ARE Solar

Every 25-year solar savings number rests on a guess about future electricity prices.

That guess is a setting in the software. On most proposals it lives in the footnotes.

We pulled Xcel's actual residential price from EIA Form 861. Between 2005 and 2024 it compounded at 2.70% a year. Inflation over the same years was 2.53%.

Here is what the assumption is worth. Take one real Denver system: 7.9 kW, $24,611 cash, no battery. Change nothing but the rate.

2.7% gives $24,459 over 25 years. 4% gives $33,682. 6% gives $52,184. 8% gives $77,718.

Same roof. Same panels. Same bill.

Run the assumption forward and it gets easier to check. At 6% a year, Xcel residential power costs 65 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2051. At 8%, it costs a dollar three.

Ours was set at 4%. We moved it to 2.7%. Every ARE savings number got smaller.

Three questions worth asking about any bid, ours included. What rate increase is it built on. How much of your bill does the system actually replace. What does the financing cost in total, not per month.

Sources in the first comment.

We pulled 20 years of Colorado electricity price data from EIA Form 861.

Then we adjusted them for inflation. The raw numbers are misleading without it.

Xcel's residential price rose from 9.07¢ to 15.05¢ per kWh between 2005 and 2024. That is up 66%. In 2024 dollars, the same change is 3.3%.

The shape matters more than the size. Real prices drifted down for fifteen years. They bottomed near 13.6¢ in 2007 and again in 2019. They are up 10.5% in real terms since.

We ran the same math on a municipal utility, two co-ops and a second investor-owned utility. As billed, all five rose. In 2024 dollars, most are flat or lower.

That is the honest picture. No projections here, just the filings.

Sources in the first comment.

A 30kW system. Dual Sol-Ark inverters. Three Fortress batteries.
Standing seam metal in the Lyons foothills. No utility wire to the property line.

We've done more than eight of these across Colorado. Small cabins on one end. Full off-grid homesteads with wind and generator integration on the other.

The systems run the well pump. The freezer. The lights. The cell
booster. They run the day. They run at night. They ride through a string of cloudy days because they were sized to.

That's not magic. That's design.

Free walkthrough if you have a property the grid isn't going to reach.

"Doesn't solar take forever to pay off?"

Let's reframe that, because the framing is the problem.

Solar lowers the cost of owning your home. It's a home improvement that also cuts a bill you'd otherwise pay forever.

Because here's the thing: you can never pay off your utility. They bill you this year, next year, at year fifteen, with no end.

Ten years from now, one path has an asset on the roof. The other just has fifteen more years of bills.

We'll walk you through the actual numbers. No someday math.

Most home projects give you back a fraction of what you spend.

The 2025 resale data is blunt about it. A major kitchen remodel returns about 51% of its cost. A bathroom addition, about 53%. A primary-suite addition, as little as 18%.

You spend the money. You enjoy the room. Most of the cost doesn't come back.

Solar is a different kind of project. It doesn't sit there hoping to add value at resale. It generates savings every month you own the home.

It can repay itself over time. Then it keeps paying.

Put it plainly. A new bathroom might cost about what a solar system costs. But your new bathroom isn't generating power for you.

So it's not "which project adds more at resale." It's a difference in kind. One is a one-time partial return. The other returns on every bill.

"I'll just wait. It'll get cheaper, right?"

It's a fair instinct. Here's the part that changes the math.

Panel prices do come down over time. But utility rates go up faster, and they go up every year you wait.

There's an old line about trees. The best time to plant one was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.

Solar is the same. The system you wait on is the savings you skip in the meantime.

We'll show you the real curve for your bill, not a someday.

The 30% federal solar credit for homeowners ended in 2025.

If you buy a system with cash or a loan this year, there's no federal credit waiting for you. That's the honest answer. Anyone still advertising one is selling you last year's math.

But that isn't the whole picture.

The credit didn't end for everyone. Businesses still have theirs. There are financing paths where that incentive stays in play.

We're not going to flatten how that works into a caption. It depends on the option, your roof, and your situation. It deserves a real explanation, not a slogan.

What we will say plainly is the trade. Owning your system outright
builds equity and resale value. Other paths trade that ownership for a different benefit.

Neither is a trick. They're different tools.

Ask us. We'll walk you through which one your numbers actually favor — even when the answer isn't the bigger sale.

You're the fiduciary of your own house.

A fiduciary acts in the owner's long-term financial interest. So look
at the numbers like one.

Colorado electric bills rose about 30% in five years. Regulators
project they could climb another 20% to 30% by 2027.

You'll pay for power every month for as long as you own the home. That
cost rises on a schedule you don't set.

You can keep renting your power. Or you can own what makes it.

We're not saying solar wins for every roof. Shade and usage matter.
We're saying an owner who never runs the numbers isn't doing their own
diligence.

Run them. That's the whole ask.