Harmon Solar Podcast
The solar energy sector in Arizona is currently oversaturated, which has led to a scarcity of transparency. In response, we've created a podcast to provide an honest perspective on going solar in the state. Join us as we explore the intricacies of utilities, equipment, processes, and more. Our primary objective is to educate and empower you to make informed decisions on your solar journey.
Harmon Solar Podcast
Let's Talk Solar Proposal Design and Creation
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Ready to illuminate your understanding of solar proposal design and creation? We promise, that by the end of this episode, you'll have absorbed a wealth of knowledge about the ins and outs of what is on a proposal and why the system is designed the way it is thanks to our special guest, Daniel Reese, an 11-year veteran at Harman Solar. We delve into the realm of solar offsets, utility bills, and the strategic placement of solar panels on the roof, as well as address potential obstacles that might arise during the design of a solar array and how to transform these challenges into opportunities. Don't miss out on Daniel's insights on how to create a cost-effective and aesthetically pleasing solar system. Light up your life with the power of solar today!
Chapters:
7:41 Solar Proposal Overview
20:49 Understanding Solar Offsets
35:31 Roof Placement in Solar Panel Installation
46:56 Shade Impact and Panel Installation Factors
52:04 Solar Panel Placement Considerations and Obstacles
Welcome to another edition of the Harman Solar podcast. I'm Rob from mono, your host of UPSLs and marketing at Harman Solar, and with me again my co-host, ben Walsh Lager. You all know him as Mr Everything, ben. Welcome again. Thanks for having me again. So you know the question that's coming. Here it comes, ben. We had, so let's go through it now. We had business card, yep, we had pamphlet. There it is. We had newspaper scroll, and where are we today?
Speaker 1Choose your own adventure book. What Choose your own adventure book? Choose your own adventure book. Yeah, the books where you know turn to page 13 to turn left down the memo.
Speaker 2Okay, you have kids. That's pretty much my, that's a kid thing, right? Yeah, yeah. So we're at an adventure book. Yeah, okay, I can't wait till next.
Speaker 1Cause that's kind of what. That's kind of what it is with me. I'm choosing my own adventure in the solar industry Like what should I do next? What should I add next?
Speaker 2Okay, it's been a long day for me and then we've been together all day, so that's scary, yeah, it's, it's scary, but we've had a good day. So today, Ben, we're going to talk the solar proposal and within that proposal we're going to. So what we're going to do is we're going to show you guys what a proposal looks like. We got some slides of that. If you're on Spotify or iTunes, obviously you're not going to see that. We'll kind of talk through it. So you understand what that what's on the pages. And then we are going to really focus on the actual design of the system, the solar arrays and stuff. I'm going to. You'll see what we mean by ways that are raised.
Speaker 1Yeah, these are customized proposals, not cookie cutter not everyone gets the same thing. This is for you in your house, right? Exactly.
Speaker 2So we're going to, we're going to go into one customized one and then we're going to talk, we're going to show you some different ones on some different roofs and kind of give the the wise. And to do this we've brought in the guy from Harmon Solar. He's the guy that's been doing this for a while and he will introduce him in a second, but this is his world and he does this for our dealer partners, for our internal sales teams. He's everything's solar proposal. Yep, Right, you used to work really closely with them actually.
Speaker 2And then you guys got along so well that you left Exactly Right.
Speaker 1So actually I actually owe all not all, but most of what I know in the solar industry to him. He taught me a lot about solar and design.
Speaker 2I cannot believe that you're actually giving him this. I got to give credit.
Speaker 1Wow, credit is due, that's really good, let's bring him on.
Speaker 2Welcome, daniel, to the Harmon Solar podcast. How you doing.
Speaker 3Doing good. Thank you Good.
Speaker 2Did you hear what Ben just had to say?
Speaker 3I think my headphones are working.
Speaker 2I'll repeat it.
Speaker 3Never, never heard of compliment in my life. Never Like never.
Speaker 1No, it's true you. I credit a lot that I've learned in solar because of you. Raph was supposed to teach me a lot of these things that he didn't, so here we go.
Speaker 3Fall back on Daniel. It's on Ralph's list. Right, right, just fall back on Daniel, it's you know how you do this.
Speaker 1What does this mean? You know things like that, and Daniel was always there to answer all those questions over the all the years.
Speaker 2So okay, I'm still in shock. I'll have to watch this over a few different times.
Speaker 3We can edit it out.
Speaker 2Yeah, I might have to, I might have to. So okay, daniel, so let's just give us, go ahead and tell us how long you, how long have you been a Herman?
Speaker 3coming up on 11 years.
Speaker 2That's longer than me. Yeah, and I'm going to say it again Every every podcast we talk about this, we bring in somebody from Harmon five years, seven years, 11 years, 13 years, 12 years, whatever. So Daniel's been around a long time. He's probably one of the longest tenured employees there in the sales side besides myself, and Dennis.
Speaker 3Yeah, dennis, and I think you were there. I barely started before you, right, wow, but you brought me in.
Speaker 2I did bring. I did bring him in. I take credit for that. Just like you took credit for Gio, I take credit for Daniel. There you go, good job, sometimes All right. So you've been there a long time. So tell us a little bit about what you were doing before you got to Harmon and then talk about the role that you have at Harmon.
Speaker 3Before Harmon my wife was in the military and we were stationed in England, and so when we came back here she went to Korea and figured I might as well find me a job. Okay, All right. So our kids started playing baseball and stuff. So I knew baseball was going to come up in this past year, had to had to pay for it, so started looking for a job, met you.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's right. In baseball we met right. I had a club going and he brought his kid over, and there's an interesting story behind that which we won't get into. But that's right. That's how we met and you started working with us and you were like me, just kind of learning the industry and we kind of. Together, we learned it Right and 11 years later, here we are.
Speaker 1Yeah, I started off, still learning data entry.
Speaker 2That's right you did. You were just doing purely data entry. That's right. When we very first started, wow yeah, and then it just kind of went from there, so yeah, so it's been around a long time. And so talk to talk about the role that you have today in Hartman.
Speaker 3Today I'm responsible for doing 99.9% of the designs and proposal creations for the company Okay.
Speaker 2So any proposal pretty much that comes through into the company, whether it's through one of our dealer partners or it's one of our internal sales people goes to you. Yes, You're our safety valve.
Speaker 3I do everything to ensure that what we do isn't bad for the customer.
Speaker 1Yeah, so that's right If you are a Harman customer or potential customer and you have a proposal in front of you. I've touched. That's the guy that did it.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's my fault. Yeah, name your face. It's my fault, so if anything's wrong flash his email address and phone number.
Speaker 2So and you might ask okay, so proposal is a pretty broad word why do we even do a proposal, right? So obviously we have to come into your home with something right Typically and sometimes we come into your home with nothing, get the information and then Daniel's doing the proposal on the back end of that right. So proposals are how we kind of show you, you know, what solar could do for you based on the information that you give to us. It's so critical when you talk to Geo, like we talked about in the sales podcast when you're talking to Geo, that you're getting her all the information that she needs. And that information goes to guys like Dennis, who then go to Daniel.
Speaker 1Daniel's like the cook in the kitchen.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1Like he doesn't know what to make until he gets those ingredients to the order.
Speaker 2That's true, yeah, and we can kind of talk about proposals have come a long way. Right, I mean, when we first started, I believe it was like an Excel.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was basically an Excel spreadsheet trying to guess what the new bill is going to be.
Speaker 1Yeah, we get the information, and then we have to tell the customer okay, you got to wait like two, three days so we can build this, because it you know, we didn't have the technology back then. Yeah, it just took time to put everything together, the kind of the old school way. And now now we're doing proposals in 10 seconds or less, 10 seconds, maybe 10 minutes With the right information, we could do it in 10 minutes, yeah, which that's pretty amazing from where we've been.
