Anyone have solar panels

If all your figures are right, including everything, then you got a Good deal. 24 panels at 175 Watts is 4200 watts or 4.2 KW. How did you get 5066KWhrs ?

 

Smart move , paying cash. Since you did not lease, what was your total cash price?

 

I guess it all boils down to: is one happy to pay for electricity many years up front ? I toyed with a DIY project, but in each case there were obstacles, irregular panels, not desired wattage, certified electrician, prices too high. I have the perfect situation, S facing, either yard or roof. But cannot get the whole idea to click.

 

Say a PiP gets 3mi/kWh wall to wheel and you pay about $0.14175/kWh at marginal use that's $0.04725/mi.
Say a Prius gets 50mpg. At $3.65/gal that's $0.073/mi.

Then you can look at solar in a couple of ways.

In cold, hard financial terms solar replaces the marginal electricity cost of $0.14175/kWh.

But in altruistic terms you can say that you're going to take the $0.073/mi you're currently paying for gasoline and instead pay for solar at a rate of $0.219/kWh. Of course, there's also a premium for the car, but that's offset somewhat by the awesome quiet of EV mode.

 

I had PV installed last year, and just had my 1-year anniversary. I mention this because in California we have something called 'net metering', which is somewhat deceptive if you don't know what it means. We are only billed a small amount each month, and we are required to 'settle up' annually with the electricity company for the net amount used throughout the year.

Our system is 4.7 kw; we have 24 roof-mounted black Sunpower panels. I have a 5000m inverter, which can handle a few more panels, if I want to add some. We use a lot of electricity and I have been doing a bit of detective work to figure out what I could do differently.

I finally decided it was the pool pump that was causing my bill to be so high. Last week we replaced it with a variable speed pump, which, all things being equal, should cost a third of what the other pump cost. My goal is to bring us into tier 1 all the time. We are consistently up in tier 2, even with solar. However, for many reasons, I am very happy to have solar.

I feel it is the environmentally responsible thing to do; there isn't much I can do as a consumer, but this was something I could do . My bill has gone down, from an average of $250/month to $164/month. When I found out about net metering, I had an automatic $100 a month sent to my electric company. My settlement for the year was $768. I really hope that things are better next year with the new pool pump and some other cost-saving measures we've been doing.

My PIP is charged once a day, at night, on its own meter, with a L2 charger. This allows me a lower rate since it's on its own meter. Last month was my first bill and I used 45 kWh, at around $3.50. That was for 3 weeks. This month was a 4-week month and we used 64 kWh, at a cost of around just under $6.00.

If the new pool pump doesn't bring us down to tier 1 (although I suspect it will) I will add 3 more PV cells.

 

Thanks for the posts, very enlightening. Your costs for the Pip are minor. But I wonder why overall your wattage is so high?

 

Oy...pool pump, big LED tv, cooking w/elec, too many computers, small 110v hot tub, it all adds up. We keep the a/c at 76 degrees and try to turn off lights. Most lights are the efficient type.

BTW, if someone does their own PVC install, they cannot get the rebate and tax credit, according to the sites that provide that info. Self-installs, as well as leases, don't benefit from the incentives.

 

The legislators very nicely arrange the laws so DIY s cannot benefit, it just ruins incentive.

 

Pretty certain this must have been an industry-driven addition to the incentive laws. Small businesses want the business, so they likely lobbied long and hard for this disincentive.

 

WA State has amazing incentives for solar installs that reduces payback to under 6-8 years for most people. problem is despite the (WA pays up to 54 cents/kwh for power generated. this is NOT only for excess power) great deal, but it requires a ton of money upfront.

the big movement now is leasing options. companies come in, install the solar on your roof, they collect the big buyback and you pay a reduced cost for your electricity and eventually own the panels with a small monthly fee. the payback time is actually more than double but you dont have to pony up tens of thousands up front. now how this model is working, its too early to tell but have a lot of Leaf owners who are doing it. time will tell.

