Our Experience with Solar Panels
TOPICS DISCUSSED
The WGA & SAG-AFTRA Strikes
The Silvers Family Experience with Solar Panels
Outside of Politics: Entertaining vs. Opening Your Home
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Sporty Thursday: Broadcast Rights (Pantsuit Politics Premium on Patreon)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth Silvers [00:00:08] And this Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Beth Silvers [00:00:26] Welcome to Pantsuit Politics where we take a different approach to the news. Sarah is enjoying her final few days in Europe with her family. And so I am joined today by the most special of special guests, my husband, Chad.
Chad Silvers [00:00:36] Why, thank you, Beth.
Beth Silvers [00:00:37] I'm so glad that you're here. We are going to discuss by popular demand, (and I do mean demand, not really request at this point) the process of putting solar panels on our house and what we have learned since we've had those panels.
Chad Silvers [00:00:50] Yes, we're going to geek out on solar panels and our first full year having them.
Beth Silvers [00:00:56] And then before we do that, we're going to chat about television, which we also know about and love, and is actually in the headlines right now because of the strikes.
Chad Silvers [00:01:04] Again, here in my personal capacity to talk about TV.
Beth Silvers [00:01:07] That's right. And Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about the difference between entertaining and opening our home to guests.
Chad Silvers [00:01:15] Interesting. Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:01:16] Yeah. I think there is a distinction that we can dive into. I imagine this will also involve you making fun of me for being somewhat bossy, but I think it's one of my finer characteristics.
Chad Silvers [00:01:26] Yeah, we can talk about outdoor spaces. I think that'll be fun.
Beth Silvers [00:01:29] Before we jump into all of that, we wanted to remind you that sharing the show with a friend is always one of the best ways that you can support our work here. Word of mouth is still how podcasts grow their community of listeners, and ours is no exception. So if you like what you hear, please pass this along to others in your life. We appreciate it so much. Chad, We have two strikes happening in Hollywood now. The writers have been on strike since May.
Chad Silvers [00:02:02] May 1st. Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:02:02] And now the actors have joined them. Can you talk a little bit before we get into the specifics of the strikes about the state of TV in general with streaming and cable and network television?
Chad Silvers [00:02:15] So TV, television, movies, all that filmed entertainment is going through a big change in the growing pains associated with that. If you listen to the sports broadcasting rights conversation we had on the premium channel on Thursday, we talked about how each of the big media companies have their own streaming services now. So actors and writers are a bit concerned with how that service is being handled and how their content is being put on there and they want to make sure they're getting paid.
Beth Silvers [00:02:53] So as I've read about this, the last time both actors and writers were on strike in Hollywood was 1960, in the midst of another technological shift. Technology seems to always drive these labor disputes in Hollywood.
Chad Silvers [00:03:08] Yeah. And that big technology change at that time was television. The actors and the writers wanted to get paid when their movies were put on television. So now we've got a strike that's really centered around will actors, writers, everybody else get paid when their content is on a streamer and it lives on that streamer and is played over and over.
Beth Silvers [00:03:33] And as I understand it, the other issue in terms of just basic compensation for people working in this industry and try to think as we talk about this, not about the big name stars, but about all of the background actors, all of the people whose names you never know who bring a story to life, and all the folks who work behind the scenes to bring a story to life. Their jobs have changed so fundamentally as television projects have gone from, we make 30, 40, 50 episodes of a show a year to maybe we make six or eight episodes for a season on a streaming service.
Chad Silvers [00:04:11] Yeah, the way that writers work in a writer's room or on a staff, it used to be if you got a job with a series, Law and Order or something that was on 23 weeks a year, I mean, that was a job. That was your job. You had good, consistent pay from that. Now a new series comes out. It may be eight, 10 episodes. And there's other things that they're doing kind of condensing those writers rooms, not giving credit to all the writers that are in it. These writers are having to find a lot of gap work to make a full year's salary. So it's difficult.
Beth Silvers [00:04:54] Some of you might remember that Sarah and I briefly explored a television project and we got to work with some amazing people as we talked about that. I don't want to speak for her, but what I really learned in that project was that if you are on television, you have to really, really want to be on television. There are just so many obstacles to getting a show going and to making that show in a way that you're proud of under all of the economic constraints put around the show. Remind me a little bit of book publishing where there were times when we were in that process just kind of shaking our heads, like, what is the goal here at the end of the day? Because the economics are all very speculative and I think TV takes some of those dynamics and just amplifies them. So, Chad, I understand that this strike is about five major issues. So we talked a little bit about residuals. What happens in streaming when your television show is there. Base pay is another one, especially with inflation. A big issue that's getting more press all the time is artificial intelligence.
Chad Silvers [00:05:56] Yeah. Writers are very concerned about the definition of who a writer is. Basically, they're worried about AI taking over and studios using that to write a script.
Beth Silvers [00:06:11] Right. That their work is going to be just a training ground for a computer. They come up with a concept and then the machine takes it from there.
Chad Silvers [00:06:18] Yeah, that's a very big concern for the writers. They want to put it in their contract the definition of a writer is a human being.