Speaker 2That's crazy, right, and so that's, that's all Daniel's world. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to we're going to skim through a proposal, just so, if you, if you go through a appointment with us to give you an idea, hey, this is what they're going to bring to me, this is what they're going to show me, and so we're going to kind of just lay out the proposal for you, and then we're really going to focus on the, the, really the system details. We're going to focus on the designs that we put together. How, why, all those questions, give you the why, so you understand why we do what we do versus what other people might do, cause there's a lot to talk about on that side of it too.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, a lot, and I'll. I'll be honest, the proposal may come off as intimidating because there's numbers and charts and data and marketing information. Right, it might be a little bit overwhelming, but that's what we're here today. We're going to show you that this is what all that means and here's how to explain it, so that way, when you do get a proposal from us or other companies, you know what you're getting into. We're going to ease the fear Exactly.
Solar Proposal Overview
Speaker 2For you, for those of you that are that are watching on YouTube, you can see this is the proposal. This is basically the very first page that you get and we'll skim through this real quick and it just basically it's not, that's not your house and we've marked away some information so you can see this is an actual proposal that we gave. So this is a Harman proposal, has a system size on it. We'll get into that, and one of the things these proposal companies do is they always throw in, you know, tons of carbon that you're offsetting and acres of forest and things like that. That's great.
Speaker 2If you're all about green and you're all about wanting to save the world and all that, then they just kind of want to show you that most people kind of just go past that. But it's just depends on you. I mean, it's there, it's there for you.
Speaker 1Sure, you want to see what this is. There's an aspect is there, but most people go solar to save money right. Not to save trees. Right, let's green dollar, bills green dollar bills.
Speaker 2So the next page is a cost analysis, and what this does it's um. It shows you your utility bill over time based on an estimation. So we're typically estimating about what is it? 5%. 5% utility increase year over year. Yes and the proposal is a 25 year kind of a look right 25 year estimate yeah.
Speaker 2So yeah, so understand that and that's changed. I mean, they actually started off when we were first doing it as a 20 year estimate and now they've gone to 25. I think at one point they even went to 30 and we pushed them back.
Speaker 3Yeah, you can still show it 30, but it's at that point it's doesn't really make any sense, right, yeah?
Speaker 1So people really don't care about the first few years. One of my saving what's going to happen in the next, you know, five ish years, let's. Let's look at that.
Speaker 2So, and this is kind of showing you that when you look at it, it kind of it's an estimation of what you're paying year over year, year one, year five, year 10, and what the kilowatt hour rate which we've caught that conversation on a few of these podcasts what we anticipate the rate will be based on history. Yeah, and you know, it seems like, especially now, utility rates are increasing even higher and even faster. In the last few years. Srp, for the first time in I don't know how long, just increased their rate 9.6% just six, seven days ago. So we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in Oklahoma and our other operation out there. So this kind of gives you an idea of that.
Speaker 1Yeah, Again. All estimates, all based on historical data, projecting them you know, the future is just based off of how you use power, politics involved and all that stuff and what they're going to do. So nothing is set in stone, right?
Speaker 2Next page is the system design. We will focus more on this. We'll come back to this as we go through this, but, as you can see, that picture of that home and those trees, this is what Daniel does I mean. So this is your, this is your bread and butter. You're the guy putting this together, deciding where they fit, why they fit all that stuff. So this is just a high level of hey, this is your system size. This is your equipment. This is what we think it's going to produce, based on all the back end voodoo, math, right, right, okay. So when we've passed that, real quick production and consumption is your next page. This is basically showing you how much energy you're using, based on the data you've given us, and what we think this system, or what this, with this proposal tool, thinks this system will produce, based on the data we put in there.
Speaker 1This is a very important slide right here because, again, this is the information that you provided us. Daniel's not making up these numbers. You know this is information that you said hey, this is how much I used each month or the year. I need a system that's going to help lower my bills. Based on that, whether it be APS or SRP, Daniel figures out how is that going to be accomplished.
Speaker 3Right, and that can only be accomplished if I have actual usage.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So you're saying you need data? Yes, Accurate data More information the better, which is why GEO is asking you that question up front. We need that information, which is why, if Dennis or somebody's in your home, we need that information.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't get why a lot of homeowners are hesitant on giving their. We're not asking for a social security number or anything. We just need to see how much do you use, how much power do you use so Daniel can build a proposal Right, and they're hesitant. I don't, you know, we're only as good as the data you give us, maybe down in the comments and YouTube. Why are you hesitant?
Speaker 2Yeah, you know what I would really like to know why are you hesitant? I would love to have somebody respond and just tell us why. What's the hesitancy? What's the issue? We're not looking to do anything. We're just looking to build you a system that meets your needs, right?
Speaker 3We don't know what your needs are Car insurance and saying, okay, what kind of car? Well, I don't want to tell you that Big difference between a Lamborghini and a Ford. Tempo right, it's a drive-by-Ford.
Speaker 2Do they?
Speaker 1have a Tempo still, I don't think they do. No, they weren't no In 1994. I think your insurance company pays you to drive a Ford.
Speaker 2This next page is something you'll see on every proposal. It's called the cost of not going solar and just gives you an idea of, hey, if you do nothing, this is what your bill is going to look like in 25 years. And then, if you do something about it and go solar, this is what your situation is going to look like in 25 years. Again, off about a 5% use, about a 5% increase in rates over that, year over year. It just kind of gives you that assumption of what it could look like and the numbers can be pretty staggering sometimes when you look at these.
Speaker 2Okay and this kind of ties into that. It's just kind of breaking it out year by year your utility bill over time. It has the cost of doing nothing versus what if you did something, and you can see the disparity in the graph and how it goes up every single year, year over year. The little green if you're looking on YouTube, you can see that's if you're going solar. If you didn't go solar, the light green is where your utility bill is estimated to be year over year.
Speaker 2So again a significant gap in savings.
Speaker 1Let's talk about this for a little bit.
Speaker 1How long have you been living in Arizona? Ralph, 11 years. Daniel, 12 years, 12 years. I've been here pretty much all my life. Have you seen utility rates increase since you've been here? Yes, yeah, it happens. So those homeowners who are just moving to Arizona, they don't know this, they don't know how. You know what utility company I have and how is it going to increase. And you know I've only been here a year. What can I expect in the future? This is basically our model that says this is what you can kind of expect here in Arizona. Yeah, I mean, and those homeowners that have been here for 10, 20 years, you've probably seen if you don't have solar, your bills have gone up over that time, the best analogy and Daniel was actually the one that gave the analogy was the gas station analogy.
Speaker 2I'll get you to talk about it. Go ahead. What's the analogy?
Speaker 3So, basically, if, back 20 years ago, if you could have went to the gas station and said I want to buy a thousand gallons of gas a year for the next 20 years at 99 cents, would you have done it?
Speaker 1Yeah, of course yeah, can I still do that?
Speaker 3Well, you can with solar, yeah.
Speaker 1Well, gas station, it's the same idea, though, right, it's the same idea.
Speaker 2It's totally the same idea. If you could have locked in that rate back then, you absolutely would have Sure. So why not lock in your utility rate right now? In a sense Lock in. What I mean by that is whatever you're going to produce at a certain rate, not what you're going to get from the utility, because that's going to always go up.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's just the way it is. But those again homeowners are hesitant. They're like I don't know, Maybe gas prices, you know, will stay around 99 cents a gallon for the next 20 years. Sure, Well, that didn't happen. Have you met Biden Okay?
