Submitted by ffejie t3_10s80cw in jerseycity
Has anyone had any success getting someone to put solar panels on the roof of their Jersey City house? Specifically on a structure that is directly attached to the neighbors (i.e. most of downtown).
I'm looking for recommendations on a reliable contractor that will do the install and perform the electrical work, as well as whole home battery.
Anyone got any recommendations?
Thanks this is awesome to hear
Is heatpumps what you use?
We unfortunately do not have heat pumps. We initially renovated our home in 2016 and we didn’t know of their existence back then.
You will be glad you don't have heatpumps this weekend!
Can you share your approximate square footage of roof as well as the amount electricity you generate?
What was the cost? Did you finance?
Please share which details you can.
I believe our roof is 17x50 feet (1/3 of the roof is sky lights and HVAC). The total cost was 20k. Back then there was a 25 percent federal tax credit which I think is now 30%? You also get money from NJ (TRECs) based on kWh’s produced in addition to the electricity you save. As you can see in the chart we build up a lot of credits in the spring that then get used up pretty fast in December. Most of the solar companies can give you a proposal remotely using satellite imagery.
This is great, thanks so much for the details.
Hope this also helps someone else. I'm hoping for similar results, we have less roof, but less sky lights.
I had them installed on my townhouse ( which is attached to another house on one side) happy to give you more info if you DM!
If you can't get solar panels put on directly to your home, check out community solar. You basically get the panels installed somewhere else, and the power generated gets net-metered off your PSEG bill. We used Solar Landscape and our panels are on top of a warehouse in North Bergen. There are a few other companies in Hudson Country you can check out too.
Already doing it with Community Solar!
This question is asked often in the NJ sub. If you search you’ll find posts like this:
Putting Solar on a typical detached house vs a Brownstone/attached house in Jersey City are very different things. I had literal dozens of companies hang up on me once it did not fit their archetype of a single family home with a shingled, angled roof on a stick frame house.
Thank you, I hadn't searched the NJ sub.
Do a Google maps satellite search of your area to see if anyone has solar on their roof on attached houses.
If so contact the owner and ask who did it, is it saving money, etc.
You mentioned downtown I see some on 197 York near Marin Blvd. on one roof in a row of attached houses. Also on 143 Grand on a attached row house.
Interesting not many in JC I see a few up Journal Square on unattached houses. (you would think you would see more DT ..younger home owners)
Is this really a suggestion to reach out to someone who lives at 197 York? Isn't that a bit... invasive?
Do not go on typical sites like EnergySage- its a complete waste of time and they will resell your phone number to dozens of companies that will blow up your phone for literal months.
I have attempted to do this twice- the first time was at the end of February 2020, and everyone ghosted on me because of Covid. Regardless, dozens of companies called me after I put my info in on some sites like energysage but almost all of them ran away when it was not your stereotypical single family house. The last time was this past spring/summer. I didn't love the quotes because they couldn't guarantee anything specific due to supply chain issues- and panel quality can very tremendously, and a warranty doesn't mean anything if its from some fly by night company in China. I shelved it, as the IRA had just been passed, and we had some family health issues, waiting for a better day when you can just buy panels without issue. The IRA should hopefully bring costs down as well when it fully kicks in.
Anyway, Greenhouse Solar and Apex Solar were two companies that were actually willing to do the work (and that's all I could find). I found these companies by looking at a database online of actual installs that listed, the date, size, address of the install, and the company who did it that exists somewhere. I can't seem to find it at the moment, which is frustrating. I begged Brooklyn Solar to give it a go, but they politely declined. I also wanted a battery as well. These guys were balking, until I made it clear that I am not too worried about payback periods and such with a battery system. Of these two, Apex seemed like the much better option, an actual knowledgable person spoke to me, did not panic when we veered off his script- I had all the numbers already worked out in terms of payback or not. There are multiple issues with brownstones/townhouses- the biggest is the roof area and the fire code. You need to be at least three feet away from anything up on your roof- a skylight, AC equipment, the edges of your building, so firefighters can potentially get up there. This dramatically limits the amount of panels you can fit up there. My house has power lines in front of it, so there is even extra BS/permits terms of getting a crane to get the stuff up on the roof. There is also the issue that no one wants to puncture a flat roof, so you need to get a ballasted system, which means you need to get approval that the roof can handle the additional weight, etc.
Another option is to go with community solar. There are several projects out there, I went with solarlandscape.com. It seems like a scam- a guaranteed 15% off your bill and you get powered by solar? But its worked, and while they seemed to have figured out their issues, I was actually getting like 80% off my electric bill for awhile. I wasn't going to complain about it.
Finally, you can attempt to DIY a part of it- I seriously considered this. Companies like renvu solar: https://www.renvu.com/ Will design a system for you, and get all the permits taken care of, for a very reasonable price- $500 for their "full" package. You can then subcontract out the rest. I came up with a way to get a small jack/crane on my roof, so I could hoist all the stuff up there, that seemed to be a major sticking point for most of the little guys doing single family homes. They didn't want to deal with cranes.
Anyway, send me a DM if you want to discuss further. I really want to do this but it just has not worked out... yet.
I am exactly where you are. I submitted some info to a few different companies and everyone ran away after talking to me for 5 minutes when they actually looked at the satellite imagery one typical example: "is your roof, like, _attached_ to other roofs? Do you live in an apartment?" It was as if the tech had never seen a row home before.
I'm extremely well qualified to do a DIY install, but I simply don't trust myself to not screw up my roof and cost myself $10s of thousands of dollars and a huge hassle.
I've already signed up for Community Solar - a total no brainer - it's just a net savings for everyone, regardless of your opinion of solar/solar incentives/GHG reduction.
Thanks for these details - I have some other leads based on this post, and will update when I lock in someone to do this so hopefully you can get on this path as well.
Yeah so the database I mentioned above apparently is no longer online for some reason, it used to exist at http://openpv.nrel.gov but it is not available, its unclear if that is permanent or temporary- a doc from another part of the site kind of implies that they might charge for the data now, but if that's true, its not clear how you would even do that- but it was the only site that actually got me to someone actually willing to do a project around here.
If you get some real leads, please share!
Thanks for this. I live in a row house, and I've only ever seen them on single family houses. Do they actually save a lot in electric costs?
The math checks out for them to offset quite a bit of electric costs, but everyone's roof and tree coverage varies.
Usually with financing, the panels can generate enough electricity to pay for the monthly costs and then some. After the financing is paid off, you get even more savings monthly.
The biggest thing for me is resiliency. With solar and a battery, I won't have to worry about a branch knocking out my power and waiting several days for a repair. I've had quite a few friends have this happen, and it can be extremely dangerous in winter (ice storms) to go very long without power. I don't have a fireplace to light in an emergency, etc.
Thanks! I'm afraid I'd have to hit the lottery first, and that's highly unlikely. Nice to think about though. I could switch to electric and dump PSEG (most of the time).😁
The point of the financing is that you *don't* have to hit the lottery to afford a ~$25K capital outlay. You just pay monthly and your electric bill is lowered by more than your monthly payment.
weasey36 t1_j71cmpn wrote
We installed 14 panels on our brownstone in 2020 (space limited by skylights and HVAC equipment). It covers 80 percent of our electricity for the year. Our heating is electric FYI. We had a very good experience with Sunnymac (regional installer for SunPower). Our only hiccup in the process was PSEG which delayed final approval multiple times.