“When my solar system finishes paying for itself I’ll upgrade it with whatever technology is available for whatever part of my system is at its weakest.”
How much was your solar system and how many watts is it. If you bought it with your own money and used no gov. subsidies it will likely never pay for itself. I should know, I live in the sunniest place in the US, southern Arizona. The original cost of my system in 07 was 62K for 8.4kw system. In a 20 year life span, that system will produce about 45K worth of electricity, in southern AZ. However, I got local, state and federal subsidies. Dumb luck I hit it just right.
Solar panels in 10,000 watt pallets are 15 cents per watt with 25 year capacity warranty. I have 15,000 watts on my roof at 19 cents per watt installed.
Alibaba has lots of 15 to 19 cents per watt panels for FOB delivery in the states.
My dual 8000 watt inverters were 21 cents per.watt installed.
Solar has come.way down in price every new home built by two of my home builder friends has panels on them at the first sale built into the sale.price which right now are.going for 100,000 over asking price in North Texas. I have seen 575,000 homes selling for 700 in the last few weeks it’s a seller’s market my friends can’t build them fast.enough.
No state or local credits or subsidies. And no net metering. I'd have to pay a hefty monthly fee to my power company with any agreement I make with them to buy my excess power from me at a measly rate. So I don't use that. Basically I'm dependent on the battery storage to get meaningful use out of the excess power I produce in the day.
The only way my system is doing well for me is because I did a lot of study regarding my own power consumption each month across a couple of years, with study on average peak solar hours per month in my area, and weather patterns per month in my area. With the help of my installer, I hammered out the details of a system that best meets my specific needs. IMHO it's not for people who aren't detailed analytical geeks.
Because my wife is retired and I work from home a lot, some of the random appliance usage can happen during the day (when the sun is out) at my house. That means my one inverter can usually handle the load and my batteries still be fully charged when the sun goes down. But that's not like a two parent household with both parents working: no appliance usage during the daytime, but almost all appliances running simultaneously as soon as the two parents get home from work in the evening -- even with full batteries there might not be enough battery storage to run all of them before the sun comes up, and the inverter can't power all of them at the same time without having to get help from the grid. A two parent household with that kind of evening-only power usage (what my household looked like before my kids grew up and moved out and my wife retired), would need much more inverter capacity and battery storage than I have to keep from pulling over half the power from the grid even with a 10 kW system.
And like you suggested, it's probably good only in the south. I'm east of you in Alabama. I hear the humidity in the air here dampens the solar effect more than dry air does for you, but not enough to give more than a moments look.
In Washington State our Governor Dimsley and his merry band of Democrat thieves have mandated that all of our electric power be “100% carbon neutral by 2030”. They are banning any new natural gas infrastructure. They are also mandating homes that are currently using oil, natural gas or propane for heat to switch to electricity. And of course coal will be banned completely.
Solar of course is one of their favorite “alternative energy solutions” despite the fact that we have approximately a quarter of the solar potential than places like southern Arizona where you live. Because of nearly constant drizzle and rain 8 months out of the year in Western Washington, failures from corrosion, mold, algae, fungus, moss, and other moisture related issues assure failure before the projected life spans of these systems. This means that even heavily subsidized solar systems have no chance of ever penciling out in this area.
My wife and I live in the foot hills and typically have several power outages a year due to wind storms causing trees to knock down power lines. Often the power is out for days and sometimes weeks. Fortunately, we have natural gas and we along with most of our neighbors have generators that are hooked to our gas lines. This means that the inconvenience and expense of having the power out for extended periods is far less.
Like you... this experience helps to give us a better perspective and understanding of our actual power usage patterns and what it takes to live our lives in a normal way given the limitations power generated at home. Most people do not have a clue.
We have friends who live completely off the grid all of the time. Most started out sinking small fortunes into huge solar systems with battery backup that they thought by the specifications would provide them with enough electricity to live their lives in a completely normal way. Sadly most discovered the hard way that solar in this area does not live up to the hype. Despite huge solar arrays in some cases... almost every one that I know living off the grid has a backup generator hooked to a large propane tank that they use daily to charge their banks of batteries. The one exception is a guy who charges his Electric Vehicle for free every day at his government job. At night he uses his Electric Vehicle battery to top off his solar system's backup batteries. He does not believe this is theft; he brags about it, but not to his supervisors.
The authorities make it sound like our area has almost as much potential for solar as Southern Arizona. Where we live we have a “sun number” of 70 and Phoenix in Southern AZ has a score of 90. This makes it sound like Phoenix has only around 25% more solar potential than areas near Seattle. When in reality Phoenix has approximately 4 times the potential for solar power than we do. The "Sun Numbers" are a marketing and leftist ploy. They are an absolute lie meant to mislead.