Getting home insurance at all is already an increasingly concerning thing. If you’re here in Florida, don’t make the mistake of installing a solar system without checking your insurance options first. Now, companies that do insure rooftop solar systems are allowed to set some pretty strict conditions for that coverage, such as only covering homes with solar systems installed after 2016 or on shingle or metal roofs, 10 years old or less, or on flat roofs, no older than five years. Now, do you see that? That’s way shorter than the life of the panels. Now there can be restrictions such as the system can’t produce any more than 10 kilowatts of electricity, and that might match the typical rooftop system capacity, but some are gonna be bigger than that. Some companies won’t ensure solar systems are mounted on clay or tile roofs. I spoke with an experienced insurance agent recently, it was just last week from Florida.
Best quote insurance and if you want an introduction, let me know. They shared that they’re now only seeing about three insurers in Florida, who will cover solar panels. And this is in part though, due to a completely different issue than what we’ve even touched on and it’s called net metering. Now, when you are manufacturing, you’ve got your power station on the roof, and you are producing more power right now than you can use right now. You can’t store it unless you’ve got a battery system as well, which adds to the cost. So you sell that power back to the power company again. Now basically the power companies are increasingly asking for proof that the homeowner has a $1 million liability policy to cover the fact that they’re net metering. Now, most homeowners insurance companies won’t cover properties that are commercially producing electricity on behalf of a power company. So that’s something that a lot of the people that we are talking to aren’t aware of. So I hope this helps. Buying or selling a home with solar on brings a whole other slew of things and we’ll be talking about that in another video. If you want an introduction to an insurance agent that can help you, let me know. And in our next solar video, we’ll cover what to consider if you’re thinking of buying or selling a home that has solar.