Not too long ago, Bryan and Summer Stubblefield wanted to take their clothes off California house with solar power panels. They were consider an electric vehicleand powering it with the sun seemed like the right choice for both their pocketbook and the planet.
They contacted a few contractors, who provided quotes in the $28,000 range for the solar system. But each bid came with a caveat: photovoltaic panels can last 25 years or more, but the roof on their 2,000 square foot home had about 10 years left. It made a tough decision: pay for a replacement now, which would nearly double the cost of the project, or install all that hardware knowing they’d have to remove and reinstall it when it came time to put the roof on. re-deck – a job that can cost hundreds of dollars per panel.
“At that point we froze,” Bryan Stubblefield said. “The fact that we had to make one more decision caused a pause.”
The Stubblefields are far from alone in this dilemma, says Amy Atchley, one of the contractors who contacted the couple. Among the first questions her company, Amy’s Roofing and Solar, asks a customer is the age and condition of their roof. About half need work done to accommodate solar power and, she says, the road ahead can be especially tricky for those who have five, 10 or even 15 years to go before they need a reroof.
“It’s really hard to give people advice,” she said. “Most people just decide to wait.”
Residential solar systems typically provides 5 to 11 kilowatts of powerwhat, with some 5 million homes that tap the sunadding up to more than 38 gigawatts nationally. This is the equivalent of more than 11,000 wind turbines. In addition to helping mitigate climate change, photovoltaic panels can also help provide resilience against outages. But when homeowners have to match their desire to go green with the age of their roof, those benefits can be delayed — or prohibitively expensive.
One reason the question can be so vexing is because tax incentives, unlike solar panels, don’t help offset underlying roof issues — even when addressed while going solar. The Internal Revenue Service makes it clear that the federal tax credit that can cover as much as 30 percent of a photovoltaic system does not include “traditional building components that serve primarily a roofing or structural function.”
The Stubblefields said the lack of help “absolutely” influenced their decision to wait. But Bryan Stubblefield said he understands that it would be quite expensive for the government to subsidize such a large expense.
The potentially good news is that – regardless of the rooftop incentives – the residential solar market is nascent enough that it may not have much to worry about losing customers like the Stubblefields just yet. The half a million or so residential solar systems coming online each year is far short of the approximately 5 million homes that need a new roof every year. That means there are still plenty of potential solar customers in need of a new roof anyway—and that’s a demographic many companies are targeting.
“The best time to go solar is when you get a new roof,” said Kealy Dewitt, vice president of marketing and public policy at roofing company GAF. The organization recently designed a product it calls Timberline Solar, which incorporates a photovoltaic panel into a shingle that is installed much like a conventional shingle. If GAF can get more people who need new roofs to convert to solar shingles, Dewitt said it would be “a massive deployment opportunity for clean energy.”
Atchley agrees. While there may be some situations where it makes financial sense to install panels and take them off to re-roof later, it makes the most sense to wait to do it all at once. Many of her clients find her while looking for deals on a roof and end up installing solar as well. It rarely happens the other way around, she said.
Like Dewitt, she thinks the government could do more to incentivize integrated roofing and photovoltaic technologies. For example, her company sells a metal roof that is designed to easily accept solar power and has a lifespan nearly twice that of the average panel. It does not currently qualify for clean energy incentives.
“You get the roof and solar power,” she said. “It should count.”
Lawmakers have tried to address this issue. In 2021, Democratic members of Congress introduced the “RAISE the Roof Act” which would have expanded the solar tax credit to include these integrated solutions. However, such efforts have gone nowhere, leaving many would-be solar adopters with difficult calculations to make on their roof. This includes the Stubblefields, who have since moved.
“It looks like we have another 5 to 10 years on the roof,” Bryan said. “We are left with the same question again.”
