Frequently Asked Questions

A breaker of the status quo. A Grid Hero takes control of where their power comes from. Most of the power you use today is generated remotely and brought into your home through transmission lines and then distributed to your home through distribution lines.

Simply put, non-Grid Heroes use power and then pay for it with limited control and choice where their power comes from, how it gets to the grid, and how much they pay for it.
Grid Heroes take control of where their power comes from, how it gets to the grid, and how much they are paying for it.

verb 

Through choice.

The customer. Our mission is to help people become the best version of themself with integrity and solar. 

Bright Planet Solar is our fulfillment partner that handles the engineering procurement & construction side for us.

Expect to save up to 45% upfront working with us plus lots of legwork and time.

We focus on giving you amazing service treating you how you want to be treated. We sleep sound knowing you receive ethical representation. 

Saving money and saving the planet.

Whether you own the solar or Sunrun owns it the federal investment tax credit is a catalyst for energy freedom, control, and savings. Solar cuts your energy costs and is the best way to protect your home, family, and help preserve our natural environment for future generations.

We'll get you a savings report that puts this point in black and white. As long as you can get most of your power from solar and you are hedged against utility inflation so it's costing you less than the utility, you win.

"Net metering allows consumers who generate some or all of their own electricity to use that electricity anytime, instead of when it's generated." When you go solar, you save money by becoming an electricity contributor to the grid. During the day your system will generally produce more electricity than your home is using. This excess energy is stored in the grid and causes your electric meter to run backward thereby measuring each amount of electricity you contribute to the grid. Contributing electricity to the grid acts as a "piggy bank" and enables your home to use that stored electricity anytime. In every way, shape, and form you are a Grid Hero because of net metering's unique function.

√ Your expectations and goals. This gives us the satisfaction to provide you with the most current and competitive options for solar.

√ At a minimum, your last 12 months utility bills or your ability to login to your online utility account and push the green download usage button. The most effective way to retrieve your last 36 months of energy data is by clicking this link https://utilityapi.com/authorize/energy@gridhero.co  

√ Your roof condition. This lets us estimate alternatives, exceptions, and worst case scenarios into your quotes.

√ Consideration of your homes future power consumption. For example, Do you see your future energy usage going up or down? Maybe you're thinking about putting in a pool or a hot tub... Or planning on cooling your house even more once you go solar... You might be planning to add a new member to your family... Or the kids are going to be moving out of the house soon... Taking a moment and using your foresight makes all the difference in designing the perfect system for the future of your home and family. 

The customer is authorizing us to see their historical data, NOT access their personal online account. Everything is protected by, and actually goes beyond, the Department of Energy's DataGuard standard. See here: https://site.utilityapi.com/privacy.html

This is the #1 question we hear and exactly why it's important to work with us. Every option we offer as a broker is 100% transferable and will not slow down the process to sale your home.

Home ownership comes with a raising cost of living and homes that come with solar are able to reduce that monthly cost of living, making your home more marketable to potential buyers.

As a general study done by Berkeley Labs and NYU, homes with solar sell 20% faster because new homeowners face  increased cost of living expenses. Solar decreases living expenses and adds an overall higher perceived value to prospective buyers.

Because net metering's unique function allows you to ignore two facts.

1. That the electricity produced month to month will will vary over the course of the year.
2. That you will need to use grid feed power at night when your panels aren't producing electricity.

Net metering's function gives you credit for excess solar power produced and sent to the power grid at anytime. Thus making it easy to design a solar system. No need to worry when it's night time or the sun isn't shining because the original system design is based off of how much power the home uses. Simply designing a system that covers the total amount of kilowatt hours the home uses over the course of a year will cover all the power you use over a year.

The number of installed solar panels will be limited by the amount of available square footage of available roof space. If there are lots of roof obstructions, limited roof space, or lots of north facing slopes, this could be a reason for considering higher efficient solar panels. Higher efficient panels have a higher panel wattage and take up less space but cost about 20% more.

Solar panels produce different amounts of power depending on the climate in which they are installed. The electricity produced by solar panels is measured and quoted to you in kilowatt hours per day and per year.

The number of kilowatt hours can vary from a low of 3 kWh per day per 1 kW of peak DC solar panels in the North East and the Midwest to highs of 4.8 kWh per 1 kW of peak DC solar in parts of California, Arizona, & Nevada.