Speaker 2So next slide is you get into basically the investment and the incentives. So there's always going to be a summary page, whether it's cash, and this is a cash example of what the base cost is for the system price. It talks about the net investment because it's going to take a look at your federal income tax credit, the FTA, the federal ITC, and you can see, in this scenario it drops the price from 35, 160 to 24, 612, because there's an assumed $10,500 income tax credit. We're not going to really get into credits and liabilities and all that stuff. That'll be a different podcast we may do one day.
Speaker 3Or we'll just have Dennis come back and talk about it incessantly.
Speaker 2Right, but this kind of just shows you just a base versus a net on a cash situation. The next one's the exact same slide, except this gives you an example of if you were to finance it. So this is through one of the finance partners we have and it kind of shows you what the monthly payment is. I can real, I'll touch real, real briefly, I don't want to get into this, but it shows you basically the first 18 months what your payment is and then, in solar loans typically, what happens is at month 19,. You have to reamortize the loan because you either pay the tax credit back into the loan and the payment stays the same, or you don't pay the tax credit back and the payment jumps because they basically have to put that percentage of that ITC into the loan and increases your loan size. So something I'd love to have a podcast on one day, because a lot of people won't ever talk about this and it's very important when you're talking about solar financing.
Speaker 3This is not what this podcast is about.
Speaker 2But just to show you that this stuff is, it's on the proposal. Well, it's on our proposal.
Speaker 1It is on our proposal.
Speaker 2Keep that in mind, if you are getting proposals from other companies.
Speaker 1You know. Ask them for. You know the full information. What's my loan going to be? You know, before and after tax credits and things like that.
Speaker 2Make sure they're disclosing not just the fantastic great numbers but all the numbers, Because I cannot tell you how many times we get a phone call from somebody that bought solar from somebody else and they can't understand why their payment went from 230 to 350 a month 19. No one ever explained it to them and they didn't read the paperwork. You got to read what you signed. Number one, real important. And number two ask questions.
Speaker 2That's why we're doing this but that's a different podcast anyway, but just want to show you that we do show it. These next two pages are basically the layout of the finances, so it shows a 25 year. There's 21 on this first page, there's four in the next page and you can kind of get an idea of you know what the system to produce, what the rate should be, the kind of savings you're going to see annually. And on the far right is where you're really focused on the return on investment and you can see in this cash situation here I think it's year five, actually year six they start seeing savings. So after five years this system here that I'm showing paid for itself in the next 20 years is all your savings accumulating up year by year.
Speaker 1These are all assumptions as well. These are just estimates. This is assuming that you're using the same amount of power every year. Your usage isn't increasing or decreasing your systems working as it should. You know all these, all these things, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 2But again, we're showing you this information that's in there and the next page is just the last five years, the last four years, whatever it is, and we'll pass that. Then there's a detail page that basically it just breaks down some, some utility information as far as an annual bill, consumption, all the things that we've been talking about, but it puts it in a nice little Page, I guess a little summary page a little summary page of the utility stuff, the system sizes, the cost.
Speaker 2It just kind of puts it all together. So kind of a cool page to kind of go through and see. Yep.
Speaker 1I like the cost for estimated cost per kilowatt hour. That's something I usually bring up a lot with my customers. Yeah, looking at that, because that's your basically your price at the pump. You know if gas is $5 per gallon you want to know well, how much am I paying per kilowatt hour With my utility company before and after solar.
Speaker 2So I always show that yeah, this one's really good where there's customers only paying 5.7 cents. So that's really that's. You lock that in. That's cheaper than 16 cents. Yep, okay, so I mean that's. Those are the basic pages of a proposal. I mean that that's the information that you're gonna see from Harmon and hopefully from other people, if you don't see some of that information we do have. We have seen other companies that will hide certain pages Because they don't want to show it, because maybe it's not the most attractive thing in the world.
Speaker 1Yeah, nobody wants to see a negative savings the first year, so let's just delete that right.
Speaker 2Let's take away the negative savings for 13 straight years and then, oh, by the way, now it starts working. So yeah, so that just gives you an idea of it. Now we're gonna get to where Daniel really I mean he does. He helps generate that proposal and it's really it's a tool that's doing that and Daniel's our tool. And we have another tool that Dennis was a tool, daniel's a tool.
Speaker 1Welcome.
Speaker 2I kind of like calling you a tool, but he's our, our person that's now gonna put all that together and throw it in the system. But before that, once he has the information, he's gonna create what we call the industry is a solar array.
Speaker 3So explain to us what a solar array is Basically a solar array is a layout on the roof of what where the panels are gonna be located. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty good yeah.
Speaker 1I was hoping for a nine-page definition, but One sentence I guess we'll do.
Speaker 3That's basically it. That's where the panels are going.
Speaker 2Thanks for that, daniel.
Speaker 1So we have an image up right that people can see we do so before we get to that.
Speaker 2So that's one in, that's one array that is one array, so before we get too detailed into that, let's talk about what info you need to actually get to this point, right?
Speaker 3Most important thing is the address, because we don't know where that would make sense home is gonna be right, then we don't know where to put the the panels. That, yeah. The second thing probably a second most important thing would be the usage. Okay, because we want to know exactly how much power in the last 12 months you've used, right, that'll give us a baseline of how much power we need to produce. With that is we need to know if you're gonna be at making any life changes. Are you gonna have more kids? Do you have babies right now? And they get ready to be teenagers? Because, as we all know, teenagers use electronics. The more electronics a teenager uses, the more power you're using. They've never shut doors, ac is always running in.
Speaker 1A new city is going up.
Speaker 3If we know that information ahead of time we can oversize and kind of future-proof the size of the solar system a little bit.
Speaker 2Makes sense, or maybe they want to get an IV car in the future. Maybe they're gonna build a pool, right, right, all those different things.
Speaker 1The more information the better. You can never give us too Much information. I don't think Daniel or I will ever go.
Understanding Solar Offsets
Speaker 3No, no, no, stop, that's not, that's not. You know now, always more information to better, especially when it comes to lifestyle.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's your money, so and with usage comes a decision of offset. Right, Correct. So let's talk about offset.
Speaker 3So offset. It's two different things. Aps and SRP are kind of. They're totally different animals when it comes to solar right APS we want at least a hundred percent. That way you pay the very least amount of money to APS, 100% of what, 100% of their current usage or projected use projected you okay.
Speaker 1So in other words, if you're using 20,000 kilowatt hours, you want a system that produces 20,000 kilowatt hours.
Speaker 2That's, that's how we get the hundred percent now wait, we talk about this, so let's just be really clear. So if you're saying, if I get, if I use 20,000 kilowatt hours and I get a system that gives me 20,000 kilowatt hours, I'm not gonna have a bill with the utility company, no, that's not true. Why not? I'm using all the power I just have everything.
Speaker 1There's other, there's a lot of other factors that that go into that. Hmm, one of your analogies that I like what you say is first of all, the Sun doesn't just sit over your house all day long, it moves, so there's nighttime usage and.
Speaker 1I know, and that we also have seasons, because I'm sorry flat earthers, but our there's round, so we have seasons, right? So all those play into your utility bill of how you use power, when you use power, when solar production is actually happening. You know things like that. So it's, and it also depends on your utility and how much you are sending back to the grid and how much they're buying it from, right? So a lot of moving pieces in there.
Speaker 2So important I want to make that point to everybody that's listening is that a hundred percent doesn't mean there's no utility bill.
Speaker 1Right, it's a hundred percent offset of your usage, right? A hundred percent offset of your bill.
Speaker 2Exactly, yeah, that's the best way to say it.
Speaker 3Yeah, okay even if you don't buy any power from APS, you're still gonna have a bill. You have an account fee charge, disribution charge. There's still charges there that have nothing to do with the power itself.
