Rant: My neighbor said solar panels are a scam, then his electric bill hit $300 in August

This guy Tom from down the street told me last spring that solar was overpriced garbage and I'd never break even. I went ahead anyway and got a 6kW system for my house in Phoenix, paid $14,000 after the tax credit. Now Tom's got $300 monthly bills in summer and my electric bill is basically zero, plus SRP actually pays me for extra power. Has anyone else had people try to talk them out of solar only to see the numbers work out totally different?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivan2112d ago

Jumped in on a similar debate with my father in law last month lol. Hes been bragging for years about how hes "too smart" to fall for solar salesmen but then I showed him the math on his own house. His bill hit $280 in July here in Texas and he spends like $3500 a year just on electricity. I told him my system was $11k after incentives and I save over $2k annually so payback is like 5 years. He went quiet real quick. The wild thing is he pays around $40k in total utility bills over 10 years while my panels will be paid off and then just printing savings. Nobody talks about the opportunity cost of just burning money on power you could be offsetting.

matthew_owens92d ago

Same thing happened with my own dad actually. I showed him my electric bill went from like $180 down to $12 and he still insisted I was just lucky. Man pays $4,000 a year to the grid and thinks I'm the sucker for having panels on my roof. I guess some people are just committed to being stubborn about it.