Nope. Doing that means extra government regulations. Besides, my state doesn't do "net metering". Meaning, I'd get back a little for each kWh I sold to the grid, but would have to pay a large monthly fee (in my case $130/month) for the privilege of participating in the buyback program of them giving me a little bit of that back and also adding regulations. Such as, if the grid power went down I'd have to automatically shut off my inverters too. Since I don't participate in that program, the few times the grid power goes down (I live in Alabama, not Commieforia) I still have power in my house.
As far as gas stoves go. Using electricity resistance to create heat for cooking and heating is a crime.
We prefer gas heat and cooking too. But the bottom line is we can't drill and process our own natural gas. Nor can we mine and process our own coal. Or drill and refine our own oil. All of those energy sources, though vastly better than solar, are over-regulated by the Dims. Solar is the one energy source regulated only by God and me. Being all electric and having lots of solar helps our budget have a lot of independence from the Dims' stupid energy policies driving energy costs up like crazy.
Great that you can charge your car with this array. Very nice indeed! So too too bad that the sun does not shine at night. Otherwise, you could charge your EV directly. (Which you do during daytime anyways) (retired)
One thing the EV brings to the table in all of this is that the EV doesn't have to be charged every day. My wife (retired) and I (quasi-retired, working from home a lot) drive the EV about as much as each of us used to drive a car when both of us worked in the office. (Driving half as much now as the two of us combined used to drive.) The EV gets 200 miles on an 80% charge (the suggested charge limit unless driving it on a long trip), and we average 40 miles per day or so. The end result is that usually we can wait to charge the EV on a good solar day. Not always, but usually.
Here's how we implement it. My wife wants to have at least 100 miles in the EV charge on any given morning to handle whatever random chores she does. We have an old ICE pickup in case we have things pop up to require more miles that day. So we go with 100 miles as the usual safe charge for the day. Plus, I set up two 240V NEMA 14-50 outlets (like dryer outlets) to charge the EV. One outlet is constantly powered like most outlets in the house. The other 240V outlet is powered only when my home solar batteries are charged at least 80% (configurable). So when we come home with the EV and have more than 100 miles charge left, we plug it into the intermittent outlet. If we come home with less than 100 miles left, we plug it into the constant outlet (knowing that it may add to our power bill).
The solar inverters automatically power the intermittent outlet for us. If we come home in the evening we might have 90% charge left on the solar batteries, so the intermittent outlet will charge the EV for a while then stop later in the evening when the home solar batteries' charge is below 80% (it actually cuts off at 75%). The idea being to leave more than enough charge in the home batteries to power the house through the night, since the EV doesn't really need charging anyway. Then if the EV is still plugged into that charger the next day, later when the sun has charged the home batteries to 80% the free solar on top of that charges the EV some more. I don't have to go out to the garage to plug it and unplug it while monitoring the solar telemetry or the weather. Nor do I have to ask some state official managing the solar power for permission on when to charge. All of this happens automatically at my configuration, not the Dims' configuration.
So all in all what is your bottom line? How much has it cost you for all the solar panels and batteries?
Phase I (installed in April/May of 2021) cost $33K for solar and batteries and an inverter (and related cables and switches and such), of which I got a 26% tax credit on. I downloaded the telemetry from the inverter for half a year into a homemade TSQL database and studied the throughput in hourly and daily candles (power consumed, power pulled from the grid, power coming in from solar, power going into or coming from batteries, SOC -- strength of charge of the batteries).
It worked as good as I predicted, so I implemented Phase Ia in the fall of 2021 and converted my two natural gas appliances to electric ones (got just a few hundred dollars rebate from power company). I now have no natural gas bill. I studied that throughput through the winter. On the 1 year anniversary of the solar system I had a full year's worth of data to study and determine a yearly average of what it means for my costs (helps really well in the summer, some but not as much in the winter, etc.) I had predicted it would save me 50% to 60% of all of my power in a year, the result was 58.5%. Not too bad for a soon to be retired software engineer born and raised in Sweet Home Alabama. LOL
So I knew it was good enough to implement the full version I originally wanted, which I call Phase II. That's add to the solar equipment and buy an EV. I spent a hair over $51K to double my solar and inverter capacity and triple my battery capacity. I get a 30% tax credit on that. It was time to replace my wife's ICE crossover car anyway, and a used replacement would have cost us $10K! (It's amazing how much used car prices have gone up.). We bought an EV for $62K after taxes and such, $12K of which I count as luxury expense because we bought one with niceties as our only new car in our marriage. The remaining $50K of the EV I count as the cost of the EV (what an EV would have cost of lesser luxury but large enough to be a crossover and also tall enough for us tall people in our 50's to still easily get in and out of 20 years from now in our 70's LOL). An electrician charged me $3K for installing the 240V outlets for charging and adding a few 120V outlets to the garage while he was on the job anyway. The extra electrical panel to control the intermittent 240V charging outlet is part of the $51K I gave the solar guy.
