Solar project gets reduced to a heap of toxic rubble by one single hail storm.

There’s a giant array of those things right next to 1-95 up by Fort Pierce, FL. Surprised it hasn’t been whacked by hail yet. It storms every day up there this time of year.

Then after both projects were done (4 years apart) the glorious insurance outfit, Florida Farm Bureau, renewed and excluded any and everything solar. They now want an additional $500 a year. Agent took photos and even sent me an email saying my coverage ‘is bound.’

I did mine in two phases, with Phase I being 2 years ago (32 panels = 10kW, 1 inverter 9kW continuous AC, 30kWh battery storage) for me to study it to make sure it worked as much as I expected (with variations during the seasons as expected). Half a year in (fall of 2021) I liked it and did Phase Ia: converted my two natural gas appliances to electric (now have a variable speed heat pump with heat strips for cooling and heating the home, and a hybrid water tank for heating the water and also help a little with cooling the home). On the 1-year anniversary of Phase I I studied the throughput and it had produced 58.5% of the power I consumed in my now all-electric home. So I did Phase II, which was replace my wife's old ICE crossover with an EV crossover and expand the solar system (20kW solar, 18kW continuous inverter capacity, 92kWh battery storage). That was completed Aug 31 last year. Both times before the upgrade I contacted my insurance (State Farm), told them what I was doing, and that I'd like more coverage for rebuild cost (since rebuilding would include installing solar equipment). And both times State Farm gave me what I wanted and increased my premiums to account for the increased coverage, but with no extra rider charge added for solar. Perhaps because I don't sell power to the grid (which by some insurance regulations might make it look like business income equipment instead of home equipment).

So far I've seen Phase II work with fall, winter, spring, and early summer and it's produced 78.3% of all the power we consumed, including charging the EV for about 23K miles (we've put 26K miles on it, but about 3K of those miles were on trips charging away from home). When we reach the 1-year anniversary of the Phase II upgrade I believe the throughput will be in the low 80% of free power (buying less than 20% of our power from the grid). And my power bills averaging $75/month even though I don't sell power to the grid.

I'm applying for the grid sell plan and I predict my power bill will average $55/month (practically nothing in the spring, summer, and fall, followed by winter months totaling about $600). If the regulations change the fees or something else I don't like, I'll change the settings and quit putting power onto the grid (which is the way I'm currently working it) and be happy with only $75/month power bills as a regular customer who just rarely needs power from the grid (which is how I'm currently viewed by the grid because I don't put power onto the grid like a lot of solar customers do).

What state and zip code regulates you ?

Aside from my meter charges, last year I was at virtually 100% for the entire year. First 5 months I bank the excess, and then spend the rest of the year using it up. Got to net-zero about Oct. For 20 kw I needed two meters and panels. So $22 a month for each. So the grid connect amounts to about $500 a year, for the luxury of using the grid as my ‘battery bank’

If we lose power I got 28 kw of LiFeP04 cells. 2 banks of 17 cells each, 280 ah

XW6848

Got like 10 strings here, various inverters. 120 panels total on property. Never had one panel go bad — yet. 12 years on some this fall.

I've had 32 panels for 2 years (May 2021) and 32 more for almost a year (Aug 31, 2022). Those 64 panels max the capacity of the 8 inverter strings, perhaps because my panels are newer (total 20kW). Never had a problem. Not even had to clean them (perhaps because they're on my roof which has a steep pitch, and perhaps because a few times every winter we get ice, which supposedly helps clean the panels as the ice melts in the morning). I'm sure the day is coming when I'll at least have to rinse them off, and perhaps clean them with a rubber squeegee.

One of the reasons I haven't had problems is we rarely get hail here (the story in this article), and when we do get hail it's small-size. Maybe if I lived in hail prone areas it wouldn't be worth getting solar. Of course, solar wouldn't be worth getting anywhere if the Dims didn't have their stupid war on energy.

Just like treehuggers to not plan on Mother Nature. Like turkeys in a rain, too stupid to come in so they don’t drown.

