Posted on 11/25/2021 12:45:48 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
I have been researching putting Solar Panels on my home and would like to know out there who has done this. How did it work out and what suggestions or opinions do you have.
I live in Arkansas and my home seems to be a good candidate for Solar Panels, it is finding the right company and getting the price that makes sense.
So far on Monday I dealt with a company here in Arkansas and I received a estimate for $35,000, without a battery backup system. That would cost and extra $25,000. Well I can't make those numbers work even without the battery backup system.
The recommendation was for about a 9.62 KW system.
The plusses on any Solar System are a 26% Tax Credit on the cost of the system, plus my energy provider, Entergy, would buy my excess electricity and run that as a credit on my monthly Bill.
After talking to this first company I decided to see what Tesla had to offer just as a comparison. Their bid was about $21,000 including the Backup Battery System. Huge difference here and I can make those numbers work for me.
So now I have something to compare to and will look at other installers in my area to see what the average deals are. Not sure Tesla even has a company they affiliate with in my state. Will find out.
I sent the Tesla bid to the first company I talked to and told them if they could match this we might be able to do business. Of course I have yet to hear back and probably will not.
I installed 12KW in my Kentucky house and 9.5 KW in my Florida house. After rebates my Kentucky house cost me a little over $30,000 including battery backup and I have a large battery backup. I’ve had it 7 years and is is nearly paid for itself, in another year and a half I will break even in the Ky house. I didn’t get it for the cost savings but for the reliability of keeping my food in the freezers from being lost. I bought my batteries direct from China and only paid about 1/4th of what they would have cost here.
In Florida I didn’t get the battery backup. I spent about $18,000 after rebates but it has only been a couple of years and the payback is going very fast. I decided that if I croak and the wife doesn’t I would have her monthly outlay as low as possible.
Being retired the fact that mostly I only pay a hookup fee to the grid I like having the reduced electric bills each month.
I installed my own system in Kentucky, it was a lot of work but not difficult. I bought a kit from Whosale Solar minus the battery. I can run about two weeks on the battery if there isn’t any sun and if that happens I have a NG generator that will charge the battery in about 4-5 hours that will last for two or more days. You only want to discharge your batteries a little bit if you can get away with it. Mind you this is if I don’t use air conditioning. If I use air-conditioning the battery will only last a few days before needing sun or generator. I also have a gasoline generator but it’s pretty small. If I’m careful with loads it will run the house and charge the battery but at a much slower rate.
Most companies will sell you solar with battery backup to only run a few loads in the house like a refrigerator and a few lights. I do the whole house and wish I had put up about 18kw instead of 12 in Kentucky.
In Florida we have a pool pump and heat pump pool heater. I only got solar there to offset the cost of the pool pump and heater.
Would I do it again? You bet. The security of always having power is special for an old guy like me.
While I check on my systems every day I do it remotely through the internet, they are both pretty much hands off.
Go for about 30% more PV on the roof than they want you to get. There are always more clouds, rain and snow than you think there will be.
Battery backup is a different animal, the inverters cost more because they do more but it allows you to have power when no one else does. After an Ice storm one year we didn’t know the neighborhood lost power. Our system doesn’t blink or anything it is just either on grid, sun or battery and you can’t tell the difference if you aren’t looking. A neighbor knocked on our door during the outage and asked us when we got power back on. We are more careful now not to let people see our lights.
Btt
Two details I read was the output level dropped quicken than normal quoted and the lifespan was shorter than quoted. Good Entergy is buying the excess electricity, check there price closely.
I bought a house with a 7 KW system here in Phoenix. It works as advertised, but if you don’t have batteries you are still tethered to the grid. It is about break-even after tax breaks and incentives. Why do you want solar?
That is the biggest complaint I hear from the buyers in my neighborhood. They get a hard sell that implies they have unlimited access to 24 hour power.
When I ask them about battery banks, inverters and switching gear...blank stares and crickets. Most think the photo voltaic cells store power and that the power is already regulated to 120V 60Hz coming out of the panels.
Take a look at a company called SunRun. A few years ago they were offering to put and maintain the panels on your roof and feed the electricity back into the grid.
Imagine that during the day when you are not at home, electricity is flowing onto the grid and your meter is running backwards. Then you come home and turn on the AC, your meter starts moving forward again.
I am not sure if that program is in all the states or if it has changed.
Rather tangential, but my data:
I’ve been renting utility solar for a couple years (pay $15-20/mo to electric co., get whatever “my” panels dump into the grid). Cost per Wh averages 50% more than normal electricity cost, ranging from equal cost to 3x; supplies about 20% of my total power use.
