You’ll never get your money back during the lifetime of the system.
At age 66 that is not that big of a consideration for me. The deal spreads over 25 years. Whoever buys my house will end up with most of the benefits I am just interested in the technology.
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.