Used to live in Houston, Tx. Enormous entry port for cars, Toyota, etc.. Just off the boats the thousands and thousands of cars are stored in lots awaiting trucks to take them north.

In comes one of the regular Tx coast storms. Every single car had broken windows and every metal panel dimpled. Used car market crashed with all of those extra cars on the market.

What state and zip code regulates you ?

I'm in central Alabama, regulated by Alabama Power (the lower 2/3rds or so of the state).

If I was to put power onto the grid without signing a purchase plan agreement, the utility would automatically sign me up for their default power purchase plan which would add the "solar fee" of $5.41 X inverter nameplate capacity per month. In my case that would be $5.41 X 24 = $129.84, with a 4% state tax on top it'd be $135.03/month added to my bill just for the privilege of them buying back power from me at 3¢ to 4¢ per kWh (depending on the season, which is 1/5th to 1/4th as much as we pay them per kWh after adding the riders and state tax they charge us).

There is another "solar fee" you can choose to pay which is the route I'm going. That's based on the highest power demand you had that month ($1.50 X highest kW draw from the grid, plus 4% state tax). One reason I'm only now signing up for it is because I didn't know how much that would be (I didn't know the max kW grid pull each month), especially with the extra demand of charging an EV and, in extreme temp cases, keeping the house cool in the summer during 100F weather days or keeping the house warm during below freezing days. As of now, I've got the experience of going through my first winter after my recent solar upgrade in late August last year. I also now have the experience of the power demand of charging the EV for a year. And fortunately, my inverters have an exhaustive data export recording at 5-minute candles, including how much power was pulled from the grid at those moments. I use a homemade C# app to import that data into a homemade SQL Server database so I can analyze it and run simulations on what my past 12 power bills would have been like with the different rate plans I can choose from. Thus I've decided on the power purchase rate plan with the demand charge "solar fee". The second cheapest rate plan is to keep doing like I'm doing with no power purchase (no putting power onto the grid) and staying on the default family dwelling rate plan almost every residential customer is on. The difference between the two rate plans is about $200-$250 per year in favor of the purchase plan. So from April to November I'll have either no power bills or, possibly a small power bill in April, and/or May, and/or November (with November sometimes using up all of my credit built up from selling power to the grid during the spring through fall months). Then December through March I'll have power bills totaling $550-$600 (with March being maybe $35, and December somewhat low at around $100 to $150, depending on how much buyback credit was leftover after the November bill, and January and February being the only months in the year that'll always have high bills). Thus, the utility won't buy back power at near the rate that they charge me for what little power I buy from them (we don't have net metering). But in my particular solar system and power consumption habits, what the utility pays me for my power will more than offset the extra fee they'll charge me for the privilege of selling them cheap power.

Another regulation with putting power onto the grid is that most people have to have a shut off switch to automatically shut down your solar power and battery power if the grid went down (to keep from harming linemen working on downed lines, which is understandable). Thus if the neighborhood's power is out mine would have to be out too even if I've got plenty of sun (or battery storage) to power my home. My inverters, however, allow me to bypass that rule because my inverters can detect the grid down and not put power onto the grid even while supplying power to my house. So when the few times the grid is down (our grid power is pretty dependable, unlike 3rd world California), I still have power in my house. That won't change if I sign up for the power purchase plan. Thus I'll have the best of all worlds of solar: it can keep providing me power when the grid is down and also lower my power bills mainly by virtue of providing most of the power I need anyway, and also lower my power bills further by selling excess power to the grid.

“...Not even had to clean them”

I did find that after 9 or 10 years, not having cleaned them, production was off. A good scrubbing brought back about 20% of the lost 30%. Panel age would have been the rest.

Nobody thought to put in one of those systems like they got at the ballpark to automatically drag a tarp over them if a storm hits?

What would that have cost, a couple thousand bucks?

Florida govt at the moment is more in favor of the small solar consumer. Alabama, not so much.
I get 100% credit in daytime for my consumption at night.
aka true net metering I guess

Should have built a chicken wire covered high tunnel over it even if they lost sunlight. Would have told them but they didn’t ask me.