Beth Silvers [00:06:26] And then actors are concerned about their likenesses being used to train machines and then those machines going off and just kind of doing what they will with their likenesses and the actors not getting paid. It sounds like the actors have more openness to that model than the writers do, but the actors want to be sure that they are getting paid, not that they show up for work one day, which is part of a proposal from the studio side that they show up and they get paid for one day of work and then the studio owns the rights to do what they will with their face and their voice and their mannerisms.
Chad Silvers [00:07:02] Yeah, that's interesting because of so much motion capture and CGI de-aging or changing or adapting an actor's face for a role, which happens a lot.
Beth Silvers [00:07:15] Well, I was also thinking about video games and wondered what kind of model exist there because lots of sports professionals likenesses get used in those video games. I wonder if there's some kind of model that would translate over to look at.
Chad Silvers [00:07:28] Yeah, could be. I mean, that's like what we talked about about sports broadcasting rights. There are the leagues and the players associations help get players paid for those games.
Beth Silvers [00:07:38] But it's not a neat translation either, because what an actor is doing is so different than you just being you and being translated into a video game.
Chad Silvers [00:07:48] Yeah, it's more than the likeness. I mean, actors are plying their trade. They are performing as young Ellen Silvers did this week, as young Elsa in her frozen production.
Beth Silvers [00:08:00] She would say there's a craft to it, and she would be right.
Chad Silvers [00:08:02] She did say that. Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:08:03] And the other thing to mention about AI is that if that sounds a little premature to you, remember that they are negotiating a three year contract. And as rapidly as that field is developing, I understand why this is a major point of contention.
Chad Silvers [00:08:17] I think the strikes are a little convenient too. I mean, the writers went on strike first, so most productions have been shut down because you need a writer working. So I think it was easy for the Actors Guild to go on strike too.
Beth Silvers [00:08:33] I don't know if a strike is ever easy. I think it has to be a very scary time. I mean, it seems like for couple of years now there has been a squeeze in this industry where it's kind of become more and more like gig work than ever before and scarier. There's no safety net for people in this industry. And it also seems to be getting more personal all the time. But the executive pay issue and the comments from executives in the press versus people speaking on behalf of the unions, like it's very testy right now.
Chad Silvers [00:09:06] Yeah, Fran Drescher going at it.
Beth Silvers [00:09:08] Well, and Bob Iger seems to not be very helpful. I mean, the personalities dominating the studio side are unsympathetic for a lot of reasons. And I don't know. I struggle to see how you move negotiations forward when it feels like everyone believes everyone else is acting in bad faith.
Chad Silvers [00:09:28] Yeah, most of your studio heads and executives in the industry, it's pretty easy to villainize them, but they're trying to run a business too.
Beth Silvers [00:09:39] They're trying to run a business. They are running very successful businesses. Even with the pressure that the studios are feeling from how rapidly things are changing. We still have a lot of big hits making lots of money. I understand that not as many people are seeing movies as they used to, but it's still a lot of people and a lot of money.
Chad Silvers [00:09:58] But isn't it the big hits making a lot of money and then not a lot of medium hits and smaller hits making money?
Beth Silvers [00:10:06] Yeah. And I think that hurts everybody. I don't think consumers want this either. So there's a lot to be figured out. And a strike seems like an interesting context in which you sort of put everything on the table and say, how do we figure this out?
Chad Silvers [00:10:19] Yeah, I don't know. That's a bigger sea change. I think back to most of the movies in the eighties and nineties that I loved, I don't know if those would be made today because everything today is existing IP superheroes, some animated movies. Even the good comedies aren't made anymore as much.
Beth Silvers [00:10:40] So one more issue to cover about what's driving this strike, and I think this one is one of the most interesting because it has a lot of parallels to other forms of work, and that is self taping. That when you are applying to work on a film, the costs of the application process have really shifted away from the studios and to the actors where they used to go in and read for scenes with people who are there at the companies employ. Now they are doing it at home. They're having to get good equipment at home to do it. They're having to pull in friends and family to read with them for those auditions. And I feel like that's something that a lot of people can relate to, even if you aren't working in Hollywood. You see places where it feels like, man, doing my job now has a lot more cost on my side than it used to.
Chad Silvers [00:11:30] Do you think that's a relic of COVID?
Beth Silvers [00:11:33] I think it's probably something from COVID that really worked for the studios. And why not keep it going?
Chad Silvers [00:11:38] It worked. It was less costs and then lets make a standard.
Beth Silvers [00:11:42] Yes, why not. That seems like what's happened with a bunch of these issues to me. That the studio has seen an opportunity to lower costs and have said, "Well, let's do that everywhere we possibly can." And I understand that from a business perspective. But I also feel like the thing that is a microcosm that this strike represents is people are getting tired of that and saying, we have to meet somewhere in the middle. So this isn't just about actors and writers. It's about an enormous chunk of California's enormous economy. One of the biggest things that America exports in the world is entertainment, and underlying all of it is the wealth inequality dynamics where people are just tired of like a very few people making ungodly amounts of money and it not being spread not evenly, but even close to fairly across the folks working under them.
