As it's the last year to get the 30% tax break in the U.S. I'm thinking about installing Solar. Anyone have any advice? Primarily I'm looking for cost savings followed by backup power when the grid is down (yes, I know I need a multimode inverter or some other contraption to get solar power while the grid is down). I'm not ready to invest in batteries yet, I think big changes are coming shortly and I'd be smarter to add batteries next year - but I want to be ready for it. I know the IQ8 system sounds perfect for what I want, but it most likely won't be available until 2020 (they said 1st quarter last October, than 4th quarter in January - so not much confidence there). Update: Was hoping for more discussion, but without that I'm jotting down what I learn as I go, hopefully anyone reading it will spot any newbie mistakes and give me some pointers, or at lease possibly it will help the next guy. Why Go Solar? From NREL's SAM program, a 7.7 kw system could save $13k in its life time: 20x QCell Peak DUO 385 W = $5200 1x SunnyBoy 7.6 Kw = $1800 Other gear = $2800 Installation labor = $2312 Installer Margin & Overhead = $7800 Indirect costs = $1300 ======= Total= $21,000 30% credit = $6,300 (Other local incentives may apply) ======= Effective System cost $14,700 saved per year $1197 System payback 13.5 years Effective savings $13,000 The reason I started looking into it is backup power, but once you add batteries to the system it won't pay itself back unless this is something you can do at least partially as a DIY project. As investments go, solar seems to be pretty good 12% for a simple grid-tie, see the discussion below.