Solar electrical systems?

Don't hire Borrego Solar.

 

pyccku, is your water heater electric or natural gas? If it's electric, doing solar thermal would cut your electricity bill in a big way. It'd be cheaper than PV by a bit too.

 

In Arizona...I'd do both PV and solar water. Plus insulation and ceiling fans if you don't already have them.

 

I installed a 7.5 kW system on my home in 2004. So far I have generated over 60,000kWh of power. I pay less that $350 a year on solar. If you want more info drop a line .

YOU ALL SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT HOME SOLAR!!!!

73 de Pat KK6PD

 

We boosted our system to 3300 watts last November, which is generating about 275-325 KWHrs/month.

It's always easier (and a lot cheaper) to reduce your consumption. We dropped ours from at least 500 KWHrs/month to no more than 350-- over 30%! Before you go solar (which is worth it in the long run) you should do an energy audit on your house (many utilities do them for free). The top energy hogs in most houses are air conditioning, water heaters, electric dryers, and refrigerators. If you can replace yours with EnergyStar models, setback thermostats, solar water heaters, and clotheslines then you're looking at a 3-8 year payback instead of photovoltaic's typical 20-year payback.

Then it's time to look at radiant foil insulation (attic rafters and south walls), passive cooling (windows), window tinting, and ceiling fans (EnergyStar again).

The last stage is to switch most of your incandescents for compact fluorescents and to replace computer CRT monitors with LCD monitors. You can also buy a Kill-A-Watt to monitor various energy-suckers around the house like media-electronics stacks, desktop computers, and aquariums. You're not gonna be happy to see how much power a 60" plasma HDTV consumes compared to a 29" CRT. I wish our VCRs would retain their programming memory when power is cut off because we're wasting a lot of power there.

You'll be surprised at how much your consumption will drop. Once you've done that, your PV installation may not need to be as big (until you convert your Prius to a plug-in, anyway).

In late 2004 we bought a used (10-year-old) rack of PV panels (1100 watts), did the mechanical labor of mounting it & running the wires, and paid a solar installer to connect it (as well as running the construction permit and signing off the net metering agreement). Then we boosted it every year (for the tax credits) with more used panels from eBay & Craigslist (and homebrewed racks). But we're out of roof space unless we move to angled racks or a pole-mounted yard system.

If I was doing our PV system over again I'd buy at least a 5 KW inverter. 3 KW is just too small.

Check the details of your utility company's net-metering agreement. Ours just changed from monthly credits to annual, so now our excess summer production balances out our winter use.

You may also be unpleasantly surprised at how much you're paying to stay connected to the grid-- fuel surcharges, non-fuel surcharges, special fees, and so on. However grid-tied is generally more convenient (and cheaper) than getting off the grid.

 

... and here in colorado if you go off-grid from the off you lose about 60% of the subsidies (since the utility can use your power). So it's really a no-brainer here, unless the connection costs are really large (and they can be).

 

I had a system installed in December. Stopped by our installer today and they told us that the price of panels is going up substantially because of demand. Bought an electric car a couple of months ago. Great feeling to be free of the big oil machine. We'll all have to get off of oil eventually.

 

I've had my 2.5 kW system on the roof for almost five years now. It is enough to power my home AND my electric car for 11,500 miles/year. My bill for electricity and gasoline is about $70 PER YEAR. Yes, I included all the zeros.

Solar

May advice is to find out about Time of Use... if it is available in your area. With Time of Use, you can typically reduce the size of your system by about 1/3 for the same amount of energy credits.

Good luck, and thanks for being part of the solution.

 

Got any more details on how your system progressed over the years and how you've hooked/installed everything up?

Sounds like you've been able to save a ton of money by buying slightly used panels.

 

solar is great but if you've got the right home... and some wind - a wind turbine is a good alternative and a fraction of the cost in most cases.

 

How about some info on cost and paybacks??

 

Just Excellent and congrats on the electric car and on becoming free---i agree wholeheartedly with your post ----i have yet to be able to obtain a big solar system for the house. I do however run a 4 panel bank mounted in the yard used to charge my newton lawn mower and misc other items-- when finished researching, i hope to charge my segway off my panels...between my segway and my Prius the Big Oil gets 12-15 dollars a week off me...even with a 76 mile RT daily work commute during which i have a rider who splits gas expenses---this amount i still feel is lining their pockets too much.....

regards
Froley

 

http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a191/Nords_Nords/Solar%20photovoltaic%20array/
http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a191/Nords_Nords/Solar%20photovoltaic%20array%20expansion/
http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a191/Nords_Nords/Solar%20water/

In Oct 2004, spouse saw a classified ad in the paper. (IIRC that's the last time we made a purchase from a newspaper instead of eBay/Craigslist.) A retired engineer in his 80s had broken his hip and wasn't able to maintain his PV system.