Chad Silvers [00:12:38] So you feel that more with the studio executives and the studios themselves making money? What about the actors? The top tier actors that are making the major lion's share of the money that's put into film?
Beth Silvers [00:12:53] I don't know how I feel about that. I understand that there are big names that do drive people's interest in projects. And I get that you have to compete for that talent. I also know that even some of those big names make nowhere close to what studio executives are making. And I know that some of those big names have started to really advocate for their fellow performers in negotiating what people are going to get paid on those projects. So I have some respect for how those folks are conducting themselves in this process, probably more than I do for the CEOs.
Chad Silvers [00:13:30] Again, easy targets. Yeah, I think they've got to have to do something for the workaday journeyman actor and actress because nobody's going to go see one man Chris Pratt show maybe.
Beth Silvers [00:13:47] No, I'm not going to go see a one man Chris Pratt show. And [inaudible] I am a capitalist. I am not somebody who's ever been on a picket line. I'm not a French Revolution type. But I do see the issues here, and I think I'd be pretty mad too if I were in this industry. And all of it makes me really happy to have an independent podcast where we are not in that pressure cooker of shareholders and this is about to be sold again, or someone's about to acquire a majority stake because it just feels like there's not a lot of room once you start adding zeroes and executives to the mix. Well, next up, we're going to talk about a different kind of power, and that is solar power. I am very excited to share why we decided to put solar panels on our house and what that's been like for us. Okay, Chad, you started talking about solar panels a few years before we actually decided to put them on our house. What made you want to explore the idea of solar power here?
Chad Silvers [00:14:53] Just like many things, I did a little research first and went back and forth about the idea of doing it. It finally got to the point where the technology had improved, the cost at least for what we wanted to do had gone down. So it just it made sense.
Beth Silvers [00:15:12] Okay. But let's talk about why you were interested in the first place. Was this your "I like to be an early adopter of technology" gene? Was this your "I don't like waste" gene and the sun is right there? What propelled you to do this?
Chad Silvers [00:15:26] A little bit of all of that. I did like the idea. When I set it up to have those done, I think we first turned them on I sent you a message and said, "Baby I've harnessed the power of the sun for you."
Beth Silvers [00:15:41] Well, I was interested because of the climate side of things. I'm always trying to think about how we can do better here. And it did seem to me that this was a fairly straightforward way for us to do better in terms of our own footprint as a family. Did that play into your calculus at all?
Chad Silvers [00:15:58] I mean, a little bit. I'm not as extreme there, I think, as you are. You're not extreme, but--
Beth Silvers [00:16:06] Motivated by that.
Chad Silvers [00:16:07] My motivations were more, hey, power costs a lot and the sun's just there, and it's there to use. So if we could get a solution that made sense and paid itself back in a reasonable amount of time, hey, let's go for it.
Beth Silvers [00:16:26] The other piece that I thought about was grid resiliency. I worry about this a lot, actually. I worry about how our power grids are not equipped for all of the uses of electricity that are being pulled from them right now. I worry about what would happen to me personally if I got too hot or too cold. Especially after what happened in Texas, this unexpected ice storm, it just felt to me like anything we can do here to try to keep things running is a good idea.
Chad Silvers [00:16:59] Yeah, self-sufficiency did play into it as well. We made the decision to get battery back up in the house too to use when there are power outages. We'll talk about that a little bit more in the details of what we did. It was a separate decision, but part of it played in.
Beth Silvers [00:17:18] So, Chad talked about doing research. We both really like research. I would love for you, Chad, to just talk about the basics of how solar panels work.
Chad Silvers [00:17:26] Okay. Let me get my chemistry hat on here. I mean, the simple answer would just be to say that the sun shines, witchcraft happens and we have electricity.
Beth Silvers [00:17:38] I don't want the simple answer.
Chad Silvers [00:17:39] Okay. You want to go a little bit deeper than that? Okay. So solar panels are photovoltaic cells. They're typically silicon on the outside of that or two sides of that silicon that's kind of a sandwich with some metals, that much like a magnetic field create an electric field with a positive and negative plate. So the photovoltaic effect sunlight comes in and hits the atoms that are in there and knocks electrons off. So those electrons are able to pass from one side to the other, create a flow of electricity and wires connected to it take that power out or that electricity out. And you start with direct current power. You have to have an inverter in place to turn that to AC power or alternating current, which is what appliances and stuff in your home uses.
Beth Silvers [00:18:36] So what considerations did you have in mind given the level at which you understand this in purchasing our panels? Are there different types of panels that you looked at?
Chad Silvers [00:18:47] Yeah. So I researched several different panels. I mean, it really comes down to what your installer is using. So I talked to four or five different installers before settling on someone. I mean, those were all over the board when it came to price and what they carried and their level of knowledge about what they were doing, which was a little concerning. I ended up going with Hanwha Qcells. These are some of the most efficient solar panels on the market. They are now manufactured since 2019. They built a plant in Dalton, Georgia. It's the biggest solar panel plant in the Western Hemisphere and was a Korean company. They've also got a headquarters in Germany. So Korean determination, German engineering, but made in the USA now. I thought it was a good mix. And these panels are greater than 20% efficient, which is some of the highest on the market right now.
