It sounds like you've made up your mind to purchase panels, but in the event that you haven't entirely decided, have you considered a solar lease? We looked at both options and ended up deciding in favor of the lease program with Solar City. Two years later, I'm still 100% happy with that decision. The major benefit was not having to cough up the cash to buy them outright at the start -- we didn't pay a cent to have them installed -- but there have been ongoing benefits as well:
* Solar City takes care of any maintenance issues (none so far)
* They had several payment options. We could have paid $8800 all at once and been payment-free for the next 20 years --- that is by far the option that gives you the most bang for your buck -- but we opted to have a fixed monthly payment for 20 years. We were aggressively paying down debt at the time and were rather cash-strapped.
* After 20 years, you have 3 options: Quit solar, and you get to keep the panels. Keep going in 5-year increments, or upgrade the panels and start over with a new contract.
* If you sell the house, the new owners can either take over the contract or have the panels removed and return to conventional electricity.
I won't blather on because I don't know if this even interests you, but I spent about 6 months researching buying vs. leasing before we made the switch, and I've been quite pleased. The best benefit is saying goodbye to those monster summer AC bills. We live in the valley, and a $600 DWP bill is now, mercifully, a thing of the past!