{"id":1396,"date":"2018-04-23T14:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T22:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2018-04-24T07:56:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T15:56:04","slug":"solar-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/solar-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had the solar panels installed a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-1397\" src=\"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/IMG_9742-1280x960.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"730\" height=\"548\" srcset=\"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/IMG_9742-1280x960.jpg 1280w, http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/IMG_9742-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/IMG_9742-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In addition to the above 8kW set of panels, we have another 6.5kW in two areas on the front of our house.\u00a0 Initially, we were going to install it all, but we decided to scale back a bit for a couple of reasons<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>To save some money (did we mention that building a house is EXPENSIVE?)<\/li>\n<li>To see how it goes with 8kW of solar, and make sure we aren&#8217;t over-installing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The nice thing is, we already have everything ready for the next set of panels, so installing them should be a snap<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The roof has mounting brackets already installed<\/li>\n<li>The conduit from the mechanical room to the roof is installed<\/li>\n<li>The mechanical room has the rack installed for the inverter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One downside of our solar timing has been the effects of the solar tariffs.\u00a0 Since we first signed up with our solar contractor, every time we&#8217;ve talked to them, up through the end of last year, the price per watt went down, as solar panel prices continued to improve. With the new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/trump-s-solar-tariff-darkens-outlook-installers-n854931\">solar tariffs<\/a>, this year it changed. We saw a 10% price increase from our last quote.\u00a0 Whether the company is using this as an excuse to bump the price, or whether the panel prices really went up, we don&#8217;t know, and it probably doesn&#8217;t matter.\u00a0 In my manufacturing business, we&#8217;ve seen quite a few domestic suppliers of steel and aluminum products raise their prices to 25% and 10% respectively after the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trump_tariffs\">steel and aluminum tariffs<\/a>, simply because they felt they could.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, I am not a huge fan of tariffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had the solar panels installed a couple of weeks ago. In addition to the above 8kW set of panels, we have another 6.5kW in two areas on the front of our house.\u00a0 Initially, we were going to install it all, but we decided to scale back a bit for a couple of reasons To<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/solar-2\/\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Read more about Solar!<\/span>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-efficiency"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}