Beth Silvers [00:19:48] You talked about talking with different installers. I know that this can be sort of a scammy business, that there are people out there who don't know a lot about what they're doing. What kinds of questions did you ask? What did you want people to know before you felt comfortable moving forward with them? Putting price aside for a second.
Chad Silvers [00:20:06] Yeah, putting price aside, I wanted someone who was able-- I mean, like doing anything else, you want them to listen to what your goal is and will be able to answer the questions you have directly. And the final company I went with, I think did that pretty well.
Beth Silvers [00:20:26] How did you articulate our goal to them?
Chad Silvers [00:20:28] Well, I wanted to get as much out of it as possible.
Beth Silvers [00:20:35] Production.
Chad Silvers [00:20:35] From production, from a dollar standpoint. And there's a whole bunch of factors involved with that. So, typically, a solar company will give you a model that says this is the size of the system, how many panels, how many watts each panel is, and what they expect to produce over a 20 year period or something like that. So our home, the back of it faces directly south. It was perfect.
Beth Silvers [00:21:05] We really lucked out.
Chad Silvers [00:21:07] Yeah, it's directly south. So that's going to matter a lot. If you have a home that the place you want to put them faces north, you're just not going to get as much sun here in the northern hemisphere. So ours worked out very well there. It's pretty much one plane back there. So it was easy as far as the installation. I told them I wanted to do the-- or I believed I wanted to do the battery backup. So we priced that out as well. Again, they did a good job. They can use GPS data to really look at how much sun you're going to get and do pretty good with the projections. Now, I was able to look at the models and really dig in and see how much they expect the price of electricity to go up over a certain amount of time. That's the other part of it. You're going to produce X and this is how much you're going to save based on the energy cost in your area, which we have pretty cheap electricity here. We're on a co-op, so electricity is not super expensive here in northern Kentucky like it may be in California or other parts of the country. But it's still worked out to where our production level-- expected production level. And I had them tweak the cost increase because our cost has haven't been rising as much. And I wanted to be very conservative with the projections on it. Even with that, our panels themselves came out to about an eight and a half year payback, and I thought that was pretty good. Now, part of that was the tax credit that was in place when we installed our panels in June of 2022. It was a 26% tax credit back for the cost.
Beth Silvers [00:22:57] How did you think about the amount of electricity that we use in this formula? If we used less or more, would that eight and a half years be different?
Chad Silvers [00:23:07] No, because the panels are still producing about the same amount. So a good solar company, they're going to take your last year of electricity bills, look at the data from that and use that to project how much offset you're going to create with these panels. So ours is not 100% offset basically because the roof wasn't big enough to put that much on there. We use a lot of electricity. Our heat and air conditioning, all electric.
Beth Silvers [00:23:36] All of our appliances.
Chad Silvers [00:23:37] Yeah, all of our appliances. We don't have natural gas. We have Beth's 500 gallons of really hot water out back.
Beth Silvers [00:23:45] That's very important to me. The hot tub is.
Chad Silvers [00:23:47] Yeah. And then the pool. It's got an electric heat pump that's heating it. Now, we don't use it quite as much, but--
Beth Silvers [00:23:54] Far down the electrify everything path here. And we have an electric car.
Chad Silvers [00:23:58] And we have an electric car. Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:24:00] So a lot of electricity being used. We also don't have any tree cover on our house. Our roof is not complex in any way. All of those things factor in. The slope of the roof, the positioning of the house. So a lot to think about as you're considering how much electricity we think we could get from these panels.
Chad Silvers [00:24:20] Yeah. And like I said, they use GPS and a little meter that they put up and know exactly where it's at, and they can really dial in how much power you can expect to make in a year's time.
Beth Silvers [00:24:31] Now, we replaced our roof before we put the panels on. Can you talk about that decision?
Chad Silvers [00:24:36] So our roof, just a regular shingle roof, was about 15 years old. So when I decided to do the panels, I thought it would not be great to put those panels on and have to replace a roof in a few years. So we went ahead and did a new roof right before the panels went on. And so the warranty of the shingles should be 25 plus years as well, or the lifespan. And the panels are 25 year warranty on them.
Beth Silvers [00:25:07] And we bought the panels. But there are leasing options out there. So how did you think about that decision point?
Chad Silvers [00:25:14] You can purchase, of course, outright. With me there was a discount for paying for everything right up front the. The lease options you'll see out there make a lot of sense and a lot of people do them. Because let's say your electricity bill averages $200 a month. If you can finance those panels for 15 years maybe, and pay that same $200 a month that you would be paying an electricity bill, but you're using it to pay the cost of the panels, that's going to work out too. But, of course, there are finance charges in there too. So you're probably going to pay more going that way. But it's also easier to stomach. It's not a big capital expenditure right up front.
Beth Silvers [00:25:58] The installers that we worked with I know are pretty close to us geographically. Can you talk a little bit about that decision? How did you decide? Would you have used someone out of state, for example?