I’d like to actually own sufficient solar panels at home, costly but provides power independence. Coupled with an EV would be delightful.
“it’s a lifestyle decision”
Yep...
Excellent point.
All who make the choice (like my realtor daughter) should say that.
China.
Negative return on investment
Expensive repairs/ battery life cycle
Sun don’t shine
Mild climate.
Low cost of electricity relatively.
Bad for environment ( but who cares, it’s mined in China
Electric with wood back up for harsh winter wx.
Gas generator for power outages, store and rotate 4 barrels of stabilized gas....lasts months if need be.
All for much less than $20k
Lots of stuff to digest here. Here are a few very rough numbers that will get you started:
1. Figure $1.00 per Watt for panels (parts only)
2. Figure $1.00 per Watt to install the panels, including the inverter and transfer switch
3. Figure $1.00 per Watt-Hour for battery storage (labor cost is relatively minor for the battery)
4. For power production, figure an average of 5 hours of production per day (but varies depending on local climate/latitude). Assumes no shading and decent pointing.
So, for a large 10 kW system with 18 kWh of battery backup, $38k ($10k + $10k +$18k) would be a reasonable cost (before rebates, of course).
With that you’ll get around 50 kWh per day, or about 2 kW steady, which should be enough for non-AC loads.
As to payback, if you are interested, the big variable is the marginal cost of power, which can vary from 10 cents per kWh (Texas) to 30+ cents per kWh (California). For the above example, in Texas, you generate $1800 per year, so 21 year payback. For California, you generate $5400 per year, so 7 year payback. So big difference, depending on rates.
Oh yea, the 26% tax credit will shorten the payback time significantly for all cases (net cost $28k) - so 16 years and 5 years for the above, although sales tax on the parts will offset some of that savings.
$1 watt for bulk panels??? You are getting ripped off. There are literally hundreds of suppliers with 300 to 550 watt panels for 13 to 28 cents per watt.
https://m.alibaba.com/product/1600383259141/Solar-Cell-FUSOLI-Solar-Mono-Solar.html
For that much money I would have a pool again 🤪
I haven’t installed a system yet but have been researching it.
One thing I’ve decided on is Li-Fe batteries because they are more durable and safe than Li-ion, though the power density is lower.
Yea, rough number. Hard to price Alibaba when you have to add-in the freight cost.
One other comment. As to return on investment maybe being 5%. Yea, you’d have trouble selling it to corporate, but in this case your investment is probably over 90% secure (safe), nearly as safe as a bank, which pays 0.50%. So not a bad deal for someone looking for a place to park money.
Take away the federal and state subsidies, and there wouldn’t be a single solar farm anywhere. How the industrial-scale solar scam works is that companies that want to “farm” the government subsidies look for gullible suckers with large plots of land to build them on. Fortunately for them, there is an endless supply of foolish politicians who are only too happy to accommodate them in order to virtue signal. The company negotiates a power purchase agreement with the governmental jurisdiction that provides them with slightly cheaper power for a few years (only “cheaper” because it’s subsidized by taxpayers), and in return the company gets cheap or free land to build on, and gets to keep the subsidies. The politicians get to crow about going “green” and that they are lowering their electricity cost. But later, like clockwork, the company suddenly declares bankruptcy right at the seven-year mark (when most of the subsidies expire). They also usually leave the idiot politicians with a broken-down system that they can’t afford to maintain on their own. Often the companies follow up by dissolving and reconstituting under a new name, with which they run the scam yet again.
I recently retired from Denver International Airport after 30 years. DIA is owned and operated by the City and County of Denver. They followed exactly the path above in installing several solar farms on airport property. DIA is huge, covering 53 square miles, so they were a prime target for solar scammers. Without listing them again, they went through all of the steps I mentioned, and their oldest solar system is now broken down and barely operates, with the company having declared bankruptcy right at seven years and skedaddled. I have no doubt the subsequent installations will follow suit once they reach the seven-year mark.
Even when the company was still providing support and maintenance, the first solar farm’s operation was spotty at best, and I know from internal info that it never produced more than a fraction of its nameplate capacity (even though Denver has abundant sunshine). Anyone who lives in Denver and uses the airport has probably noticed as you’re approaching the terminal that the solar panels just south of the terminal, which are motorized to track the sun, are usually pointing in a variety of different directions. Many of them no longer move at all. I also have seen the cost/benefit study that was produced for the airport before the system was purchased, and the consultant who produced it concluded that at best, the airport would barely break even on the system by the time it was worn out and had to be replaced (estimated at 20 years). They also stated that without federal and state subsidies, the system would produce a net financial loss.