Speaker 2And I think what one of the people, one argument you're gonna get from from some other solar companies is well, we're gonna build this hundred and fifty percent offset system and you're gonna have all this extra power in that you're never gonna need what you're not gonna need it in some months, right, right? So that's gonna create credits, and so by creating those credits, when you get to the summer months, you'll actually be ahead of the game, is that?
Speaker 1true, yes, so no, I don't know if Daniel want to expand on it or yeah.
Speaker 3So it would in a lot of cases that does make sense to do that, because I know when we got solar first thing, my wife did that AC 78 to 72. I remember that you're gonna use more power anytime you get solar. Oh, I'm gonna live the same. I'm gonna live the same. No, everybody.
Speaker 1Oh.
Speaker 3It's been nice I haven't had a bill. Let me turn to AC down a little bit more and you forget it, and then you just leave it there for now on. So you're gonna use more power 99% of the time after you get solar. Yeah, so it makes sense to over build it a little bit, but you don't want to go so big as where now you're paying Ten cents, six cents, for your solar, but now APS is buying it back at eight cents right.
Speaker 3So you don't want to have them buy it back at a much lower rate, because now you just spent money to not save any money.
Speaker 2So let's make that point and that's like the best point so far. The conversation is there is a buyback rate right, Especially in an APS. It fluctuates year to year. They can. Right now I think it's at 7.9 or something like that seven something right?
Speaker 1They just, they just dropped it.
Speaker 2Yeah, they just dropped it in. Every year it's been dropping 10%. So you have to account for the fact that if it's costing you 10 cent for every solar kilowatt hour that you produce and you're only getting Seven and a half cents, let's say, when they buy it back, then maybe a bigger system is not a great idea because you're losing two and a half cent on every kilowatt hour, right? Let's talk SRP. Their buyback rate is 2.81 cents, right? So that's why you don't ever want to get this huge systems in SRP, because you're, but you're gonna lose. Let's say eight cents. Right, every kilowatt, are you? The goal is to save money.
Speaker 2Not spend more buy as much power from them as possible because it's so cheap, right, right. So We've kind of talked on that stuff before. I know we haven't done an APS podcast yet we will, but it's so critical when you're talking offset to understand these things, because a lot of guys want to come in and give you this massive system. And why do they want to do that?
Speaker 1to make more money, exactly.
Speaker 2They get paid based. Their commission is based on the size of the system more panels, more money for every panel is another $100 to them.
Speaker 3Let's say I have to look at it. Aps is basically like SRP in the sense that you want to offset all the expensive Right power that you're buying from APS right. So if you can knock off all the on peak time the was it a four to seven. Now it is knocked down most of that.
Speaker 1Now you're paying less money to APS for the power You're not doing right, because even if you can't get a hundred percent offset because of your you know roof size or different, you know, wherever you can't, you know you can't put panels in certain places which will and I will get into, you know at, your goal is to hopefully at least get some of it. You know, if it was a 10 or 15 percent offset, then it's probably not in your best interest to do it because you're not offsetting the most expensive part of the Day, you're only offsetting a tiny portion of it. But go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3Ideally we Try to get anywhere between 65 and like 120 percent. That's usually like the golden zones that you want to be 120 because count for people going to turn the AC down a little bit, gonna use a little bit more power and then 65. That way, if we can't Offset all their power, then we want to do as best we can to not offset all the expensive on peak time.
Speaker 1Yeah, which goes into which I've mentioned many times not everyone should get solar, but everyone should take a look at solar. You know, if you're one of those people that you know you're only able offset 20% of your power, well, guess what? You're not. You're not a good fit, so don't get solar, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2I always think back to when we first started. This is probably 10 years ago, nine years ago and there was this guy from another company that pitched this customer solar and he pitched them a 25% offset because the guy's peak was 20. She's peak power was 25%, yeah, and he said that'll cover all your peak. And I made the comment to the customer, said so what you're telling me Is the Sun's gonna sit at noon all day to give you that 25%. And that's what the guy was basically pitching to him. Yeah, basically he was telling him that without saying that stupid thing. I remember that customer and I was like no, this is terrible for you.
Speaker 2But just anyway, I said I always think back to that.
Speaker 1That was hilarious yeah to go into more depth of the off offset. So offset is just like a math equation if your system is producing 20,000 kilowatt hours and you use 20,000 kilowatt hours, that's 100%, because 20,000 divided by 20,000 Times 100, 100%. But in the next year, if you decide to be a snowbird and you go on vacation You're gone for six months out of the year and your usage drops to 10,000 kilowatt hours, your system still producing 20,000, so it's no longer 100% offset. Now You're at 200% offset. Yeah, because your usage dropped right.
Speaker 1And then, or maybe the following year, if your usage decided to go up to 30,000, well, it's no longer 100% offset anymore. It was 100% offset in the beginning because that's what your historical usage was. But whatever you do after that, that's completely up to you. Your system's gonna produce X amount. And if you decide to bump your usage up because you'd like to turn your AC down a little bit, and now you're using 30% or, excuse me, a 30,000 kilowatt hours, well, you're no longer at 100%, right you're. You know You're at a 50% because of your how you use your offset and your power will build whatever you want.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, we're gonna tell you if what you're asking for is probably not a good idea, but it's up to you. I mean we can only give you advice and then you do what you want. Yeah, and that's how some people are. They just like I don't, I don't care, this is what I want, because this is what everybody else will tell me.
Speaker 3Well, build whatever they want, but not necessarily sell what they want true. I'll show them anything they want to do.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3I will never send contracts for something that's not gonna make sense.
Speaker 2Yeah, we won't do that. We were not gonna, we're not gonna sell you something that's gonna hurt you. Yeah, do you want to look at what a?
Speaker 1bad idea, looks like here you go.
Speaker 3I've done that before. Here's a bad idea.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're not gonna let you sign it, though.
Speaker 2We actually have sent out a document to have person sign to say if you really want to buy this. This document basically says this is a really bad idea, it's not gonna save you money, but this is what you want and we totally disagree with you and I think we've anyone ever seen that? No, no one's signed it.
Speaker 1Yeah, I know, We've actually sent that out. Oh wait a minute, maybe not.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean because we just don't want that, because we know what's going to happen. A year later You're going to be on the phone talking to Ben going. Why'd you sign?
Speaker 1me this yeah, that's when I pull up that paper and go why did you sign this? Yeah, we clearly stated we did not want this Right exactly.
Speaker 2So making the point here that usage and offset are the two key critical things that you need to do anything Right. What else do you need? So I know obviously you want to know the equip. Some people are requesting certain kind of equipment sometimes.
Speaker 3Yeah, so that doesn't come around as much anymore. About five, six years ago there used to be a pretty big disparity on how equipment was made and the quality of it. Now it's tightened up, the competition is tightened up, so most of the equipment is fairly the same. It's within like one or two percent.
Speaker 1I do remember those old days People didn't want certain panels because they wanted this the high end panels, the Cadillac panels and all this, and now it's just like they're all pretty much the same. So there you go.
Speaker 3Ultimately, you're buying power. You're buying what the sun is producing for you. Do you care if it came from a hamster in a hamster wheel? Or do you want a Lamborghini? Yeah, I mean as long as you're getting what you paid for. That's an old reference. I remember that it really doesn't matter. I kind of want a Lamborghini, though.
Speaker 1We actually made this.
Speaker 3Remember we made this sheet with the hamster and the hamster wheels on the roof. That was so funny, because those are leases.
Speaker 2Because in the lease situation equipment doesn't matter, it's just a matter of the pentakillowatts, yeah, the production you're producing. So if it could be hamsters up there doing it that's great, and whatever it is it is.
Speaker 2So I would say the one thing where maybe there's a tiny differential would be the inverters, and now we offer three different types of inverters that we go with. So there's the end phase, and we need to do a podcast on this stuff? Sure, we will. There's the end phase, there's the TGO and there's the Tesla inverters, and they all do have different. They're unique in certain ways.
