What are you paying for electricity (price per kWh)?

Your assumption is right. For us our roof
is 4 yrs old so having the panels installed makes sense. Also in Bay Area, the our average cost per kwh is 30cent 3yrs ago. At this rate we will get
back the system investment in 6yrs.
Roof age & electricity rate
are for sure the factors if solar makes sense or not.

 

duplicated

 

duplicated

 

Solar Edge here too. Had the inverter and now having an optimizer go out. Replaced under warranty, labor included. System is about 5 years old. Keep monitoring your system for problems. I didn't discover my system wasn't working for 2 weeks and it took another 2 to replace the inverter.

 

In 7 years we have had 2 optimizers go out.
The installer notified us within a day and had them replaced under warranty within 4 days.

 

I have 26 pair of SolarWorld (since bankrupted) PV modules and Enphase microinverters, variously aged 9.5 to 7.5 years (installed in three batches), and no hardware failures yet. Production failures (covered by snow, wrong breaker turned off , etc.) are flagged by email from Enphase in about 36 hours. There have been several episodes of temporary communication failure between the microinverters and the central monitor unit, likely from electrical noise interfering with the PLC (power line communications) between them, but no indications of any energy production loss during those episodes, just data loss. The microinverter energy production isn't dependent on any communications with the monitor.

 

What's an optimizer

 

A high tech device that lives only 3.5 years and hope it's under warranty?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_optimizer

Apparently commonly used for maximum power point tracking on PV module strings to adjust for different lighting conditions on different modules. Not needed for systems using a separate microinverter per PV module.

 

Including a 5% city tax, about $10.36 fixed charge, plus 12.37¢/kw·hr marginal rate.

 

Just switched back to winter rates today.
$24.33 fixed cost, including taxes, $0.11kWh off-peak and $0.152 kWh peak.
Summer rates was $0.13 up to $0.31 during peak hours.

So your almost better off burning gas in the summer months, than charging during peak hours - assuming your time isn't worth anything. Free, if you can find a local charger that isn't being monopolized by a cheap Tesla owner.

 

After an 89% hike on the supply cost, our current rate is ~$0.24/kWh all year long, any time of day. I get 15% off of that with my community solar contract. So, I am paying right around $0.204/kWh now. I just received a letter from the utility informing us that they are proposing a distribution rate hike for next year. If approved by the PUC, the rate will be ~$0.27/kWh. I will see about a 13% increase in my monthly bill.

 

IMO Having solar is a good investment, especially in area with high electricity rate.
Any work related to the project can billed in same invoice, so you can get 30% federal tax deduction as well.
For example: grading electrical panel, installing more sub panel...can be lump sum in same invoice as whole solar project.
So if you plan to have solar, you get 30% discount there for upgrading the electrical panel as well
We had the 4kw installed 3yrs ago around $8.5k (after tax deduction), so far it generates $5.2k dollar equivalent.
Projecting to get the rest in less
than 3 more yrs, then will be enjoying free electricity for 19yrs.

 

Just for a chuckle, our most recent electric bill was $6.64 just for the minimum distribution fee. We used 883kWh of electricity during the billing period, which effectively bring the cost to 0.75 cents/kWh to the utility. What caught my attention was that the net billing credit applied to our utility account for the period was 21,147.25602kWh of new electricity generated!

And I don't even have a solar panel over our roof. LOL

Yep, our community solar company made a huge error on this one. BTW, the amount of electricity credit would be almost two years of our regular usage... but in our state, net billing credit expires after 1 year of generation, so even though the amount of credit would be enough to cover two years in our household electricity, if that credit was real, then I would be forfeiting almost half of it to the utility as free clean electricity.

 

My problem has been finding someone who will do the work. There are a million solar companies, but as soon as they encounter someone the salesperson can't bamboozle they become unresponsive. 90% of the companies ghosted me after I told them "no Chinese panels and it's not negotiable." The other 10% ghosted me after I told them they're going to have to re-route some plumbing vents in the attic to make room for one contiguous array rather than scattering panels all over my roof jigsaw puzzle style. I have been through Sunpower, Sunrun, Semper Solaris, NRG Clean Power, various LG dealers.

And how the heck did you get solar installed for $3/Watt? Every single quote I've received for the past decade has been $5/Watt and the prices haven't changed as recently as two months ago when I got my last proposal.

 

It may be the area you are in. 7 years ago I installed solar at just und $4/Watt. Of the solar companies I spoke with, neither even blinked when I requested US panels. I didn't need any re-routing of vents, so I don't know how typical that is.
Good luck in your search!

 

I moved the roof penetrations myself. Well, I did the entire solar installation myself too. But the concurrent reroofing project was handled by a regular roofing installer.

I had 3 roof penetrations on the south pitch solar module field: a plumbing vent, the kitchen exhaust hood vent, and a solar tube skylight, each blocking a different element (or even overlapping a boundary thus blocking two positions) of the potential PV mounting field. The plumbing vent was in the center of the field width, so I left it in place, splitting the solar field perfectly in half. Then the roofers took out the original kitchen vent jack, covered the hole, and placed a new jack in line with the plumbing vent. Then similarly moved the skylight tube jack a few feet north, across the ridgeline and out of the solar PV field. I did all the tube re-route and replacement work in the attic for both.

That left two very nice matching rectangular fields for solar PV.

I do recommend that people don't put solar PV on a roof with a limited life expectancy. Temporarily removing a PV system to replace the roof beneath it will require repeating the majority of the original labor, greatly increase the PV system's life cycle cost.

Solarworld was still making panels in Oregon at that time, that is what I used. They later went bankrupt, unable to keep up with the market's decreasing prices.

I haven't kept track of the Made In Washington products, which were always more expensive and seemed to serve a more specialty market.

 

don't give up until you've gotten a bid from revco. in socal, they always have the highest ratings - when stacked up against newcomers, they've been in business practically forever. by the time we left SoCal we had amortized our system for over 5 years and it was great - charging 2 plugins & running the house for practically free.
.

 

About 12.8¢/kwhr plus a fixed charge of about $10/month, including local tax

 

just read some good news tonight, on top of our current 32 cents/kwh:

42010236

 

Thanks for the tip, although I have to say the pictures on their own web site showing conduit running along customer's roofs and junction boxes out in the open exposed to the sun and weather do not inspire confidence.