ISTM that the overwhelming percentage of telemarketing calls these days are from people trying to convince me to install solar energy panels. Maybe like 90% of the telemarketing calls that I get, and probably about 2-3 a week. (On my home number, that is - on my business line I get many calls from people trying to get me to sell insurance.)
Is this a common experience? Possibly it varies by state - I live in NJ. I wonder why this would be.
[As it happens, I think switching to solar might be a good idea, especially in my case as the back side of my roof has very good Southern exposure. But my roof is about 20 years old and I’m loath to install solar and then have to take it all down if I need a roof job in a few years. After the roof gets done, I’ll look into it again.]
I get the calls from solar and other construction services regularly. That seems to be the dominant bit of calls that are slowly convincing me to cancel my home line…
All I ever get is that bitch from Credit Account Services, but that’s a robocall. Never got one for solar panels. Maybe it’s because I live in the upper Midwest.
Same here. The FCC should get the FBI to hunt down the scammers who are doing it. This has got to be fraud of some sort, it can’t possibly be legal to harass hundreds of millions of people weekly to sell whatever scam product they are offering.
The number it’s coming from keeps changing but the FBI should be able to figure out the physical location trivially.
As mentioned in the OP, on my business line I get innumerable calls from people wanting me to sell their insurance products. I don’t actually sell insurance at all, but as a health care actuary advising corporations about employee benefits, my company’s position is that I need to maintain a valid insurance license, and I believe these people are getting my business contact info through the insurance licensing people. So I get all these calls and emails from people assuming I’m an agent and wanting me to sell their products.
My policy when receiving such emails is to instruct Outlook to junk all future emails from this sender. But there’s this one guy in particular named Don Boozer who keeps bouncing back with new email addresses. Literally every few days I get another marketing email from this guy, each time from a new email address.
There must be some sort of email-changing service, I don’t know. You would think the utility of trying to get through to people who are actively trying to block you from contacting them would be pretty low. But I guess some people think it’s worthwhile, and for all I know maybe it is.
I get these a lot, lots of sun here so it would be great except the cost, and the fact that the marketers lie about the financial aspect, try to tell me it’s practically free, and also wont tell you what type and brand of panel is being used and the companies they say they are from don’t appear to be from any known reputable vendor i have heard of.
It would cost me 60k to 75k for a system using good panels that last with enough output i would never pay for electric again last a checked.
It wouldn’t be free, or necessarily competitive with your local utility electric rates, but when exactly did you check? How many kWh do you burn through a year? These days, 60k would buy you at least a 20 kWh array - several times bigger than most people’s roofs will even hold - and DIY installs are quite feasible, especially if it’s a 1 story house.
I have a lot of roof, all of it straight open roof, the garage/shop roof is 85 feet long something like 55 feet wide factoring in the pitch, i do not remember exact dimensions on the house roof or the other, the house was something like 105 or 108 feet one way i think, i dont remember the short length, and the barn only part is useable due to the angles etc…
The idea was to produce enough electric that the overage feed back to the power company would be more than would be used when it was dark etc.
So i’d never have to buy any electric, and would use very little from the grid.
Was supposed to be enough to run everything, house garage barn etc.
And i’m sure they estimate more electric use than i personally would actually do, but making lots more than i use is good to me.
Even DIY, the good panels are expensive, and who wants a cheap panel that died before it has paid for itself.
What you are talking about is doable. You would actually want to spend about half your budget on efficiency upgrades. Replace your HVAC system with mini splits (if you live in a very cold climate, then you’ll need some supplemental fuel driven heat), re-insulate any accessible spaces like attics with blown cellulose, seal all the leaks, replace any remaining incandescents with high CRI LEDs, hunt down and replace any particularly inefficient appliances.
Most likely you can get your total energy load down to half or even 30%, depending on just how inefficient the place currently is. That means you need a smaller array. Depending on the cost of local electric rates, it might be most effective to just do the efficiency upgrades and skip a solar install.
The DIY cost would be $10-30k, depending on how big your place actually is. Pro cost would be 30-90k, roughly, depending on who you hired.
Good panels are not expensive. Even the premium ones are below $1/watt if you pick them up on clearance from sunelec. I assume by “good” you mean a credible brand with a credible warranty. Though to be honest, I think you’d get more for your money if you got a mixture (maybe 3 different manufacturers) of panels on clearance from credible manufacturers, don’t worry about the warranty. The reason for a mixture is to hedge against a common manufacturing flaw.
Anyways, if you’re interested, we can discuss this more via PM. I am not selling anything or in the industry, but efficiency is a bit of a hobby of mine and I’ve already done this conversion on my place.