Speaker 3Yeah, but the warranties?
Speaker 2now they're very similar.
Speaker 3The warranties are very similar. So again, it doesn't really matter. If they're going to stand behind their product, we're going to stand behind it as well. Comes down to pricing too.
Speaker 2It does come down, but we get a lot of people who come in. I want this inverter, I want that yeah sure, sure, we'll get it for you. Yeah, whatever you want, you've got to pay for it. That's the bottom line. And then, what other information do you need?
Speaker 3How they want to pay. Do they want to finance it? Do they want to lease it? Do they want to pay cash? Do they have no idea? Because a lot of times people don't know. They say, oh, I want to pay cash, but they don't really have a good knowledge of how much a solar system costs. So we obviously going to have the other options ready for them, that way they can see.
Speaker 1I thought it was free.
Speaker 3Yeah, because everybody wants the free solar Interesting. All the ads say free solar.
Speaker 2Free solar.
Speaker 1No money down and it's free.
Speaker 2And I know when Dennis was there he talked about how he goes into the home, sometimes with two or three different things.
Speaker 1And he would bring all of them in there. The buffet of options.
Speaker 2And we'll give you a buffet if that's what you want. We're not going to just say, like you had said in that podcast, this is what we do, this is what we sell, this is what you're buying. Now, we don't do that, but a lot of companies there are companies out there that do that, absolutely do that.
Speaker 1Which is a nice thing about our digital proposal. We have that little dropdown where you can click Do you want to cash? Do you want to finance these terms on this?
Speaker 2We can magically change it right in front of you Exactly. Yeah, we've never do that before, right.
Speaker 1A few years ago it was more of a oh, you want to do that, well, let me get back to you tomorrow and figure out the new numbers.
Speaker 2OK, that's pretty much everything you need, right.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2OK.
Speaker 3So how much do they use and how do they want to pay?
Speaker 2So now, you have the why's of things that we need and why, so now you can get a good feel for why we ask these questions. We're not just asking because we have nothing better to do, right. We just want to do it right. Daniel gets lonely and I will tell you that if another company Daniel gets lonely he probably doesn't.
Speaker 2But there's other companies that probably won't even ask you half that stuff because they just want to put a proposal together and shove it down your throat Right. We're going to sell you this cool little system that they're selling everybody for this price. No, that's not what you want to do.
Speaker 1What if they don't have that information? I just moved into the home. Well, is Daniel proficient enough to estimate that? Let's find out.
Speaker 3I don't know if I'm actually proficient. I like to think so. I've been doing it for quite a while and we have a lot of data that says certain square footage home uses about so much when they have found me size of so much. But that's also why, if you just moved in, we definitely need to know OK, where do you keep your AC at? Where do you want to keep your AC at? Because a lot of people, even right now, they'll keep it at 80 because they don't want to pay a $600 electric bill, but they want to keep it at 72. So if they only tell us they keep it at 80, now the system is going to be too small because they really wanted it at 72. So if they give us what their wants are not necessarily what they're currently using, but also what they want to do, which is very important.
Speaker 2And I'm going to tell you this, this is really important. If you do a certain system size now, thinking I could just add a panel or two or three later, let me tell you the cost is ridiculous to do something like that.
Speaker 2You do not want to be in that scenario. Let's try to get the right information now and put what you need now. And if you're thinking I'm going to be doing this or that in the next year or two, let's account for it now, because later on when you come back and say, hey, I want to add three panels, and we give you a price, and you look at us and go are you out of your minds?
Speaker 1No, we're not. It's just expensive Because there's fixed costs. Whether you get one panel or a hundred panels, there's still fixed costs that have to be absorbed, so let's not go down that road and play that game.
Speaker 2There's people that do that and it's always a shock when they come back.
Speaker 1I get that a lot when we go to the home shows. People come up to me and they're like hey, how much for a solar system. I get a 2,000 square foot home and I'm supposed to just magically come up with a number.
Speaker 3One million dollars.
Speaker 1So, just like Daniel said, I start asking questions Well, how old is a home, how long have you been there? Things like that. I need all that information first so we can get it to Daniel to make a educated you know.
Speaker 2You know what you should do. You should carry dice and when they ask that question, pull them out. Is it a?
Speaker 3roll it, throw it against the wall.
Speaker 1It's that much, I don't know. Seven.
Speaker 2So OK, so that's all the information we need for the most part. I think we hit that pretty hard. Now let's talk about the actual design, and there's a lot of whys to that right Things that we look for.
Speaker 1Yes, so we've got all the information. Daniel has it all Basically. What do you do next?
Speaker 2So if you look at the screen now, there's an array there, so I'm going to let you.
Speaker 1That's considered one array right.
Speaker 2Well, ok let's not even say the word array. There's a home there, that. So this is what, dan, this is what, dan, I'll let you talk about. What are you looking at? What are you doing when you're building this now?
Roof Placement in Solar Panel Installation
Speaker 3OK, so obviously the black rectangles symbolize the solar panels. What we ideally do is in APS, we prioritize south facing roofs, then west facing roofs, then east facing roofs and then north facing roofs if absolutely necessary.
Speaker 2So you're always starting In APS. You're starting south.
Speaker 3Always starting south.
Speaker 2We've had the equator conversation.
Speaker 3We don't need to go back to it. Ok, awesome when we're in the northern.
Speaker 2Yeah, we're starting south. We laugh and joke about this, but I know there's a reason why I know Mr Science.
Speaker 1I get it Well there's because a lot of customers get confused.
Speaker 2But south is the best producing roof in APS.
Speaker 3So we start there. There is times where we don't go south because a lot of times south is facing to the front of the house and spouses have a tendency to say, oh, I don't want them there. And then we tell them well, that's going to save you X amount of dollars per month if we put them there. And the spouse says no, so then we'll go west and then east if have to.
Speaker 2When you say spouse, that's very politically correct.
Speaker 1I like that. I know where you're going with this. Yeah, I know where you're going to.
Speaker 2My wife does not want panels on the front of the house. You said it and it happens a lot.
Speaker 3I want what I've done in the past myself is I'll ask the spouse, I'll say where is the house number on your house? Nine times out of ten they won't be able to tell you. Sure, and on mine it's on the left-hand side. But you asked the wife where's it at? She won't know. But I bet you, the day that she moved in she knew exactly where that house number was on the house. Yeah, and so over time everybody gets used to everything. Yeah, if you see it enough, it just blurs off and blends in.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3So I've been able to overcome that using that analogy.
Speaker 1I have a customer recently. I sold them a system a long, long time ago. They were snowbirds. They were hardly ever in the home, so it was a small system. Their usage was pretty low. Right, I remember the best. It was an east-west house, so the best placing placement of the pans was on the west, which happened to be the front of the house. I remember he said he didn't want it in the front of the house because he thought they looked ugly, things like that. So we put them all in the east.
Speaker 1A few years later they're now home full-time. Their usage jumped up dramatically. I know we talked about you know Doing you're doing it right the first time. But there are certain cases where sometimes, if your usage increases a lot and you have to add a lot more panels not two or three, but you know a significant amount where it does make financial sense, I get that. So in this case His usage did increase a lot. He wanted more panels and you know I put them all in the back of the home again. He and I told him like it's gonna be better on the front and he goes oh yeah, I don't care about that anymore.
Speaker 3He goes put him wherever it's gonna be best for us, oh.
Speaker 1Now you want to do it. So yeah, it's true, you know, people have it on their home. They start seeing the savings and they go yeah, I should probably have in the best possible spot, mm-hmm.
Speaker 3And ideally that's what we want to do from the beginning right put them where it's best financially for the customer and Some and for people to understand.
