Anyone here gone solar?

[engnrng]

Like I said, payback is meaningless, those calculators do not include your tax rate. Compare your savings return to a tax free bond instead. You are investing a chunk of money and getting a return (tax free $40 per month). Can you invest in a high dividend stock and get a better return (there are some paying over 5%!), but dividends are taxable. Can you invest in a tax free bond and get a higher return? It does sound like solar may not provide a good $ return in your case, so your justification boils down to helping climate change and only you can place a value on that.

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[RVAtom]

@jhalkias I’ve got a 6kw PV system (18 panels) and a 6kw Duracell Power Bank, set up for grid trading.

My utility company (Social Energy) connect my battery wirelessly to everyone else who has an array and power bank. They then use proprietary AI to monitor the the house energy demand and patterns etc and use the power bank as a holding account for trading energy. It learns to prioritise the household needs and demands and then sells sorted energy at demand peaks and buys it back when it dips. Quite clever. In peak summer, I was getting around £60 a month, and had a bill go only £10, so it’s quite effective. They also keep 10% of your battery free so they are able to offer the national grid a set amount of storage capacity for the times when they may have too much supply and would otherwise dump. We get paid for that too, though it’s not much... usually £3-£5 per month.

They’re a start up, so it has not been without its issues for me, but it’s starting to come right. It was interesting to see this year that Tesla applied to become an energy supplier in the Uk market, using pretty much the exact same business model... I’m following that development with interest, as I suspect Tesla have either created their own trading AI, or are potentially going to acquire Social Energy.

Once V2G is fully established in the UK, you then have the same option of grid trading via your car battery too.

It’s a great way to recoup your layout quicker than you would normally, highly recommend something similar if you have it over there.

That sounds like a really smart system. I'd love to hear that become the norm in more places. To use local battery storage to smooth out some of the peaks would be great.

 

[CHeil402]

I had a Tesla 12 kW solar with 27 kWh Powerwall battery capacity (2 Powerwalls) installed in September. I pulled the trigger right after they dropped their pricing to be the lowest or match competitors. I did like that they had fixed pricing. I also asked if they would install a subpanel in my garage in anticipation of adding the EV charger and they did that at no additional cost.

Power from PECO in southeast PA is pretty cheap (about $0.13 / kWh) and they offer net metering and there is no time of use fee. It definitely makes the payback period longer based on the favorable conditions from PECO... but the way I looked at it was that Tesla offered 10 or 20 year financing options and my monthly payment ended up being about the same as my electric bill, so I'm getting the solar system by essentially just paying Tesla instead of PECO and I'm adding value to my house. And while we don't lose power too often, we just lost it for 3 days after a big storm this summer and after looking into a smaller generator for about $5k, I figured the cost of the batteries offset that and could act as an 'insurance policy' against a future time of use rate if it ever happened. Currently I have it set to backup only as there's no sense to using them as they only have a round trip efficiency of about 90%.

I oversized my system in anticipation of the future EV needs and if you purchase your system (instead of lease it) there is no size cap. I've only had it a few months, so I don't have a full year of data, but Tesla's install design estimated 13.6 MWh / year. I have good sun exposure, which if you're curious you can check out for your own roof here: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof. Last month (October) I had a negative balance so only had to pay the $10 / month connection charge which I would have had to pay anyway.

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