On 1/29/2015 6:19 AM, trader_4 wrote:

snip

If we sell the house, the $18K is basically lost. There may be a slight
increase in value of the house but probably not.

I don't see why that would be. I'd certainly pay more for a house
with solar power.

I don't live in a normal city. In the sub-division I live in, most of
the houses were built in 1963. These are not luxury homes, they are very
plain tract houses, less than 2000 square feet, that sold for about $25K
when they were new. They presently sell for around $2 million. An $18K
solar system would be lost in the noise. Buyers are bidding up the
prices and paying cash. I could not buy a house in my city anymore, just
the property tax would be $2000 per month.

As to maintenance, my neighbor has had solar electricity for about eight
years. The only maintenance he has to do is to clean the dirt off the
panels once a year. Anything else is taken care of by the warranty.
You're really paying for the warranty on the inverter. Good panels
without the added complexity of micro-inverters or optimizers rarely
fail though they do produce slightly less power over time. it's the
inverter that has a limited life span.