The cool thing is that I'm currently out of pocket only $3,200. I put most of these costs into a 2nd mortgage, a HELOC. What I didn't put onto the HELOC I paid from regular savings (which in the end means I pulled that much out of our investments). I budget for this all to cost $850/month because that's how much the related expenses cost on average in year 2019 before covid and before Brandon. Back then my average monthly power bill was $188, my natural gas bill was $125, and I spent on average $150 at the gas pump to drive one of our cars (used cars getting 15 mpg). That's $463/month in energy costs I count as "normal". Plus I put aside $400/month into a car savings account to pay for whatever repairs or car replacements we had in the future. $463 + $400 is $863/month. Count it $850/month.
Here's a way to look at the HELOC. It has a fixed 3.5% interest rate. By avoiding most of my future energy costs I've in effect replaced future energy costs with a reasonable 3% interest rate. Think of the interest rate as a kind of insurance policy against stupid Dim energy prices in the future.
Today my HELOC payment + car payment + tiny power bill is over $850 each month. So I pull the excess from the HELOC (which increases the balance owed some). When I get the tax credits I'll pay down extra onto the HELOC (which lowers the HELOC payments kind of like paying down a credit card balance lowers the minimum payment on the credit card). But my month-by-month budgeting gimick of pulling from the HELOC will increase the HELOC balance back up. I reach the HELOC credit limit and have to pull form savings (thus my savings is hurting by a net $3K currently more than the overall energy project has saved me from sky high energy costs). Repeat each year I get tax credits.
When the EV car payments end 3 and a half years from now (4 year car loan) I'll still budget like it's $850/month for the energy project for 3 years. The idea is that the $400/month car savings allowance is making up for the fact that the EV cost $12K extra for the luxury/fun part. (My wife agreed to this when we chose that EV.) Hopefully there will be few car repair costs during those 3 years anyway because the EV has a 7 year warranty and we hardly drive the old used ICE pickup anyway. So basically for 3 years the $850/month will more than pay for the HELOC payment + tiny power bill. Thus I'll pay extra on the HELOC to pay it down (through I may invest the extra in mutual funds if the bear market is over by then, since the HELOC has a fixed 3.5% interest rate).
After 7 years of owning the EV, I'll resume putting $400/month into cars savings like my wife and I did for many years. Thus, the $850/month energy allowance will drop to $450/month. That won't quite make the HELOC payment + tiny power bill (which I anticipate to grow some over the years, calculating it to have a 3% inflation rate, through the Dims promise to make energy costs rise much more than that). At that point, I'll still have a HELOC balance, but my cash savings will be around $20K for the overall energy project. That's the energy I saved not having to pay out of pocket over the years (assuming a 3% inflation rate on all energy costs and oil changes). 7 years after owning the EV I assume another $12K savings out of pocket (by not having to buy another used ICE car at $10K in today's prices with 3% inflation rate, picking 7 years because that's our average our used cars last us). So at that point the overall energy project will have saved me $32K as long as the HELOC keeps getting paid down through my budget. But at 10 years of owning the EV I expect to have to replace the battery ($10K in today's prices since it's not a Tesla, but assume a 3% inflation rate to make it $13,500). Basically not having to buy a used ICE car every 7 years pays for replacing the battery at 10 years.
Assuming a 3% inflation rate on all costs (both the energy costs I avoid and the extra costs the EV adds by having to replace the battery), the overall project pays for itself on about the 12th year. That also assumes a 1% degradation rate on the solar and battery equipment. That's the point where the total net savings = the balance left in the HELOC. That break even point will happen sooner if the Dims raise energy costs more than 3%. I can also get to the breakeven point sooner if, on the months I have excess in my energy budget, I invest the excess instead of paying extra principal on the HELOC balance.
Another way to look at the HELOC is that it's the cost of saving money. The energy costs I avoid is how much I save each month. The HELOC payment is the cost each month to save on energy. But as the HELOC is slowly paid down, the HELOC payments go down too. Thus future HELOC payments cost me less, while I save more money by avoiding future energy costs (as energy costs go up). Then the next year it costs me even less (even lower HELOC payments) to save even more (even higher energy costs). Then the year after that it costs me even less to save even more, etc.
Seriously thanks for your long solar testimony/ I read every word. You are all set up for a glorious long life as long as you are growing greens in your garden and eating them every day and your wife eating them the same.
You’ve got me wondering if I could pull this off at my latitude — not so far above yours, but not as sunny during winter either.