened out by some better-than-average periods throughout the year.

If you are interested in going solar in Saxony Estates, please let me know. I have had a very good experience with Astrawatt, and my salesperson is offering a $500 discount to you and a $500 bonus to us for any referrals. I’d love to see our neighborhood help drive the trend for cleaner energy.