A couple years ago, we bought a teardown in a north county coastal town, less than a mile from the beach (so it’s frequently a little overcast).
No matter, we were convinced that when we renovated the house, we would absolutely get solar, even if the numbers didn’t pencil out completely. Maybe things have changed, but we were still interviewing solar companies and trying to find a way to make this happen within the past year, and surprisingly, it just didn’t make sense for us to pull the trigger.
Our house is 3700 sf and has no pool or A/C, and with the right windows, the right lightbulbs, a tankless water heater and new appliances, our SDG&E bill is almost always less than $100/month. We have two teen daughters who LOVE to take long showers and blow-dry their hair everyday (at least once)! And, my husband and I are both home all day. Sure, we try to be conscious of saving energy, but we don’t go crazy. I think we probably only turned the heat on a dozen times this winter, and we tried to remember to put on a sweater if we were a little chilly before heating the house. For us, bottom line was that it didn’t make sense to go solar because we realized we don’t use that much power anyway.
That was our experience, and obviously your needs vary. Good luck w/your decision.
P.S. I found out that Sequoia Solar in Solana Beach (one of the companies we were interviewing) went out of business last week.