To annualize these numbers we get a range between 1095 kWh per year per 1 kW of solar panels in the North East and Midwest up to a high of 1715 kWh per year per kW in areas with the greatest solar irradiation such as parts of California, Nevada, and Arizona. Climate makes a big difference to the amount of solar panels you need to produce a specific amount of electricity and this is why we need to know your location to do these calculations.

Electric rates vary between utility companies. We have the residential electric rates for each of the utility companies in our system and by letting us know your average monthly bill from your utility company, we are able to work out how many kilowatt hours of power you need your solar panels to produce to cover all of your power.

From good sun exposure to expensive electricity rates, the solar tax credit and liberal net metering laws. Homeowners either get an excellent return on investment when owning panels in California or save considerably when opting for a power purchase agreement or lease. If you have the space for solar panels in California, the only way you lose is by not putting solar panels up.

1. The average payback time when paying cash for a solar power system is 7 to 8 years when factoring in the solar tax credit.
2. The average cost for power without solar in California is between 16-24 cents per kilowatt hour.
3. The normalized cost of solar energy is 8 cents per kilowatt hour.
4. If you don't go solar the forecasted average price for solar over the next 25 years is 42 cents per kilowatt hour.

In addition to a positive impact on the environment, the biggest advantage is the impact solar has on your wallet. It's the savings gift that keeps on giving thanks to California's liberal legislation and the 30% solar federal tax credit. When the federal tax credit levels off at the end of 2019, you will be kicking yourself for not taking advantage of the biggest incentive while it was around.

The only disadvantage to installing solar panels happens when someone deals with a dishonest solar rep or a bad solar company. There are bad eggs in any industry.

Grid Hero works for you not the solar companies.

Because solar systems naturally produce most of the power in the middle of the day when homeowners are at work and using little to no power. Net metering allows homeowners to use their produced power at anytime.

Homeowners enter an agreement known as net metering with the utility company when they go solar where the utility company guarantees to credit homeowners for their produced power exported to the grid.

Each of the major utility company's offer slightly different net metering agreements but they are similar in nature.

There isn't a cookie cutter answer to this but generally speaking the largest savings over time happens when you purchase solar panels with cash in full and then financing.

However, purchasing a system doesn't make sense if you aren't in a position where you have a federal income tax liability large enough to take advantage of the 26% federal investment tax credit. Without the ability to collect the tax credit, third party (they own) solar plans are the way to go but this is still a generalization.

Taking into account the fact that you might be moving before paying off your solar panels and weighing out the guarantees between owning and third party ownership helps determine whats best for your home.

This depends on whether you went with (you own) purchased solar or (they own) power purchase agreement/leased solar.

"In a comprehensive study done by Berkeley Lab, data showed that an average purchased system increases a home’s property value by about $16,000."

Furthermore, data showed that "most participants saw no impact on their home sale value as a result of their power purchase agreement or lease agreement."

We have you covered. We've partnered with the most trusted solar providers and financers that back our workmanship, performance, and materials for 25 years.

The original net metering rules (NEM 1.0) put a limit on the number of CA homes that could go solar. NEM 2.0 is an update in CA energy regulations that remove barriers to going solar in PG&E, SDG&E and SCE territories. NEM 2.0 eliminates CA’s net metering cap and provides certainty for CA’s solar energy future. Now all homes in CA have the opportunity to go solar.

It means you are being billed more for your power when more people are using power during the prime time hours of the day. In other words you are charged more from the utility company when everyone is home from work and turning on the electronics, lights, etc. The utility company calls this period“peak-time”. For PG&E customers peak-time is weekdays from 3-8 p.m. or 4-9 pm. Weekends, holidays, mornings and overnight are off-peak times and have lower rates. The great news for solar customers is that no matter when you use your clean energy you’re going to save big going solar.

In 2019 all PG&E, SDG&E and SCE customers automatically switch to a TOU plan. Due to this, solar has never made more more sense.

With solar you take back control and maximize the value of your hard earned money.

First and foremost, you’re going to save a lot of money going solar with us. You'll actually want to send your family and friends our way without being bribed by gift cards (although we offer those too). You'll know you saved time and money because of transparency.

