Posted on 07/29/2022 8:11:08 AM PDT by George from New England
Is anyone paying for an insurance policy rider on their solar panels ?
How much ?
Is a $2 per $100 quote reasonable ?
In Texas we get a lot of hail, and there are large deductions before they pay out, and it is not part of a roof policy.\
That 2% seems cheap.
Solar panels are typically covered in your homeowners insurance as they are considered a permeant attachment to the property. There may be some exclusions, such as wind damage, you’d have to check your policy or talk to your Agent for specifics, as they may vary from carrier to carrier.
The “rate” is determined by the COPE factors, as well as other expenses the insurance company incurs in underwriting your insurance policy.
Construction, Occupancy, Protection, Exposure
That was the case in 2011 when I put them up. In 2012 I just increase the dwelling coverage to reflect the investment.
2018 came and the woke company renewed with a blanket exclusion of all and any solar. They even decided to include batteries in the wording.
Now come 2022: I have $6000 in off-grid batteries and the ability to with a $3500 inverter, make power overnight. Nothing can be construed to be solar if operation is when the sun is down.
Batteries charge from the grid and are my generator replacement for any overnight utility outage.
They do not have the word generator in the exclusion. I suspect that would piss off too many customers.
This is the Florida Farm Bureau that is screwing us here in Florida.
I suspect if I have a loss involving the batteries or inverter I will have to sue them to get coverage on the basis this is a modern form of a generator, not solar.
I am interested in more mundane subjects like the wars famines pandemics and stolen elections. Maybe you should be asking the motley fool.
In Kansas. I contacted American Family and my agent had never encountered this question. This happened 3 months ago. Our solar system went live early May (28 panels). The added cost for added coverage is $25 per month.
My insurance has no riders nor discounts for solar. Thus, rebuilding my house as it is with solar would cost more than without solar simply on solar being another cost if I had to rebuild. I increased it more also for the related changes I made (my new hybrid water heater would cost more to replace than the gas water heater I used to have).
Solar done decentralized (on your own property and managed by you, for you) is becoming more popular among those of us who don't trust the gubment, especially with energy. Think less Algore and more prepper.
I would only purchase panels if I had the room to put them in my yard and not my roof. They add a lot of weight, act as a wind sail and if you need a roof replaced, you’ll have to pay to have them removed & reinstalled.
So with insurance and deductible....are folks really winning?
Electric cars cost double and they can only be repaired by the maker....insurance doubled and deductible....?
Still saving the customer money or just looking great to neighbors?
COPE? Can’t Offer Payout Ever, insurance’s other policy.....
1. I doubt anyone on FR with solar and/or an EV is doing it to virtue signal. I got mine to protect my retirement investments from energy inflation. Even if I wasn't saving money long term (which I'll get to in a minute) I basically have replaced many of my variable costs (who knows what the prices for gas, power, and natural gas will be for the next 10 to 20 years) with fixed costs (car payment and HELOC payment I took out to buy the solar and extra on insurance). In other words, it gives me financial peace of mind by defining most of my expenses in fixed monthly payments instead of the unknown costs of the Dims forcing us to tithe to Algore.
2. My car insurance for my EV is $70 more per month than it was for my old used gas car it replaced. Of course, for now I have no repairs both because it's new and because it's under warranty. I'm assuming when repairs come it'll be about as much as I was used to for driving 10-20 year old ICE cars (older ICE cars need repaired more frequently, compared to EV repairs, as you correctly pointed out, being costly when they do happen).
3. Even with paying an extra $100 in monthly insurance premiums (that's $30/month for homeowners, though some of that increase is just for the cost of lumber and such increasing, plus $70/month increase in car insurance), my overall costs will pay for themselves in about the 11th year. That assumes having to pay $10K in 10 years to replace the EV battery, and also a 3% inflation rate in the costs of power per kWh, and natural gas per ft3 that I'm mainly avoiding, and avoiding replacing my wife's car in 7 years with another one for $10K (like I've done on average every 7 years, but used car prices are going up), but also assumes a slight annual degradation in solar output (my panels have a 25-year warrantied guaranteed to still be producing 70% the final year, my home batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty).