Yet knowing all of this, the airport/City of Denver still crowed publicly about how much money they would save on electricity, and of course about producing “green energy.” They simply lied.
Being a drain down system, we could only use it in the non-freezing months.
Due to the low cost, it paid off in 2 months.
Then I got 2 Grumman 4X8 panels with circulator pumps, worth over $2000 for $150 because the previous owner had become frustrated as his "professional" installer had never been able to get them to work.
Using a differential temperature controller I got for around $100, I made an open loop system using Amsoil Propylene Glycol anti-freeze with a heat exchanger and two circulator pumps.
It also paid off in 2 months or so.
It provides 90%+ of our hot water in the summer, 50% or so in the winter plus some heat to the house on really sunny days.
The panels are mounted on the south side of our barn, and are hinged, so I manually tilt them to be perpendicular to the sun a few times a year.
I am presently installing another water system using Sunmaxxsolar evacuated tube collectors, two, 20 tubes each.
This will be a closed loop system with expansion tank(s) to heat hot water and the house.
My plan is to add collectors to the front of the barn until they provide most, if not all of our heat.
I have done a LOT of concrete work in the house and barn with Pex tubing throughout to retain heat for night and cloudy days.
The evacuated tube collectors do provide some output even on cloudy days, the flat plate panels do not.
So far, I have 3 hot water heater tanks to store heated water, I plan on adding more.
Two of them are wired for electric, and I have used them a couple of times for a few days while I was working on the collector system and/or our System 2000 boiler.
I have 4, used (bought at yard sale) 260 watt electric collectors.
2 tilt on the roof rack of our U1300L Unimog.
One is flat on the top of our U404 Unimog radio van.
One is flat on the top of our Excursion.
Even though they are used, and should be putting out less than what the label says, I found that in full sun, they are all putting out 290 watts!
There is a 90 watt panel mounted flat on top of my snowmobile trailer, and a 160 watt one leaning against the barn waiting for me to permanently mount it somewhere.
I have 4, 100 watt portable flat panels, and one 100 watt rolled up one.
None of the electric ones will be mounted on the house.
Check with your local fire department about how they handle fires with houses with electric panels.
The safest thing is to stand back, protect nearby structures and watch it burn.
All of those panels mounted on vehicles charge deep cycle batteries through 5 Victron 100/20 PWM controllers.
I put our smaller Engel fridge/freezer in the Zeppelin NATO radio shelter on the back of our U1300L Unimog in June.
I took it out last week.
It kept food safely cool during that time, with the battery voltage never dropping below 12.6 volts.
Both of our Engels consume less than one amp each of power when running.
We use the other Engel in the house.
There is a 3,000 watt pure sine inverter in the radio shelter.
With the panels and batteries we have, we can run the System 2000 boiler, solar circulator pumps and our "normal" refrigerator for a few days.
During that time, by consuming what's in that, we can switch to just the Engel ones, and should be able to go indefinitely.
I have 10 surplus 175 amp hour AGM batteries I got from a salvage yard that should be good for another 13 to 15 years, and miscellaneous other deep cycle batteries I've accumulated.
The U1300L has its' 24 volt system, and I have 2 sets of solar powered through a Victron set for 24 volts, AGMs in series for 24 volts for other lighting and accessories.
There are 2 AGMs, 12 volts each that are charged alternately by one of the solar panels through a Victron set for 12 volts and/or a 12 volt alternator I added where the hydraulic pump would normally be.
The last 2 batteries are for ham radio only to power my HF and UHF/VHF radios.
So far, I haven't had to switch to the backup battery yet, even during a day of heavy 100 watt use on HF at the New England Forest Rally.
Exactly! Most of the solar electric systems being installed a grid tied and little more than a laundry for taxpayer money to democrat supporters.
Dumping most of that power into the system during off peak times is insane.
What makes sense is non grid tied systems for individual businesses and residential, and even more sense, is heating hot water with evacuated tube collectors.
With the troubles that are no doubt coming, I beg you, as a fellow FReeper, to not tie your solar cells to the grid without storage batteries. And, please have a large battery bank that they charge. Use an inverter charger to top off your battery bank while the grid is up, and to give you power when it is down. Even if times don’t get tough, even if we don’t have a grid down collapse, Arkansas has ice storms. That alone is reason to have a battery bank and inverter charger.
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