Thursday, April 22, 2010

1040 Good Buddy

By the way, I forgot to mention that I filed my state and federal tax returns last week without declaring my SREC revenue as taxable income. We've had several posts about that here, and I won't rehash, but my accountant agreed that at least for this year, SREC income is not taxable.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have a question and i don't know if you would be able to help. we are getting solar panels and our contractor gave us a total project cost. after we signed our contract they put a change order in for us to sign that would not change the project cost but reduced our inverters from 3inverters to 2 (original contract called for 2 sma sb4000 and a sma sb7000 and they are trying to change it to 1 sma sb 3000 and 1 sma sb 5000.) a little google research has indicated that this significantly reduces the price to the contractor in terms of the pricing for the inverters themselves. (close to $5000 by my estimates) i feel like this is a bit of a bait and switch and was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this in the industry. i can certainly give more info if you are interested or are able to answer some questions.
-mjd

Dave Conifer said...

Hi. I really don't know about the technical end of this. My system has two inverters and it works pretty well.

It does seem odd that the contractor wrote your system up one way but then switched it up to their benefit after you were "hooked." So I get the same vibe that you do. Maybe you could ask why they changed it and why there's no corresponding adjust ment in the final cost.

Sorry I'm not very helpful -- I don't want to pretend that I know more than I do...

...dave

Anonymous said...

I have a new solar system and now have one certificate for sale (gats). I've been contacted by a company called Srectrade. I'm on their bulletin board in the gats system and unfamiliar how these thing are sold. Do I go with Srectrade? Or is there another way? Please fill me in!
Thanks

Dave Conifer said...

note: this reply will sound like a commercial for SRECTrade, the broker that handles my SRECs. I'm not associated with them in any way except as a customer -- but the fact is that they rock and I'm glad to endorse their services.]

First of all, don't worry about your SREC rotting away. You have plenty of time to decide how to sell these things.

I did research and decided to work with SRECTrade. I think they're fantastic. They'll hold your hand through signing up and all the red tape/paperwork. Then you can just sit back and read emails about the SRECs they've sold for you.

There are a lot of brokers out there. Some are like SRECTrade -- they take a very small commission and make their money by doing LOTS of transactions. With most of these, including SRECTrade, you are free to pull out of the arrangement any time.

The other ones are more old-fashioned. They don't want you to know the specifics, they just want you to commit to a long term arrangement (which usually benefits them a lot more than they benefit you, in my opinion.) My installer tried to push me into one of these. After I read the fine print I realized why -- they get a commission for the first two years of the contract. I thought it was a little shady.

Anyway, I am completely happy with SRECTrade. I can't imagine a better deal. I know it's possible to sell these on your own but the commission with SRECTrade is so small that I can't imagine going through all the hassle.

I hope I've helped. Feel free to ask me anything. I'm always happy to help!

Anonymous said...

I have a 4.8 Kwh solar system, had it since Jan. 10. I've been noticing that gradually my inverter has worked its way up from 5 Kwh's over my solar revenue meter readings to over 30 Kwh's as of June 10. The inverter company tells me that there is accuracy tolerance of +/-5% on the inverter and +/-0.2% on the revenue meter. My installer will come up to check it out, but I need to know if there are any information I can give him for a heads up? Or if there is a problem with my inverter?
Thanks
djw

Dave Conifer said...

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question but I think you might be comparing apples to oranges. A 4.8 kw system will generate roughly 4.8 kw of power every hour. Maybe the number you are reading on your inverter is a cumulative total after six months of production (as opposed to the rate of hourly production).

My inverter flashes four sets of numbers over and over. Some are rates, some are cumulative production, some are things I don't even understand at all.

I'm not very knowledgable about the the technical aspects of these systems but I think it might be a good idea to confirm what the numbers you're seeing on the inverter actually are.

I'm going to do a post on understanding the meanings of the units and terminology. Maybe it'll help me understand it better.