rpatel18
New Member
My inlaws recently moved into our old house we own in Bakersfield, CA and we were wondering if it would be worth the money to upgrade the solar and put a battery system in. We purchased the house in 2018 and the previous owner had a solar system installed around 2014.
I'm not sure what the panel specs are but there are 20 of them on the roof and there seems to be some discoloration where some of the black parts of the panels are looking slightly brownish (forgot to take a picture of it when I was on the roof). On the inverter, it says Sunny Boy SMA Technologies AG. There is a screen on the inverter showing the stats and I've seen it at most output ~3kw and it says its output a total of 101,643kwh so far.
We're on a E1 WB Residential Service rate, and I'm not exactly sure what they will pay in true up but I remember that when we were here, we paid about ~$1.8k in true up costs per year which I thought was quite a bit for having a solar system. The other change that we're going to make is to install a heat pump this fall, the AC unit is fairly old and is on its last leg. My assumption is that they are on NEM2 or maybe even NEM1? But I also don't know if upgrade solar or adding a heat pump changes what rate tier we're on and changes the math.
How do I start to figure out if upgrading the current solar is worth it and if so, how much is worth spending then?
I'm not sure what the panel specs are but there are 20 of them on the roof and there seems to be some discoloration where some of the black parts of the panels are looking slightly brownish (forgot to take a picture of it when I was on the roof). On the inverter, it says Sunny Boy SMA Technologies AG. There is a screen on the inverter showing the stats and I've seen it at most output ~3kw and it says its output a total of 101,643kwh so far.
We're on a E1 WB Residential Service rate, and I'm not exactly sure what they will pay in true up but I remember that when we were here, we paid about ~$1.8k in true up costs per year which I thought was quite a bit for having a solar system. The other change that we're going to make is to install a heat pump this fall, the AC unit is fairly old and is on its last leg. My assumption is that they are on NEM2 or maybe even NEM1? But I also don't know if upgrade solar or adding a heat pump changes what rate tier we're on and changes the math.
How do I start to figure out if upgrading the current solar is worth it and if so, how much is worth spending then?