Chad Silvers [00:26:10] We're so close to two other states, and I did talk to people in Ohio and Indiana. It turned out the company that was the best ended up being in Kentucky. And I'm not mentioning their name here, but if anyone's got questions, I'm happy to refer you if you're reasonably close to Central Kentucky, Louisville area.
Beth Silvers [00:26:31] Did you think about how these would affect the value of our house? We don't have any intention to move. We probably continue to make it harder to move from here because we've done so much that's unique to our house. Chad proposed here on the land where our house sits. So it's pretty special to us. But did you think about our home value?
Chad Silvers [00:26:49] I didn't a lot in there, and I had people ask about that. I think that's a complicated question. It's got a lot of variables to it. If you're buying the panels outright, I think of course that's going to add to the value of a home. You're covering an electricity cost and you're producing it yourself. If you're tied into some type of lease where those are there and they transfer with the home, I don't know, maybe that's a liability.
Beth Silvers [00:27:19] Yeah, I read on the Department of Energy website that you can figure an average of a premium of about $15,000 if you own the panels and you're trying to sell your home. But I have to believe that varies tremendously across the United States by market.
Chad Silvers [00:27:36] Yeah, different types of home, different types of set up, different offsets. And like I said, when we signed to do ours, we had a 26% tax credit that actually because of new legislation turned into 30%. So that was really nice in the first year recouping 30% of the cost of the panels. And that's factored into what I was saying that it's an eight and a half year payback.
Beth Silvers [00:27:58] So you did the research. You figured out what kind of panels you wanted. You found an installer, you ran the numbers, and then we had to deal with the power company. So what do you have to do when you get the panels to deal with the power company?
Chad Silvers [00:28:11] So that kind of ties back into some of the things you might have heard in different parts of the country about solar panels scam companies. There's a pretty big company that's based in Tennessee, in Knoxville, that is getting sued in Kentucky. I think Tennessee and Georgia attorneys generals are looking at it as well. They would go install, charge the customer for everything or start the loan payment, but they weren't contracting and pulling the permits with the counties where they were installing them. So customers have these installed and they can't turn them on because you have to work with your county building permit folks and the power company to actually get them installed. Like just putting the panels on the house is not the complete installation. Probably a bigger job is wiring them up and doing so up to code. So you have to tie it in to the meter. For us, we ended up doing what's called net metering. With net metering, you are still pulling power from the grid and then you're sending the excess power that you make back to the grid. So, in a typical day, let's say we make 100 kilowatt hours of electricity and the house uses 60 during the day. We've used that from the solar and we've sent back another 35 or 40 to the grid. Those just live as credits, a one for one credit for us with our power company until we need it, until we pull it from the grid. So with that net metering, we are selling power back to the grid. In here, every unit of power that we sell back to the grid is bought from us at the same price that the power we're buying from the electric company is. In some parts of the country, when you're selling power back, you sell it at a wholesale rate back to the power company, but you're still buying the power that you're actually pulling from the grid at night or times that your panels aren't producing enough at the full retail rate. So those parts of the country, it's not nearly as lucrative to do it because I feel like you're kind of getting cheated, right? You're selling the same thing back to them at a lower rate than you're buying from them.
Beth Silvers [00:30:50] Okay. So your favorite part. Let's talk about what we're producing and how you're able to see that and how it is offsetting against the electricity that we're using.
Chad Silvers [00:31:01] Okay. So our system we ended up going with it's a 16.8 kilowatt system. If you're talking terms of DC, it turns out about 14.4 kilowatts AC power. So 42 panels that we put on our home, we have two inverters that are turning that over into alternating current power. And it's cool when the sun's out there in the garage and they're rolling like mad. It's great. You know you're making money when that's happening. And then we put two Tesla power walls in as well for backup. So with the Tesla Powerwall, you get a Tesla Gateway, and with that it ties into the Tesla app and gives you all kinds of fun data.
Beth Silvers [00:31:49] What is a Tesla Gateway? What does that mean?
Chad Silvers [00:31:51] That's the device that talks to the Powerwalls. It's tied in to the grid to know if the power goes down. It's also connected to weather services. So our system knows if there is a storm warning, for example, and if the Powerwalls, the batteries, aren't charged up, it will start charging to make sure that you've got power if there's an outage. So if the power did go out for some reason, that Gateway clicks over and you go into using the battery backup when the power's out.
Beth Silvers [00:32:29] The detail that the system provides moves us into the solar panels might not have been good for our marriage portion of the conversation because Chad watches this like a hawk and has now developed very strong feelings about when I use the washer and dryer and I don't like that so much. I wanted solar panels to be a path to greater freedom, not greater constraint.
Chad Silvers [00:32:50] Well, like a new toy, when we first got them last June, just having access to that data and being able to watch the energy usage and see like when there would be a big spike and I'd be like, "What in the world?" Beth's using the dryer or a hairdryer or the electric range the stove uses so much power. Oven, not nearly as much. Kind of weird. Hot tub, crazy amount of power for short times.
Beth Silvers [00:33:18] But we also get to see the crazy amount of power that it produces, and it's a lot. And it's surprising how much we produce even on cloudier days.
