The building where I live is looking for ways to lower costs and save money. Obviously, we’d need some outside help in putting solar panels on the roof. Is there a specific type of company or program I should research? Or isn’t it cost-effective unless you have a huge number of panels?
It depends, if nothing else, on latitude and climate, as well as the amount of roof space you have per resident. A high-rise in Buffalo will be very different from a one-story flat in Tucson.
You’d also want to worry about the paperwork side of it. Do the residents pay for their electricity individually, or is it included in rent? How would you apportion the benefits of the panels?
If you want something quick and easy to install, look into Balcony solar power - Wikipedia. However, it may not be legal in your jurisdiction.
You’re looking for companies that do commercial solar installations. That is probably the same as companies that do residential solar installation. Get an estimate or two, which will at least put you in the range of what you’ll be looking at for an initial investments.
Once you have that number, and a year or so of electric bills, then you’ll be able to decide if solar is a worthwhile investment. For my home solar I estimated that it would pay itself back in 7-8 years.
One important thing to investigate with your utility company is how they handle excess solar generation. What rate do they pay you for the excess electricity you generate, do they bank the credit for use at night, do you just lose it?
One of the biggest issues for an apartment building is going to be how is the savings distributed to the residents. How simple that is will depend on if each unit is directly billed by the utility, if you use a submetering company, or if the building pays for electricity and somehow passes the cost to the residents.
With the cost of electricity going up, solar is probably a reasonable investment (or, definitely an investment worth investigating), but it all comes down to details.
I recommend against using a solar company that is signing you up for a “no cost” 20 year lease, or something. Those aren’t always bad deals, but are just much more complicated, and more difficult to figure out if they are good investments.
Do you own this apartment or are you renting it?
Even if there’s direct billing, there’s some electric cost to the building/property manager itself. Interior & exterior lighting, possibly elevators, alarm system, gym, heated(?) pool & any other amenities they might have. While I wouldn’t expect them to be a lot they have some cost & having just enough electricity for those uses would mean there’s no cost for the building/complex.
I tried doing the math about how much power I would save if I installed a solar panel in one of my floor-ceiling windows and it turned out I’d generate enough power to run my refrigerator. So, not a whole lot. Now imagine that multiplied by hundreds of apartments. The power savings is something but not a whole lot and very expensive for what I’d get.
Excellent points @echoreply! I second your caution about these “free” solar panel installations. While the equipment may be “free” you will end up buying your electricity from the panel company or their agents, and their rates may not be competitive or are subject to change in ways that will certainly not be favorable to you.
Own. I will add that there’s only 5 condos in the building, one of which is unoccupied.
A quick look online shows a 20"x40" panel would generate 100W (presumably, full sunlight). By comparison, a typical apartment according to Google uses 300-600kWh/month.
Lets whip out the scrap envelope… 2x3 feet generates 100W, presumably about 1/3 of the day allowing for steep sun angles etc. That’s 800Wh, or 0.8kWh.
Your apartment uses, let’s say, 450kWh/month, or 15kWh/day. So you’d need 18.75 (let’s round to 20) panels to serve one apartment. 4x5 layout, that’s 12x20 feet (240sf) of solar panels. Assuming one apartment is, say, 1000sf - You just might have enough space to do it, even if they are stacked vertically one per floor. One plus would be - if airconditioning is a significant draw, well, then you make hay while the sun shines.
The devil is, as always, in the details. No trees or other buildings blocking the sun? What latitude are you - the further south, the less you have to tilt the panels and presumably, create vertical structure to raise up so the front do not shadow the back. What kind of winds do you get, will the roof and panel support structure be solid enough to hold down essentially a giant sail in gale force winds? these are simple structural issues. How often do you have sunny vs. cloudy days, and for how long a stretch?