3. Without an EV, and without upgrading my solar system like I'm doing this year, I was looking at a payback period of 9-10 years (including paying interest on the HELOC I took out to pay for most of it). That's because my first year it produced 58% of all the power I consumed in my two-story now all-electric house (but not charging my new EV). Not too bad since I estimated it would produce 50% to 60% of the power I needed (patting myself on the back for my research and calculations). I anticipate my upgraded system will produce 85% to 95% of all the power I need, including driving the EV ~200 miles/week.
4. EV's are not double the cost of ICE cars, unless you insist your EV be made by Tesla (the acronym stands for Too Expensive Still Liberals Adore). The same for Tesla's solar products like their Powerwall. My EV cost $62K after tax and fees. If you got the one like it without all the bells and whistles it'd be $52K, and it's tall enough for tall people in our 50's (too darn old to crouch down in a clown car like a lot of EV's are). So contrast that $52K cost with a gas version of new crossover (mini-SUV) that us tall people are comfortable in. I doubt you'd find one for $26K (half the cost of the comparable EV). Now for me, it cost 6 times what I was "going" to spend (the $10K I was about to spend to replace my wife's used ICE car with another used ICE car). But that meant we'd still be getting 15-ish mpg (as opposed to comparing the cost of a new EV with a new ICE car that costs more than a used one, but gets better mpg and, therefore, the $'s saved in gas each month wouldn't be as much).
5. In my case, because my solar costs weren't up front (I'm paying for most of it with a HELOC loan), my costs to save money go down as the years go by. What I mean by that, let's forget about the EV for now and the upgrade I'm doing with the solar system. Let's pretend I'm having just my solar system as is for many years. My HELOC payment + tiny power bill + increase in insurance is about what I was paying a year ago before I went solar when I'd pay my power bill + natural gas bill (part of my project was replacing my two nat gas appliances with high efficiency electric ones and removing my nat gas bill). Think of the HELOC payment and increased premium as the cost to save money, with the amount saved being the elimination of my nat gas bill and half of my power bill (because I'm buying only 42% of my power from the grid). As my HELOC balance is paid down my HELOC payment goes down too. Thus, next year it'd "cost" me less money, then even less the next year, etc. Meanwhile, the price of energy keeps going up. Thus next year I save more in dollars in my power bill (and in the nat gas bill I completely avoid), then more the year after that, then more after that. (This is even with a slight decline in performance from my solar system each year). Thus, each year it costs less money to save more money.
6. Bonus points: I've avoided the past 3 years' worth of energy inflation in my monthly budget. The way I'm handling it is by keeping my energy budget like it was in 2019. In other words, in 2019 I'd spend on average $313/month on my power bill + nat gas bill. So today when my HELOC payment + tiny power bill is over $300/month, I'm pulling the difference from the HELOC to make it "feel" in my budget like together they cost me $300/month. That withdrawal from my HELOC balance go up, but not as much as the HELOC payment makes the balance go down. That's part of my math in saying it'd pay for itself in 10 years ---- all while the home energy portion of my budget feels like Trump is still in office and covid never happened.
Panels on roof keep attic cooler — aka energy savings there too
In Florida my first inclination would be to say ‘yes’as I’ve seen too many roofs with blue tarps after a storm but apparently they are secured pretty well to the roof.
If you have trees and/or possible flooding I would look into it for sure. Can you raise the deductible just on the solar?
Explained as follows:
Full policy deductible applies. So in my case $500 standard, but 10% on hurricane. So like $ 40,000
What is grey is is it 10% of the rider amount limit or will they bundle it all together in a claim. So if all the damage is solar and that rider amount is $ 50,000. I get only $ 10,000
Great question and I can only guess at an answer :) If you find out post it back.
I would guess the deductible due to hurricane damage to the panels would be 10% of the total. But it does make sense that if those panels are covered by a rider only then it would be 10% of the cost of the panels.
I found this which may or may not help you:
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