Chad Silvers [00:33:26] That's one thing with the panels that I went with. They are a mono-crystalline and PERC panel. And PERC is a passive emitter and rear cell panel, just more efficient. Does better in low light higher temperatures.
Beth Silvers [00:33:44] So you said you threw out a number for kilowatt hours earlier. How much do you think in the summer we are producing on an average day.
Chad Silvers [00:33:51] A good day in the summer is 130 kilowatt hours.
Beth Silvers [00:33:56] And we're using, what do you think?
Chad Silvers [00:33:58] Depends on how hot it is.
Beth Silvers [00:34:00] Because of the AC?
Chad Silvers [00:34:01] Yeah, like April and May, we produced more power than we used. So we had net credits. Now, we still had a little bit of a bill because you pay a connection fee with your utility company. Ours is 20 bucks and change or something. So you still get a bill. But, I mean, like our electricity bill was 30 bucks when it's it's average is 200 plus.
Beth Silvers [00:34:23] What about the winter?
Chad Silvers [00:34:25] Well, you're still producing, right? The sun shines in the wintertime, even on overcast days, you're producing really enough power to do everything except run the furnace. And heat pumps are pretty efficient. We put a new heat pump in a few years ago. That's rather efficient.
Beth Silvers [00:34:39] So what was our average delta? What would you say between what we produced and what we used in the winter? I just want to give people a sense throughout the year.
Chad Silvers [00:34:47] We had electricity bills that were $500 plus in the winter before. I think it's better to talk about a full year because you've got the highs of the summer, you've got the lower production in the winter and it all averages out, right? We did this not for quick gain. We did it for the long term. So you look at the long term balanced average on it. So, for us, we produced a little over 24 megawatt hours in the first year. So that's 24 million kilowatt hours. That came out to about $2500 in the first year.
Beth Silvers [00:35:28] That we saved.
Chad Silvers [00:35:28] That's how much we produced. We produced that much worth of electricity. So we would have used that power anyways because, again, we're not 100% offset. Maybe next time. Maybe someday soon. I know the guy that did mine is like, we could totally put some more ground mounted panels out behind your house and and get over 100%. And I've got a friend that did do ground mounted panels, and they're pretty cool. I mean, he's got a big array and he's over 100% production.
Beth Silvers [00:35:58] So I want to ask you about disposal of these panels when we're finished with them. I know this is the concern that people have. What is going to happen to all these solar panels once their lifespan is over?
Chad Silvers [00:36:09] Yeah, I hear that coming up a lot. I mean, there are metals that are part of a solar panel. I was talking about the sandwich of silicone that's in there. The metals that are there right now, you're going to recycle them. We don't have a ton of that happening just yet. We will probably in 20, 30 years as the demand for panels, the use of panels goes up. Right now there's not a ton of places to do the recycling of solar panels, but as the demand or as the the use of these grows, the demand for companies to do recycling is going to increase. So I think it's one of those things that the market will provide a solution to it.
Beth Silvers [00:36:57] And as I understand it, the challenge of recycling right now is due to that polymer that seals everything and to protect it from the weather, that you've got to have a really high temperature to be able to open it up and get to all those recyclable parts.
Chad Silvers [00:37:11] Yeah. And it's, again, small films of the metals that are in there.
Beth Silvers [00:37:16] I was reading about this again on the Department of Energy website and I felt a huge sense of confidence that this is a solvable problem and that it's in process of being solved right now.
Chad Silvers [00:37:27] Yeah, that's what I said. I think it's one of those things that the market is going to solve because there will be a need and someone will step up to fill that need.
Beth Silvers [00:37:35] We have talked about this strictly from a residential perspective. Do you have any thoughts about arrays being used on huge pieces of land, like in a more holistic way to power portions of the grid for everybody?
Chad Silvers [00:37:51] Yeah, I think it's something that the country, the world really has to look at. I mean, you could take like a portion of land in Arizona, New Mexico, put a lot of panels out there, and I think it could do a lot of good on land that's not being used for much right now.
Beth Silvers [00:38:08] I don't know about that. I think we ought to use more surfaces like roofs. I wish this weren't an individual project. I wish the City of Union where we live, would say, hey, we could pull a lot of power from the roofs of all of our government buildings, of businesses, of homes. Let's do some kind of project together where there-- the tax incentive is part of it, but there have to be other creative ways to kind of work together on that versus taking land that could be productive in other senses, I think, and covering them in these panels. That's what I'm worried about.
Chad Silvers [00:38:42] I was talking about land that's not productive, right?
Beth Silvers [00:38:45] Yeah.
Chad Silvers [00:38:45] I get what you're talking about. About building commercial solar farms on farmland.
Beth Silvers [00:38:50] Right. I don't like that.
Chad Silvers [00:38:52] Well, what I don't like, I don't like the idea of the government controlling and doing that project. I don't want bureaucracy tied up in this. I like some help. And the idea of doing government buildings, absolutely. But I don't think I want them in the private sector part of it.
Beth Silvers [00:39:10] Well, is there anything else that we haven't talked about on solar panels that you think people need to know if they're considering this? Do you think the price of the panels themselves will go down? I know we heard from someone who said they priced these four years ago and went back and the cost is higher today, but I don't know if that's the labor side or the actual hardware side.