Searching for a solar installer, we found a guy who seemed active in the business/govt solar associations. His website included an online real-time monitoring system for the local library's 9KW system and also had a spreadsheet to help estimate our own needs. He agreed to inspect the engineer's system ($120/hour) and to do the electrical if we did all the rest. We bought 1100 watts of panels (20 Siemens 55s) for $2000 (including the racks), took the whole thing off the engineer's roof, and hauled it home. The installer sold us a Xantrex 3 KW inverter (I should have gone bigger!).

I have basic mechanical & electrical skills (Navy submarines). We did all the mechanical-- buying additional electrical/hardware, drilling roof holes and mounting the racks, routing conduit and stringing the wiring through the conduit, connecting the ground wiring, and making sure we followed the installer's code requirements. (He was very patient with us.) He ran the electrical permit (worth every penny) and handled HECO's net-metering agreement. His crew mounted the inverter, connected the panels into a string, and connected them to the inverter. (I learned enough to add more panels.) At this point we'd spent $6800 and took a state tax credit of $700.

A few months later we bought another 200 watts of 10-year-old panels for $800 from a Craigslist seller. We made our own racks (scrap aluminum from screening in a lanai) and wired the panels into the string.

In late 2005 an eBay merchant was offering blemished Evergreen Solar panels at a huge discount. It turned out to be Sun Electronics in Miami, FL, who sold us 16 110-watt panels for $7000 (including freight to Oahu). They were forklifted onto our driveway and we did everything else-- racks, wiring, connecting, and startup as a second string. The panels operate at rated power output (they're made with extra modules in case of production glitches) but they have a couple bad modules or just don't look pretty.

Our 2005 state & federal tax credits came to about $2300.

A few months later we found a couple 30-year-old 4'x8' copper solar water panels and a used solar water heater. (The panels actually had label plates with serial numbers so I was able to track down their manufacturer's records.) The panels tested sat (held pressure all weekend) so we spent about $800 for more hardware, mounted the panels on our roof, and plumbed them in. We also finished the Evergreen PV installation. Between paying for some things in 2005 and others in 2006, and having parts started up in 2005 and other parts started in 2006, and carrying over credits from 2004 & 2005, in 2006 we were able to squeak out state/fed credits of $3000.

In early 2007 I found 5 60-watt Solarex panels on eBay for $1075. (Estate sale from a storage facility, clueless executor.) More racks, more hardware, more wiring, more carryover from prior years, another $3300 in tax credits. We have 3372 watts of panels on a 3000-watt inverter but they never seem to run above 2800 watts.

Total cost without tax credits was $16,579. We took a total of $9376 state/federal tax credits so our net cost over the years is $7203. We've generated over 8500 KWHr at 20.5 cents/KWHr for $1750 savings. Along with solar water and other improvements we've also reduced our monthly energy use by at least another 100 KWHr/month for approx 4000 KWHrs or $820 savings.

Generating 300 KWHr/month for a net cost of $7203 works out to a 10% dividend-- better than any stock or CDs I've ever owned. We also charted out breakeven & opportunity-cost paybacks of Sep 2010 (when we'll earn back the money we spent) and May 2020 (when the compounded savings are worth more than if we'd invested the original money).

While we were doing most of our own work, a retail system would have run about $30,000 for 3000 watts installed. By doing a little bit of upgrading each year we also maximized our tax credits. Our payback is roughly half the time of what a typical retail installation would require-- most websites quote 20-25 years.

 

Thanks Nords, looks like the DIY approach is worthwhile if you have the time and know how.

 

If you can find a way to dump the AC and use a swamp cooler you could reduce the size of your array considerably.

 

You won't wanna ditch the AC. When the monsoon is in full swing the AC is MUCH nicer. However, having the option to use way less energy when appropriate will save you lots on money.

 

Awesome! I wish I had the know-how to build my own system like this. Sounds like you're on your way - keep it up!