Speaker 2So we said South's best producing. We go east and west and that's gonna be okay. It's not bad north. North is not something we recommend, but we'll do it. It just it takes more equipment to produce the amount you need, yes, versus the other side. So it's a. Basically, it's more expensive to go north right.
Speaker 3You just you'll still be saving. You just won't be saving as much, so it's the best of a worst-case scenario right, it cuts into your savings because it costs you more.
Speaker 2Right to go north to get production.
Speaker 3Yeah and one thing I get all the time is people that, oh, can you just put them on the north but tilt them to the south? And with that is like, well, you can, but the way a roof's designed is for down pressure. The raptor, the joy serve, built for weight on top, pushing down right so soon as you put a sail up on the back of the roof.
Speaker 3And now we get the microbursts in Arizona that we give, with a 125 mile an hour winds that's gonna pull that roof straight off, yep, and what's gonna happen is our solar system is gonna be there, but the roof's gonna be gone. The rest of the roof is gonna be gone. So we don't want to do that because it's just not worth it. The financial responsibility of it is.
Speaker 2I agree, we will not do. It's called the reverse tilt. We will not do that yeah ever drive around Phoenix.
Speaker 1You see them, you will see them. I see all those kites up on the not a.
Speaker 2Harman, job right. So the next thing when you look at this picture, and just in general I would say, talk about the setbacks.
Speaker 3Okay. So the setbacks are established by code. They're called fire restrictions. So basically, in Arizona, a fireman, if your house is on fire, has to have the ability to walk up on any Roof plane and be able to get around it. So what those are is on the ridge line, which is the Usually the the peak of the roof that's parallel with the ground. That's three feet from there. Okay. The rake, which is the perpendicular roof line from the ground, that's three feet from there as well. Okay, everywhere else, the hips and valleys is a foot and a half on both sides, which gives you a total of three feet so you can go up to it, and one side and three feet on the other, you can go up foot and a half.
Speaker 1Yes, right, that graphic that's up though all those yellow areas of the setbacks that we're talking about.
Speaker 3Yes, those are the fire restrictions.
Speaker 1That's where we cannot put panels, and this is a great.
Speaker 2I love this picture because if somebody would say well, why don't we put some panels on that little front? You know, I don't know what that's called, what's that called the? Dormer the dormer. Yes, I'm a little front door. You can't even fit a panel there, right? Oh, there's plenty of roof there, but with all the setbacks there's no way to put a panel.
Speaker 1Right, you have a homeowner who goes out, stands in the front. They're like oh yeah, there's lots of room there. Okay, we'll now take three feet from this side, three feet from that side, three feet from this side, and now there's no room.
Speaker 2And just even this is the next one that I just kind of pulled up and it's it's got the same issue with the Dormers and the coming. You can see you can't put panels in those places, right. So and and one of the great tricks that these sold some solar companies do is you'll see panels that cut into those areas.
Speaker 3Yes, I see it all the time. A lot of times what they'll do is because most of the design tools have the ability to show the setbacks on here, I leave them on so you, the customer in sales rep, can see why we can't put panels when they want to, because I see it all the time. Other companies will have the panels all the way up to the edge of the house, all the way to the top of the peak, and they do it on purpose, because the customer wants a certain size system, right? So they say, oh yeah, we can do that for you, no problem, just sign right here. See, it's right here, we can do it, yeah. And they sign the contract, they go do the audit, start doing paperwork and then they come back to the customer oh, it turns out it just barely doesn't fit.
Speaker 3So you're gonna lose 12 panels, yeah, and? And so now the customer has to sign a change order? Yeah, and they have to go back to what we originally proposed anyway. And instead of signing with us originally, when we tell them, no, this is all that's gonna fit, they just wasted three months of the time trying to get it's a psychological, psychological thing.
Speaker 1You know that the homeowners already signed documents with that company and they're already like, ah, it wasn't what I wanted, but I've already signed with them. I'm right. I'll just sign the change order, like that's the bait and switch.
Speaker 2Yes, it's a bait and switch is a very common practice in solar. We were just talking about this today. We knew somebody that was a works for a company that was trying to do that Right, which is just stupid. You don't. You don't do that. And even on this picture, if you look at that one panel, it's kind of questionable.
Speaker 2Yes, and and the reason you would do that is when we go out and do the audit, or when we did the audit on this one it actually did fit right because, remember, we're doing an aerial view so we might be a little off, depending on the how the satellites position. It's very possible to be a little off, but that one actually did fit within the restriction.
Speaker 3Yeah and the other thing is the dormer that it's next to. There's a full three feet on the other side. Yeah, so even if it was barely into it, it's still be okay, because you have to have a three-foot area to walk around Right and that gives you a three-foot area.
Speaker 2And the reason for that is the fire code is because if the fire, if you have a fire in your house, the firemen need to get on the roof, mm-hmm, they need to be able to walk a path around the solar panels to do what I guess they would barely pound.
Speaker 3They need to cut for ventilation right, which they don't do in the state of Arizona, because if the house is on fire with clay tiles, firefighters will not go up on your roof. You.
Speaker 2So we have these for no reason.
Speaker 3Yes, so the fire codes are there so they can ventilate a house, but they don't go on top of a clay tile house or a cement tile house if it's on fire. And setbacks have changed over time, because I do have customers who are like oh my neighbor, they have the panels all the way up on the edge.
Speaker 1I'm like well, when did they get their system? 10 years ago, when they didn't have setbacks. Yes, now we have setbacks.
Speaker 3And now just about I would say 95% of the jurisdictions now have those fires setbacks in place.
Speaker 2And we follow the setbacks. We will never design something that doesn't account for the setbacks. Other companies absolutely will. So because, like Daniel and these, dan Ben said is if they can get you to sign a piece of paper that says you're going forward, they'll deal with the repercussions of the fact that it's not going to fit later. So classic tactic to be on the look for. So understand that there are fire codes and you really should be. If you get a design from a company and you don't see the setbacks and they're not showing you setbacks, ask the question, because everyone has setbacks except for Like Goodyear doesn't.
Speaker 2Maricopa County doesn't no, Maricopa.
Speaker 3County added this past year.
Speaker 1Okay, so Goodyear Always changing yeah.
Speaker 2If you're in Goodyear way to go.
Speaker 3Even though it's not required in a lot of those areas, I still put it in. And then if, because fire codes change every year, they get reviewed and jurisdictions take them, so I would rather put it in. And then if the roof is too small for what they need, then I'll squeeze it down a little bit and make sure that they get what they need, but I'd rather have it in there and not need it than need it, and not have it?
Speaker 1Yeah, because these are just satellite images too. Yes, going out through the home and actually taking the measurements is the best way. You can't really tell what can actually fit and can't fit, so we kind of play it safe with the setbacks to make sure.
Speaker 2I mean the satellite images have gotten a lot better.
Speaker 3Sure.
Speaker 2Is it near maps?
Speaker 3Yeah, Well, there's near maps. Even Google is pretty good. But the issue you run into is okay, what's the exact pitch of the roof? And because, as you know, measurements of a flat surface is a lot different than an angled surface.
Speaker 2Now I know Eagle View, which is a company that's out there. They're doing that because a lot of roofing companies use Eagle View, because they can actually get really good measurements of the roof from the satellite. So the technology is getting better and better and better. When we first started, the technology was horrendous.
Speaker 3It was a guess. Yeah, it was a brand Absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2But it's gotten so much better. We were using Zillow, I think. Yeah, it was bad, right so, but now it's so much better. We can do a lot just by looking at a satellite image. The next thing I would think that you look at is shading.