Solar energy system degradation rates vary depending on the brand, as well as the climate where they are installed. The good news is, recent data has shown modern solar systems are outperforming all expectations

According to an analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), some premium panel manufacturers offer degradation rates as low as 0.3% per year; and while other brands have higher degradation rates of up to 0.8% per year, that’s still a yearly average degradation rate of only 0.5%.

Meaning, even if you get a standard solar panel 25-year warranty period at 0.5% degradation, your solar panels should continue operating at around 88% of their original capacity after this time. Not too shabby at all!

For the better part modern tier 1 panels are pretty maintenance free other than they do require proper caring and cleaning to stay in top shape to guarantee you receive the most significant solar savings possible during the next 20 to 30 years.

Sunlight is an energy that has invisible particles called photons. When photons come in contact with the materials solar panels are made out of (silicon crystals), it excites the electrons in the crystals so much they jump up and down and eventually break free from the crystals and move freely to seek missing electrons within their atoms and electricity is produced from the the motion of the electrons breaking free and seeking. Inside each solar panel there is a conductive metal plate connected to wires that lead to a fuse on each panel that connects everything together so that the electric flow makes it's way to the inverter where the current is converted into usable energy.

Silicon as it one of the most common elements found on our planet but for residential, the majority of solar panels aren't made from silicon becasue silicon crystals are expensive.

Most home solar systems are built from copper, indium, gallium, and selenide. Which isn't as efficient as silicon, yet it still gets the job done at an affordable manufacturing cost without sacrificing tier 1 standards.

The use of materials other than silicon, explains why solar is so affordable for homes these days and manufacturing costs continue to come down.

With cash, Sunrun & all loan products when we're dealing with multiple meters on the property one of a few things can happen to make a project or the projects work. Bear in mind the smallest installable system size is 2 kilowatts per meter (which is eight panels). In theory three different systems could be installed (one system per meter) but only if the usage on each meter warrants at least 2 kilowatt system size.

The customer can call the utility company and request to combine all three meters into one. This can be a process sometimes and at other times it's relatively smooth. Once the three meters are combined our solar representative will upload documented proof in order to move the project forward.

Option 1. With (they own) Sunrun's power purchase agreement, the maximum energy usage offset per project system is 110%. It's always better to pay less for power and matching solar savings with the meter that has the highest usage is never a bad idea especially if two out of the three meters don't meet the minimum solar system sizing requirements.

Option 2. With (you own) solar such as cash, Loanpal, Dividend, Sunlight, and renew pace loans we can offset the energy usage for any project up to 150% per meter. This higher offset with purchased solar allows more flexibility so as to potentially cover two out of the three or three out of the three meters with one project when the meters have been combined.

PG&E NEM (Net Energy Metering) Bill - How to Read

The installed PG&E smart net meter measures the difference between the amount of energy your system produces throughout the month and the amount of electricity you consume from the grid. This difference is called net energy, which PG&E uses to calculate your solar bill. You will have an app to personally monitor production and consumption.

When your panels generate more power than you need, the excess energy automatically flows via the electric meter to PG&E’s grid. And at times when your electricity use is higher than your solar system’s production, you will rely on that additional energy from PG&E.

Under a Net Energy Metering (NEM) agreement, PG&E reads your meter each month and sends you a statement summarizing the net amount of electricity your home consumed from or supplied to the grid during the billing period. Resulting in either a credit or a charge to your account.

PG&E customers with a solar lease or PPA plan become part of their NEM agreement, and are automatically placed on a 12-month billing cycle to receive three types of statements: See Below

PG&E Energy Statement (Monthly):

Delivered every month, and it only displays your amount due for the monthly service charge, plus any additional gas or non-energy costs. View a sample PG&E Energy Statement.

NEM Energy Statement (Monthly):

Delivered each month, and it shows a summary of your year-to-date solar charges and credits and how you are tracking towards True-Up. View a sample PG&E NEM Energy Statement.

True-Up Energy Statement (Yearly):

Delivered every 12 months, and it provides your net energy charges and credits over the whole year and shows any final balance due. The remaining costs must be paid, and any excess surpluses are typically reset to zero. View a sample PG&E True-Up Energy Statement.

SDGE NEM (Net Energy Metering) Bill - How to Read