Then the electrical issues… How does it connect to each apartment? Is each one separately metered? Would you then consider grouping the panels and each apartment feeds from its own set of panels, to a wire down to their meter? The connection electronics are standard equipment by now. Alternatively, there are products like Tesla Powerwall and competitors, where you can feed a giant battery (also able to be charged from the utility) Which can fill in when the sun don’t shine. There are safety considerations for such wiring, so as not to for example electrocute workers who think they’ve shut of power.
Then financial/legal - what are the arrangements? (Presuming a condo setup, apartments are owned) Does each apartment own a set responsible for all aspects of that, or are costs for the whole arrangement shared? What does the utility do to you when they realize they cannot get the same level of revenue - is there a service charge for the connection along with a per-kilowatt charge? Do they buy the excess? However, if the utility won’t accept buying excess power fed back into the mains, there’s probably no need to cover your 100% consumption as some power consumption at night would still be from the utility, you don’t need as many panels. perhaps you can plan the framing to hold maximum panels, but only install a few to start? Plan the framing so each condo can install as many or few panels as they want? perhaps more panels will be cheaper in future, or when you decide to install a battery unit.
Plenty of places have installed and used solar, so none of this is anything other than planning and engineering (and lawyering). But I agree with echoreply, don’t commit to ongoing open-ended costs.
What part of the country are you in? It’d be useful to find other condos in your area who have done this and learn from their experience. One concern I’d have is adding an additional shared cost to the condo. The owners may not always be in agreement about the cost of the panels and subsequent maintenance.
Coincidentally, I was just reading about this, and since it was already mentioned here by @dtilque, I’ll just share this piece:
(Gift link)
As mentioned, it’s probably not yet legal where you are, but it’s coming. Might be worth discussing with your neighbors so you’re ready when it comes to you. The above link is an opinion piece, but I found it very informative.
Oh, and yet another question is whether your jurisdiction has any tax incentives or other government subsidies for installing solar. I don’t think the US federal government does any more, but some states probably do.
Then need to look at the bylaws & any negative impact to a given owner - if they go on the roof at a 45° angle that may be just enough that the guy in the back never gets sun on his porch/deck anymore. What happens when some are in favor & some are opposed?
I’m in central PA right along the Susquehanna River, so at least one side of the building is never really blocked, and I have the ok of the HOA to look into this (at least one condo is owned by someone outside the HOA but I think they’d be amenable). There’s a lot to consider here-we’re not a very big building, so it just may not be cost-efficient. Need a way to either bring in money or cut costs for other reasons I won’t go into here.
If it’s not very big, then that also means less usage to offset. Most of the costs will scale linearly with the size of the installation.
Will there be an increase in rent to pay for this?
How long before the cost is finally offset by the power save?
When it finally gets to the “saving money” part, will it effect the rent, lowering it for the tenents?
To put some numbers on things. I have a 17 panel system that is rated at 6.9 kW. How much electricity produced during the day obviously depends on the time of year and cloud cover. Yesterday was 43.2kWh. May was 982.6 kWh. It cost about $15,000 fully installed.
It dropped my electric bill from $150-200/month to $25/month, which is where I get my 7-8 year payback estimate. It is saving me money, but required a capital expenditure.
If your HOA is broke, this won’t help. If you are in a different situation, where you have capital available for building improvements, and want to lower monthly expenses, then solar might be an excellent fit. In those cases I would compare the expense of solar with other cost saving improvements, like better insulation and more efficient heating and cooling systems.
Project Sunroof is a good place to get estimates of the suitability of your roof for solar.
How long before it paid for itself?
Are the panels to offset the electricity used by the condo building itself? Or will it be used for the individual condos? If it’s just the building, then it seems like the usage would be less than if it’s for the individual condos and you could have fewer panels. If it’s for the building and the condos, then it seems like you’d need a lot more panels. And I would foresee more problems with that kind of situation. Typically, electricity usage for condos is not shared. Each owner is responsible for paying their own electricity.
It literally says 7-8 years in the post.
$15,000 capital outlay. Saves $175/month. The savings per month may or may not increase depending on what happens to utility rates.