Speaker 3Yeah, shading is one of the most important things. Luckily in Arizona there's not a lot of shade from trees. Unless you have the 80-foot palm tree that does not shade anyone's house at all, ever. So, we get that a lot. It's a big old sundial that's just waving across the roof.
Speaker 2And this is really important. If you look at the image that we have up right now, you see there's a bunch of trees around this house, but we're following the sun and we're following how it goes, and these trees really aren't going to have an impact on this system at all.
Shade Impact and Panel Installation Factors
Speaker 3No, most of those trees there are actually below the peak of the roof and they're about halfway up. So the only time it's really going to cause a lot of shade is December, and it's not going to be that big of a deal at that time anyway because production isn't as important in December as it is in January.
Speaker 2I know, that in my solar system, if you go and look at my west side, used to have these palm trees that were below the roof line. Now they're all above the roof line. So, my production has really dropped at the end of the day on the west side. And I need to probably cut those trees. It's going to cost about $2,000 to cut those trees down, but I have to make that decision because I've lost production late in the day now because of it. So shade absolutely impacts. Yes.
Speaker 3And that's very important is what people need to realize is the shade you have when your system's installed is the shade you need to keep, because if you let your trees grow higher than what they are now and start shading the system, that system's going to produce less. So if you want to keep the same production, make sure your shade level stays where it is.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you know the arguing people are going to use, not the salespeople, what they're going to say as well. We have optimizers on these panels, so they optimize when they're shade, and there is a little bit of truth to that.
Speaker 3So the good thing about optimizers is, if you have optimizers on your system, if one's panel shaded, that's the only panel that's shaded. If you have string inverters, if you have one panel shaded, all the panels on that string are shaded, which could be eight panels yes. So optimizers do help. Like I said in Arizona, it's less as important because, even though we do use optimizers a lot, it's less important because there's not trees and we don't have forests and all that stuff. We have very minimal shading impact.
Speaker 2Unless you're in Biltmore, yes, so the key is and I see a lot of solar companies where I look at a design and there's trees actually over Over the panels.
Speaker 1They're over the panels.
Speaker 2And I saw a video from a solar company that was installed. They were proud of it and put it on social media of them installing panels and they were under this 80-foot tree and the branches were over the roof, but they were installing them and I'm like those are going to produce real well.
Speaker 1Right For those who don't know solar panels work off of light.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So no light, no power.
Speaker 3I guess in theory you could put giant spotlights up there, Right?
Speaker 1Plug in Giant spotlights, never ending power.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm just showing you another one. It's just. This is a real basic system. Just this has no shading. Well, let's talk about you. You can see the shading starting to hit. It's not on the panels, but you'll see the shading on the ground from the house next to it. Right, two-story helmet.
Speaker 3And when we design these systems, if there's a two-story next to it, we also design or built in the model the two-story next to it. That way we ensure if there is going to be shading from the neighbor's house, Because we've had those one stories and it was built four feet away from the neighbor's house and there was literally no place to put the panels. It wasn't going to be shaded. So we told them it's like well, cut your neighbor's house down.
Speaker 1Then you can go solar.
Speaker 3But until then I wouldn't recommend it, Because production just goes so low when it's shaded all day long, right.
Speaker 2And this next one. It's just another example. This is a house with a roof that's cut up all over the place. You can see, on the front area there's just nowhere to put panels. You can't fit them anywhere because of the setbacks, but there's and we haven't talked about the vents and the pipes yet, but you can talk about what all those little marks are on the roof.
Speaker 3On this one, yeah, so all the white circles are usually vents. We tried not to cover any vents because relocation of them just brings in a lot of issues. You got to go into the attic, you got to find out what type of vent it is, got to get the permitting to move the vents in most cases, and it just stretches out the time from way too long to make it worth the while.
Speaker 2And there's some jurisdictions that don't allow you to cover vents, correct Others that will allow it and we've done it in the past and we basically will just cut the vent, you cut them down, but it's. And you put a low profile T over it and you can do it. We've done it in the past. There's certain vents we'll never cover, obviously. There's, like, I think, the gas ones and all we're not going to touch that stuff you can't.
Speaker 3You're not allowed to cover those types of vents in any jurisdiction, but some people may do it.
Speaker 2But yeah, this roof. I mean there's those vents and pipes everywhere, so obviously that takes away roof space.
Speaker 3Right so, but we're able to move it in. And what we always try to do, we try to make sure that your system is going to be aesthetically pleasing. Because, there's companies out there, they'll put them landscape, they'll put a portrait and it looks like a mishmash jigsaw puzzle on the top of the roof.
Speaker 1Like a yard sale.
Speaker 3Just thrown up there. Even though you want to save money, you don't want to look like garbage up on your roof. Right, it was just thrown together like from a two-year-old.
Speaker 2So you just hit. My next point I was going to talk about was portrait and landscape. The one thing you'll notice is that all these systems that I'm showing you, they're all in portrait.
Speaker 3Yes, Portrait, it does two things. This is the most cost-effective way to install the panels because you use less materials, less roof penetrations and the less proof penetrations, the less likely a roof is going to leak Right. So we try to do everything that we can to save the customer money but also install it the best way possible.
Speaker 2Yeah. So you'll see that I would say 90% plus of Harman's installs are portrait.
Solar Panel Placement Considerations and Obstacles
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2There are the times that we've done landscape, for whatever reason. There could be a scenario where we just have to do it. There's sometimes scenarios where a customer just wants another panel or two and the only way you're going to get it on there is landscape. Not the prettiest thing in the world when you start mixing and matching like that, but if that's what you want, we'll give it to you.
Speaker 3Yeah, a lot of times if your portrait and then just have one single row of landscape, it looks beautifully fine.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3So. But when you start going one here, one there, that's when it starts looking like it's just thrown up there.
Speaker 1Amateur hour.
Speaker 2And I would say another thing that we haven't talked about yet. That goes on a roof these are older homes is you'll see the ACs on the roof? Mm-hmm, we can't butt panels up against an AC.
Speaker 3I think we have to do three feet around the AC unit, you have to have three feet around, especially because it goes back to the fire setbacks. If an AC unit is within the five feet of the ridge line, now that three feet extends all the way around the AC as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think common sense plays in that one too. Because you have your AC on your roof, you're probably going to have an AC technician come out and service it every now, and then, he probably doesn't want to be stepping on solar panels Right and getting electrocuted. Keep him away.
Speaker 2Yeah, it makes sense. But just the point of this is to talk about all the different things until why you think you have this big roof that you can put all the solar on. You really don't. Yeah, there's all these obstacles that Daniel has to go through to determine where we can fit these things. So these are all your whys, right, right. So when the guy comes back and says I know I have no, you really don't. Look at the setback, look at the vents, look at the AC, look at this, look at that. Just no way to do it. Yeah, right. And the last slide that I have, and now this is a flat roof. Flat roofs are different than the pitch roofs. No-transcript, I mean talk about it because you can see how there's there's spacing between them and different things. Talk about how that's done.
Speaker 3Right. So most flat roots in Arizona are designed with a 15 degree tilt facing towards the sun or the azimuth. And no, they are. They don't follow the sun. We don't do a sun following technology.
Speaker 2Right, there's no tracking device Right.
Speaker 3So, um, so it's tilted at the 15 degrees and that's why you need space in between. Uh, it is about 48 inches. Um, we can get it down to 36 if needed, um, if we need to get more uh panels up there, but we prefer 48 inches and that's so when the sun's lower in the in the sky in the wintertime. It's not shading the other array behind it which makes sense.
Speaker 2A row could shade another row Right as the sun is lower in the sky.
Speaker 3Yep, because in the summertime it's not going to matter because the sun's basically straight overhead, so it's going to get everything. So it's more, you know winter, uh fall in a spring months, so point of that is our, our flat roofs um.