Chad Silvers [00:39:30] I think the price and efficiency is going up, new technologies are coming out. Even the model that I got, there's a newer model that's a little bit better.
Beth Silvers [00:39:42] Does that bug you?
Chad Silvers [00:39:44] A little bit. The panels are getting better. The cost, I think, overall is going down. But labor cost, when I looked, gosh, probably six or seven years ago, it was definitely cheaper last year. But we've had a lot of inflation since then and a lot of labor cost increase. So, yeah, I can see that there are more now.
Beth Silvers [00:40:07] And those metals are going to change too over time, like the different components of the parts will probably drive some of that pricing.
Chad Silvers [00:40:14] Yeah, there could be a completely new technology that comes out that revolutionizes everything.
Beth Silvers [00:40:20] We expect them to go for 20 years or so. Will the efficiency depreciate in that time period where we have less efficient panels at the end than we have today?
Chad Silvers [00:40:28] They do. Yeah. They go down over time. Those go down over time. The batteries are going to have less capacity over time. So, you know...
Beth Silvers [00:40:37] We don't live in an area, fortunately, where we have a lot of natural disasters. If we did and our solar panels were damaged by a hurricane, tornado, something like that, would our insurance cover that?
Chad Silvers [00:40:50] Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:40:51] Our homeowners insurance?
Chad Silvers [00:40:52] Yeah, I added them to our homeowner's insurance. It added I think 160 bucks or something a year to the cost of our insurance. But these panels are made to withstand heavy rain, heavy wind, hail. They're made to last. Florida, South Carolina, a lot of people have solar panels down there. And these things are made to withstand like 2400 pascals of wind. That's like 140 mile per hour wind.
Beth Silvers [00:41:21] Are you glad that we did it? Would you do it again knowing what you know now?
Chad Silvers [00:41:23] Yeah. So far, so good. I think the $2500 in the first year is kind of right on pace with what we want to do to get the right payback. Again, we did the batteries. Kind of a separate decision, but glad we did.
Beth Silvers [00:41:37] The batteries added a tremendous amount of cost.
Chad Silvers [00:41:40] Yeah, the batteries were almost as much as the panels themselves. But, again, that tax credit made it really helpful.
Beth Silvers [00:41:49] So it worked out financially from Chad's perspective. And they gave me that resiliency perspective. I like knowing that the batteries are there and that if the power goes out, we aren't dependent just on what the sun is producing at that moment, but that we have charged up these batteries and can use them.
Chad Silvers [00:42:05] And what we do usually in the summer-- well, most of the time in the winter when we're thinking snow is going to come or ice and we could have some power outages, I switch it up a little bit. But we run off of solar during the day and usually the first half of the day, the excess solar is charging those batteries up. And then at night, when the sun goes down, we run off of battery power at night and we're usually 100% covered with that, occasionally 95, 90, something like that, when the hot tub kicks on in the morning and wants to use a bunch of power.
Beth Silvers [00:42:40] And so you're available to take questions about this if people have more questions?
Chad Silvers [00:42:43] Yeah, I'll take questions. And like I said, if you're in this area, I've talked to a couple of people and referred them to the company I worked with. And I like them. I like them a lot.
Beth Silvers [00:42:56] Okay. Well, if you have additional questions after all this, you can email us Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com, and maybe just put "For Chad" in the subject line. Chad, we always end the show talking about something Outside of Politics. I feel like we've made a major shift in the way that we entertain over the past few years. When we first got married, we had a lot of parties and I cooked a lot. And we really worked to entertain inside our home. And now I feel like we have become more you can just come over kind of people. We are mostly outside. When we first got married, I wouldn't let people bring anything when they came over and I'm like, "Bring whatever you want. Bring your own cooler if you want to. Bring a dish, I don't care what it looks like." So we've really shifted from entertaining to just opening our house to people.
Chad Silvers [00:43:54] Well, opening our house, opening the outside.
Beth Silvers [00:43:56] Yeah.
Chad Silvers [00:43:57] I mean, it's part of what we've done, right? We bought the land behind the house. We've opened that up, cleared it out. Then in 2020 and 2021, we built the pool, and I'm still working on finishing the little pool house out there, a little shelter. Then the 2022 project was the solar panels we talked about. But we've tried to make the outside space very appealing and fun.
Beth Silvers [00:44:22] And it is, I think, a better way to make long term connections with people, to have it be more like our space is your space, than we've invited you over for an event. I like that we aren't event centric anymore, I think.
Chad Silvers [00:44:37] Okay, that's big because you do like to control the outline and flow of an event.
Beth Silvers [00:44:44] Well, I like things to be nice. I do. But it's really a lot of pressure for me to kind of release some of that, especially as we have kids and our lives are just busier. I think that if we were still entertaining the way we were when we first got married, we probably wouldn't entertain as much in this chapter of our lives. And so this has been a way to say, just come along and do this thing with us. Let's have fun together. And I'm not going to stress out about how it goes.
