Solar Installation

Last year (2025) we worked with Sunpath Solar to install a residential solar system for our home. This post is a general description of the system that we installed.

We had wanted to install solar panels for quite a while but our current US president removed the 30% tax credit for homeowners. We decided to install our system before the tax credit went away. Hopefully a more modern president and administration will bring the credit back. But we have to live through the old guy first. In any case, our solar installation got done in time to get the 30% tax credit.

The 30% federal solar tax credit (Residential Clean Energy Credit) allows homeowners to deduct 30% of the total cost of installing solar panels and battery storage from their federal income taxes. It is a nonrefundable, dollar-for-dollar reduction that applies to systems installed through 2025, with no maximum limit. If the 30% is more than you owe in taxes then you can carry it forward to apply to subsequent years. That is, if you owe $10,000 in taxes and have a $3,000 solar credit, your tax liability drops to $7,000. If the credit exceeds your tax liability, you cannot get the difference as a refund, but you can carry the unused portion over to future years.

Finding a solar installer is challenging. We live in Georgia and there are a number of companies that do residential solar installs. However, I found a number of companies that were setup to contract out the work. This may work fine (it probably does) but I really wanted to work with a company that had it’s own electricians and installers. We ultimately chose Sunpath Solar. They had completed a large installation for a local church and the folks that I talked to at Sunpath were great to work with. https://sunpath.solar/

Georgia allows pushing energy back to the grid. Georgia Power is our electric provider. They call their program RNR-Instantaneous Netting (Solar Buy Back). What you are doing is lowering your total electric cost. If you pushed back more energy than you end up using Georgia Power won’t be sending you a check. It’s a reduction of your bill type program. They are currently paying 7.22 cents per kWh. This is significantly lower than what they charge you for energy you get from the grid.

Our electric bill was setup with averaging so we paid about the same amount every month. Our goal with the solar installation was to reduce our bill by half. The actual system seems to be a bit better than that but we will have to live with it a while to see how this works out.

We decided to install a smaller battery. The microinverters, controller and battery were sourced from Enphase Energy. The solar panels themselves are sourced from SEG. The battery doesn’t back up the entire house. If the grid power goes down the battery powers the master bedroom, inside fridge, garage fridge (and garage doors), tv in great room and internet. We do tend †o lose power multiple times a year. However, its ordinarily for shorter periods of time (less than 8 hours). So this approach works fine for us.

Enphase provides a web and iOS/Android app called Enlighten that shows current power generation and status of system. The system comes with a StormWatch product that ensures the battery is 100% charged if a storm is coming and there is some identifiable risk of losing grid power. If weather is non threatening then the battery is used to provide some power for the house (as well as sometimes sending some power back to grid) after the sunsets. The app allows control over this. We have it setup to always maintain a 30% minimum of charge for the battery. So, for short outages, the battery would work well.