Speaker 2We're using tilted panels. We're tilting them 10 degrees, 10 to 15 degrees.
Speaker 3It's 10 degrees, I think, on a ballast at 15 degrees on a rack Right, so we're tilting them.
Speaker 2I have seen people that do flat roofs, that put the panels right next to you, yep.
Speaker 1Zero degrees. It's because, once again, the sun just sits over your house all day long and produces power for you and I have seen this many times, especially this is big in California.
Speaker 2Don't know what they're thinking there, but they do this. I wonder what the rain's going to do to that. When the water settles on the panel, I wonder where the sun is going to come from to hit the. I mean, I guess from 12 to 12, 15, you guys have become great.
Speaker 3In August. Yeah, I was going to go.
Speaker 2So and I've seen people in Arizona push that design out there that's not real.
Speaker 3No, don't do that. It doesn't make financial sense. Again, you might as well just put them on the north side, laying down flat behind your house under a tree, under a tree in your basement or you just give me the cash and then we'll call it a day, you'll save the same money.
Speaker 2So that's, that's our slides. I mean just to give everybody an idea of kind of the obstacles that we have when we're when Daniel's building an array and now you know what an array is. We're talking about a row of solar panels or a section of solar panels, and there's so many different things that go into why we have to put panels, because it's a common question we get all the time is why are they all over here and not over here? Well, now you kind of know why. So I want to, I want to kind of talk about some just a summary of kind of the things we've talked about.
Speaker 2So, proposal again, it's just an estimate, right? It's based on the data that you give us, that we give you, and then it's just going to give you an estimate of what we think this system will do based on the information you've given. If anything you've given is not accurate, the next year, the next year, this, everything changes, right? So just to understand that, we're giving you an estimate and, unfortunately, everyone in the industry uses these same tools, right? And these tools can't be manipulated.
Speaker 1Oh yeah.
Speaker 2So it's very common where we'll see. Maybe we're saying this you know, 10 K system is going to give you 17,000 kilowatt hours and the guy on the other company is telling you it's going to give you 24. And that makes the financials look so much better for you and it's, even though it's physically impossible.
Speaker 3It's impossible and it's.
Speaker 2BS, and so you have to really. This is why you don't just get one right One, what do you call it? One quote one quote right, because the guy will tell you whatever he wants to tell you to get you to sign, and so you can't have nothing to put it against. Yeah.
Speaker 1If you get four quotes of all matching system sizes and that one is happens, just produce twice as much as everyone else is right. You probably know that he manipulated the numbers.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you got to be careful for that. So that's that's. I can't stress it enough. Get more than one quote and see where there's any outliers. The outliers are. Usually there's a reason for it, yeah, so sometimes we're the outlier.
Speaker 1We're the ones who say, yeah, that's happened to don't get solar and no all these other companies said yes and you guys are the outliers saying no.
Speaker 2well, we're never going to. We're never going to promise more than we know. The system is going to produce. We're very conservative for what we promise and we show you the financials off the conservative. So if we're saying it's going to produce here, I bet you it'll probably produce here, but I'm going to stick here and show you financials for this worst case scenario Under promise over deliver.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly, and that's exact opposite of how other people do it Not saying everybody, but I'm telling you there are a lot of them out there. I can name five.
Speaker 1Yeah, but I won't, I won't, and there's a little, bring them in.
Speaker 2There's a lot of back end math and voodoo to all this. I mean and I you know I don't pretend to understand it None of us, I think, do we. We can kind of look at a system and do some math and say it should produce this. You know there are numbers for that.
Speaker 3I know the numbers.
Speaker 1So Daniel knows the number, he knows the back end, voodoo.
Speaker 2I don't know the back end voodoo. I know some of it. Okay, so any other factors or things that we're missing with this whole proposal and the raise? And what have we? What have we not talked about that's important here? Can you think of anything I really can?
Speaker 1I think we've talked about a lot, we hit a lot.
Speaker 2So I mean, I think I think we've made it pretty, it's pretty clean, and now you kind of understand, you know what, what prevents us from putting panels in certain places. You got to take a good look at a proposal to kind of see this is what. This is what the dentists of the world are going to come into your home and show you right based on the information you give us, and then it's up to you to see if it makes sense or not.
Speaker 1Yeah, and when you are getting those proposals, make sure you're getting common or like proposals.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 1So you know, if one company gave you a quote for a 14 kilowatt system, get multiple quotes for 14 kilowatt system. It may not be what we recommend, but you tell us that, tell us. You know. Hey, give me a proposal for what you guys recommend, and because I've gotten other quotes for a 14 kilowatt system, I want one as well, so I can compare apples to apples on everyone. Yeah, I mean, daniel doesn't mind doing that.
Speaker 3I actually do that a lot because I'll get a quote from a requested from somebody. Hey, they want a 14 kilowatt system, yeah. And then I'll ask first thing I asked, do we have usage? Yeah, and so if I get usage and that what I'll do is I'll build that 14 kilowatt system so they have apples to apples and CR price, but then I'll also send what they should actually get, cause a lot of times the other company is using a guesstimate.
Speaker 3They have no idea what their usage is, so they're just throwing a number out there and it's usually wrong.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love it when the homeowner gives me the actual proposal from other companies. So like yeah, give it to me. I know you probably don't want to because for whatever reason. But show me their proposal, I'll show you. You know, if it's a good proposal, I'll show you the pricing on it. You know, do the account for setbacks and things like that and then I will match that proposal system size and see who has the better price and better savings. Project projections and things like that.
Speaker 2I mean, I would have no problem sharing that proposal for as many personally as my money. Some people don't want to do it. I'm like whatever, and that's up to you. But let's look at apples to apples. It's not, it's not apples to apples most of the time.
Speaker 1Yeah, because you have those people who are like oh, there's this $20,000 cheaper. Well, yeah, because it's a smaller system. That's why it's half the size, I mean yeah, so I get that.
Speaker 2So it should be. It should be smaller, yeah, so all right, I mean anything else you'd like to add? It's a good topic. I mean just good stuff, I believe that that's all. That's all. So that's, that's Daniel's world, I mean. So when you get a proposal, you know when you come to Herman's, all are you're going to think.
Speaker 2Daniel. Daniel's going to put this together for you. Once we have your information and we're going to heavily Dennis or somebody come out and show you this and now you kind of know what to expect. So that's the whole point of this Give you you know, understand what to expect, and then also kind of arm you with the questions and especially the why's. The why's are so important. Most companies don't want to give you the why's. We want to give you all the why's. So that's kind of the purpose of what we were doing here today.
Speaker 2All right, make sure you like and subscribe, because our next podcast is what.
Speaker 1What are we doing next?
Speaker 2Well, first off thank you.
Speaker 3Daniel for joining us. I appreciate your time to come out here and do that.
Speaker 2I know you're busy. The next podcast, I haven't decided yet. I think we're going to. Probably we're going to talk about the, the actual audit, the site survey of once after you buy a system, what to expect when our auditor comes out and what he's going to look for and the things that you know that he does. So we're just trying to go down the road here and give everybody an understanding of the process as we go through it.
Speaker 1So if you have any ideas out there in the world, send us some ideas for podcasts. I'm sure Rob would love to put together one.
Speaker 3Yeah, we, we, we and we would, and so and again.
Speaker 2like I said last time, we're now on Spotify and iTunes. We had a lot of people downloading from there these last weeks, so that's great.
Speaker 1Thanks mom.
Speaker 2I heart Thanks, mom. Yeah, I heart all that stuff where you can see us on YouTube on the Harmon Solar podcast channel or just go to our website, harman solarcom, and there's harman solarcom slash podcasts and you can look at our pretty faces and watch us talk about all these great topics. So, once again, thanks for joining us. I appreciate everyone's time and we'll see you next time.