the other thing to think about. i drive a Leaf and so i probably charge much more than most (averaging about 275-330 Kwh a month) and the cost is about 10.6 cents per kwh (i just increased my green power % to 100 so my rates will go up a bit. was averaging about 10.2 cents per Kwh) so its about $30 a month to drive the Leaf about 1200-1300 miles which is $100 a month cheaper than driving the Prius the same distance. so if you want to be green, but your rates are not that high, call your PUD to ask about their green power program. just about all of them have it.

as far as what produces what? that is very individualized and there a ton of websites that will actually zero into your neighborhood and you plug in a few figures and it will give you an estimate of how much power you will generate and even go as far as telling you what you would have generated in previous years.

 

Dave, why not finance the panels, say with a home HELOC ?

 

i am guessing that "HELOC" is some sort of home refinance. good question. but guessing the crash in real estate (Seattle area homes have averaged 35-50% reduction in value from 2008) values makes refinancing for most a near impossible task

 

Not a refinance, a loan using home equity as collateral. There does have to be equity though.
Even in the Seattle area, a 10+ year homeowner who has not drawn down equity with earlier loans should be ok, since the drop in value you mention mostly was a bubble haircut

 

Wow there just seems like misinformation here reported third- or fourth-hand. If you're interested in solar, investigate the costs in your area, as payback in many areas(like mine) is less than five years. Do not rely on a vague recollection of a board post about someone's parents that a person can't really "remember the numbers".
it's almost comical how people who don't own a solar array and haven't really investigated are usually quite certain that a solar array has a payback of something like 40 years.
A kWh is a kWh, don't buy a solar array to charge a car, buy a solar array because it makes sense to do it, as all you're doing with a grid-tied system is pushing electricity back out to the grid...not specifically charging a vehicle.

 

There a lots of ways to finance a solar array, even if home equity is not available. E.g, people with good credit can obtain a credit card that has "for_life" of loan a low fixed loan rate with a 1.5% of principal monthly payment. The repayment schedule for the first 100 months for a $10k loan looks like this (not including the accumulated interest, since it changes the monthly payment by very little):



This is America. The engine of the economy is debt

Keep in mind this payment does not account for monthly savings/payback for owning the PV.
So e.g, if the $10k loan puts up a 3 kw array after tax credits, and WA produces 1.25 kwh/year*installed_watt, then rebate from the utility is about $125 a month, leaving the homeowner to pay $25 a month. No more than they are paying for electricity right now, and in something over 10 years they have an array making clean protons for free for the next 25+ years. Easy Peasy, so long as the generous WA production credit lasts for a decade.

People thinking of using this finance route should remember to NEVER use this card for purchases ... The trick is to buy the array with a card that has a nice reward rebate, and then balance transfer to the card to be used for a loan which starts from a ZERO balance.

 

Hi Everyone! I have a 7.9Kw system on my roof (37 215W panels) I turned on the system last Jan (2012), since then I've generated about 5Megawatts. (5000kwh's) I also replaced my old pool pump at that time for a variable. So the combination of those two things I have BANKED 1000Kwh on my electrical meter. I'm not sure how much of the banked power I will use over the winter, but I'd imagine I'm going to have a surplus of power in time for me to get a PIP in a couple years when the capacity becomes better. Hopefully the panels will offset both my house power as well as the batteries in my future PIP.
My TOTAL out of pocket expense on my system was a prepaid lease for 20yrs from SolarCity was $7400. I will have a complete ROI in less than 4 yrs.
I couldn't be more pleased.

 

If you paid ~ $1/watt you made out like a bandit.

 

well, he didn't pay $1/watt, it's a lease, so he's getting some use of the system for $1/watt.

 

It is kind of amazing, you have a 4.7kw system that lowered your bill by 1/3rd? I guess in CA you heat your water with electricity or something?

In MA you basically cannot do a self-install as you will find it impossible to interconnect to the utility. The state has to approve installers who connect equipment to the grid. Solar is exploding in mass and the utilities cannot keep up with inspections required to get systems connected...wait time is now as long as four months.