Chad Silvers [00:45:08] And I hope you're enjoying it more because I get a little peeved when you're busy, busy, busy, and you don't actually get to enjoy anything that is happening.
Beth Silvers [00:45:17] You do get peeved about that and I can feel your peevedness, and that also diminishes my enjoyment of things.
Chad Silvers [00:45:24] Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:45:25] And so we try to really plan a lot of events out at the pool and other wise with our friends and neighbors to the point where Chad laughs at me. I'll have like a calendar night. Like, let's sit down and plan our adult fun and get it all on the calendar right now. And Chad just rolls his eyes at me. But I feel like it's important. I feel like that's my way of saying this is important. Let's put it on the calendar so that we make sure that we do it.
Chad Silvers [00:45:48] And I roll with it.
Beth Silvers [00:45:50] With a little bit of annoyance.
Chad Silvers [00:45:51] With a little bit of annoyance. I just like to be outside and to just enjoy. I've tried to do things out there that that make it easy to just relax. We put the cool sound system around the pool. I put another sound system in the backyard. We have four fire pits and then we have-- you want to tell the fire pit story?
Beth Silvers [00:46:11] Well, so Chad again loves to be an early adopter of things, loves to have the coolest toys. And so, he was really excited when the solar stoves came out that burn the fire so hot that it doesn't smoke. So he gets one of those solar stoves and then later he gets a mini version of it. Now, we are not campers. I understand if you were a camper, how this would be a really useful thing. We are not campers, so it kind of became the kids fire. And recently Chad comes to me and is like, "We only have the big one and we have a little one. I just sometimes feel like maybe we need..." And I was like, "A medium one? Are we Goldilocks here-- the just right size?" So now we have more firepits."
Chad Silvers [00:46:53] I don't think that's a fair characterization.
Beth Silvers [00:46:56] You don't? What do you disagree with then, Chad?
Chad Silvers [00:46:59] No, we have the big one.
Beth Silvers [00:47:00] We have the big one.
Chad Silvers [00:47:01] Big one is on the patio, 30 inch diameter, too big to carry around. I would also like to have one out by the pool, but--
Beth Silvers [00:47:11] You think the little one's too small to have by the pool?
Chad Silvers [00:47:14] Okay, so the little one is like a six inch diameter. Maybe it's meant to be like a little camp stove. I got it because I got one for our neighbors as a gift and it was like, buy one, get one. So, of course, I got one. And, yeah, I kind of meant it to be the kid's, like have a little fire pit for them to play in and feed--.
Beth Silvers [00:47:35] Roast marshmallows.
Chad Silvers [00:47:36] And really it was kind of like I was [inaudible] them into picking up sticks in the backyard and burning them.
Beth Silvers [00:47:42] I got you.
Chad Silvers [00:47:43] So the medium sized one could be portable. Like, if we went somewhere to an event where we needed a firepit. Various tailgating activities, something like that.
Beth Silvers [00:47:54] Okay.
Chad Silvers [00:47:55] In a safe space where we don't burn things down. But it could be out by the pool and then we could take it. Yeah.
Beth Silvers [00:48:01] What do you think is the best thing that we have done to make entertaining at the pool easy?
Chad Silvers [00:48:06] The shelter.
Beth Silvers [00:48:07] Yeah.
Chad Silvers [00:48:08] The covered area. I've got a building out there just meant to be like a covered pavilion, I guess you'd say. But then since we had to run power out there anyways, we ran water, so we put a bathroom out there. It's also about 100 feet from the house. So people start doing the calculus of do I want to go all the way back to the house to use the bathroom?
Beth Silvers [00:48:28] I think it was genius to put the bathroom out there. And that was my insistence because I knew we did not wet people traipsing in and out of our house to use the bathroom. And also that people will just go in the pool if they don't want to make that journey.
Chad Silvers [00:48:40] That's what I'm saying. But the covered area is great. Get out of the shade or get into the shade. TV, I put a nice sound system around the pool. During the summer I work out there, so it's just like a little office.
Beth Silvers [00:48:55] Yeah, we both spend a lot of time out there and it's been wonderful. It feels like an investment in all of our relationships. It lets the girls have friends over, and we can be the house where the friends come. We can host events for church and for your academic team. And it's just really let us kind of give a gift, I think, to lots of people in our lives.
Chad Silvers [00:49:17] And you know me from the technology side, I love the music. The system is out there where you can just leave the house, walk through the yard into the pool. You've got music kind of the whole way, really sets the mood.
Beth Silvers [00:49:30] Well, Chad, I appreciate you being on Pantsuit Politics with me today.
Chad Silvers [00:49:33] Thank you. I'll be back Thursday, right?
Beth Silvers [00:49:36] Yes. Chad has been joining me on Thursdays on our premium show More to Say to talk about sports, because that is something that I'm not going to talk about with Sarah very often. So it's been kind of fun.
Chad Silvers [00:49:46] Awesome.
Beth Silvers [00:49:47] So we'll see you there on Thursday if you join us on our premium show. If not, I will see you back here on Friday. We hope that you will share this conversation with someone in your life who you think they would benefit from it. And until Friday, have the best week available to you.
Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah: Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. Beth Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
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