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To: cyclotic; natalie227
What was the total cost? When do they teach equilibrium with cost of grid electricity? How long will panels last? What is the annual solar efficiency drop off? What are the maintenance costs for system and keeping the panels clean?

How well do they work in the snow?

All good questions and to be honest, only a few of us with solar panels and EV's take the time to research those things because most people who buy them are virtue-signalling warmagedonists. But to answer your questions, my payoff period is 10-11 years from now, which is 11-12 years after I installed the first half of my system. (I'm in Alabama, unlike Chase Bank's Ohio campus, so I'm sure their payback time is a lot longer). That assumes a 3% inflation rate for all energy costs I'm either totally avoiding (no more natural gas) or mostly avoiding (I buy little power and gasoline) in my overall energy project of making my house more efficient with insulation and such, converting my two natural gas appliances to electric, installing solar and batteries and studying them for a year to make sure I like it before I went all in and doubled my solar and tripled my battery capacity and doubled my inverter capacity and bought an EV and my wife and I do most of our driving in the EV, though we still sometimes use our ICE pickup. (Some of us conservatives are serious about weaning our families off of things the government overregulates, like energy LOL).

And I have little snow to speak of (though it happens occasionally). The only cleaning I've done to my panels is wash them off with a water hose 2 or 3 times per year during pollen season. The little bit of ice I get on them on a few winter mornings in Alabama cleans them as the ice melts off better than rain. There are no maintenance costs so far, perhaps because there are no moving parts except for the fans in my inverters. My overall throughput is about 80% of all the power I need in my all-electric, two-story house is provided by solar, including charging the EV (for our local driving, obviously). I buy the other 20% of power I need from the grid but don't put power onto the grid when I have excess (for multiple reasons). For example, in my November bill I pulled 426kWh from the grid, which is less than the 1,154kWH I pulled from the grid in November 2020 (before I went solar and got an EV). That 1,154kWh I pulled from the grid in my pre-solar days is on top of the natural gas bill I had (because I had 2 natural gas appliances back then) and buying a lot more gas at the pump (because both of our cars were ICE cars then so all of our driving required gas, unlike now in which most of our driving is in the EV).

As far as how long the panels last, in my case they have a 25-year warranty guaranteed to have only a slight annual decline in throughput so that they're still producing 70% in the final year. (Actually the ones I bought in the upgrade have a 25-year/80% warranty.) My batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty. These are pretty standard warranties. My pay-back calculation takes into consideration the slight decline in throughput.

Half of these were made in U.S.A. (half of the panels and one of the inverter in Texas, the other inverter in North Carolina) and the other half made elsewhere (half of the panels were made in the nation of Georgia and all of the batteries made in Cheyna).

You ask how well they work in snow. As I've said, I have had only slight snow and ice that wasn't worth me trying to brush off (unlike Chase bank's Ohio campus I'm sure). But one nice thing cold weather brings to the table is it makes the solar panels more efficient. Of all the things I own, the solar panels are the one thing that every now and then performs above spec, and that's when they're cold. To be fair, one additional cost I added recently was doing better weatherproofing of the garage and putting a small space heater near the batteries to come on when the temp inside gets below 45°F to keep both the solar batteries and the EV's battery from losing charge in the cold. It doesn't have to come on much where I live, but the little bit of power it consumes saves me from losing a lot of charge on a cold night.

36 posted on 12/19/2022 1:37:54 PM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Tell It Right
For example, in my November bill I pulled 426kWh from the grid, which is less than the 1,154kWH I pulled from the grid in November 2020

So if you are getting 80% of your usage from the solar panels, that 426WH means your total consumption is about 2,100 WH for November, compared to the 1154 you used the previous November? So the difference was natural gas in November 2020.

Question - is the cost of converting the natural gas appliances to electric factored into your payback calculations? As well as the cost of going to EV's.

42 posted on 12/19/2022 2:16:44 PM PST by Bernard (“the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God." JFK 1-20-61)
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