Homeowner Story: Justin Fox
Why an IBM developer chose solar
Raleigh, North Carolina
At first, there was a little bit of, ‘Are we willing to invest this long term in the house? How long are we going to be here? What are we going to get back from it?’ The immediate value that we received back was immense, to be honest. But, seeing the drop in our power bill, seeing the value that we got added onto the house on top of that and the quality of everything that was done, I believe it was truly an addition to all of what we wanted to do.
Becoming a rational consumer
Products Installed: Q.PEAK DUO-G5
System Size: 24 kW
Installer: NC Solar Now
Est. Cost Savings: $2,651/yr
Est. CO₂ Savings: 37,653lb/yr
The Challenge
There are some people who tend to question relentlessly. They can’t let go of even the smallest detail and are only satisfied when they find the root cause and Justin Fox is found to be one of them.
Justin uses more electricity than an average household. He has multiple TVs and refrigerators around the house, an all-electric brewery setup with his love of beer, and a golf simulator. He drives a Tesla and his wife drives a hybrid plugin. The electric bill definitely has been burdensome.
In order to gather precise usage data, he started tracking down his energy usage from 2011, on a monthly basis. Then he realized he was paying $300 for electricity on average, and over $400 in summer. For a family of three, the numbers came out to be quite a lot.
This is an older home and I knew that we’re using a lot of energy… I wanted to be able to offset some of that and to put something that added value to my home, as well as give me something back. So, that really helped initiate my decision to go solar.
Project Overview
Justin’s 3000sqft house was built in the ‘80s. Even though the house was considered to be old in the market when he bought it, he was still willing to go for it because his wife’s, Lauren had her precious childhood memories attached to it. The problem, given the circumstance, was the fact that older houses mostly wouldn’t turn out be as efficient. Indeed, it took higher demand for electricity to heat and cool the house. At some point, Justin had to find a way to reduce his electric bill, so he invited four different installers to come up with a better energy plan. Among the four, Justin decided to go with NC Solar Now.
Justin chose NC Solar Now because they spoke his language. They sent engineers to fly a drone over his house, measured everything, and presented numbers. Instead of glossing over the details, they provided detailed and customized data. Justin appreciated NC Solar Now’s way of communication.
NC Solar Now was the only company that actually came out, gave me very specific details of what each face on this house could produce, the types of cells they were going to install, the numbers, the performance, the reliability, the extensive warranties that they provided for all of these items. And that helped me to formulate my decision to go with NC solar Now…
There was one thing left for Justin to decide: the panels. After carefully considering performance, reliability, life span, and warranties of various solar panels, Justin chose Qcells over other competitors.
Qcells definitely stood out, because the numbers were right there. Again, I want to look at what gives me the most for what I can offer or for what I can get…and that’s obviously the one that we went with.
The installation carried out without a hitch. There were no worries about drilling through the roof to install the solar panels with NC Solar Now’s guarantee which they would come out and fix any problems.
Benefits
After adding in this solar system [my electric bill] has dramatically dropped in several months. I actually hit the bare minimum for this area, which is only $16 a month. My average is actually around $35 a month, now that I have the solar system tied in, so definitely worth the investment right there alone.
Environmental factors definitely were not our primary focus within our decision to go solar, but it was a significant added bonus.…We’ve got a child that we’re bringing up in this world and anything that we can do to make that world better for her, was a good decision for us.
The Fox family lives far enough outside the city that they have to give up on a certain level of convenience urban lifestyle would offer. On the other hand, from their perspective, a sustainable lifestyle doesn’t have to be relying on resources from the city as much; Justin draws water from nearby springs and has a septic tank in the house. It seems a natural choice for them to become energy self-sufficient with Qcells’ solar solution.
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