Switching To Solar Power – One Month Later 730
ThinSkin writes "After an interesting article on solar panel installation for the home, Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has written a follow-up after about a month of normal use. Posting an $11.34 electric bill (roughly 3% of previous months), Loyd shares his experiences using solar power and how it can be fun for the geek, with computer monitoring services and power generation data. Of course, solar power isn't all fun and games, given the amount of required maintenance — even unpredictable maintenance, like wiping off accumulated ash from fires in Northern California."
Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that while can't go net negative for the year he can get to net 0. Also note that he's 'selling' back power to get to that net 0 at retail rates.
The places that allow you to go net negative buy your power back at wholesale rates, which is far lower. If you think about it when you sell power back to the power company you're not competing with the power company, you're competing with the power generators. Why should the power company give you an unfair advantage there?
Re:Wait to winter time when there is less sun to s (Score:3, Interesting)
This is actually quite striking. I worked on a solar/wind project last year and the solar panel we were using was an 80W rated panel (normally provides a little over 60W in full sunlight at these latitudes), but I never realized how much your eyes compensate for the variation in illumination levels. When it was cloudy in the winter, even when you could see perfectly well and thought it was rather bright outside, the solar panel was only pumping out about 2 or 3 watts.
The idea is that it tends to be windy and sunny alternately, which is somewhat true, so they market wind and solar as a good combo, but the fact is the amount you have to spend to get the same power from wind is way more than the equivalent amount for solar, and trust me there are lots of times when it was calm and overcast for weeks.
Still I think the most economical setup would be to find a way to reduce the hardware as much as possible. Let's say you have air conditioning for instance. Take a solar panel, use it to charge a single 12V auto battery, and then use a voltage sensitive relay to turn on a surplus 12V marine air conditioner. Basically the solar charges up the battery. When there's enough power in there, the air conditioner kicks on and runs for 15 minutes or so and drains the charge out of the battery. The sunnier it is, the more the air conditioner runs, and that means your central air (powered by the grid) runs less. The benefit is that you don't need to fuss with inverters and big battery packs.
Don't buy a house & save $2 million (Score:4, Interesting)
Well a house in Calif* with a clear view of the sky & enough room for 27 solar panels is about $2 million. So it's a choice between saving $250 on electricity or saving $2 million on housing.
Re:Wait to winter time when there is less sun to s (Score:2, Interesting)
Mod parent up! I am posting from a house with four 80W solar panels on a rainy day and the generator is on. If you want to go solar you need a lot of batteries and a lot of panels.
Of course, we don't have the convenience of mains power at all.
F.Y.I
Current usage is; 1 laptop (80W), 1 low power fridge (120W), 1 one modem (8W). Storage is 4 deep cycle batteries.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should the power company give you an unfair advantage there?
Lower costs for the power-company in terms of transmission and distribution of power (and related costs for that infrastructure). E.g. the power you produce can go right to your next door neighbor. Power from a power station usually has to travel quite a bit.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Eh (Score:4, Interesting)
So he saved about $330/month. It cost him $36K (which really cost $50K, but let's say). So it'll take 109 months to get back the money, or 9 years, not adjusting for inflation and investment opportunity cost. Let's say that brings it up to 12 years. Not including maintenance and repairs. It might even need complete replacement at that point. At 50K, which is the real cost, we're talking more like 16-18 years.
It seems to me that could change rather dramatically if the price of electricity goes up. I wonder what effect his solar array will have if he buys an electric car that can be plugged in.
Of course the always leave out the real costs (Score:2, Interesting)
$11.34 + this months payment on the loan covering the costs of installation + costs of maintenance and operation.
Re:Solar is not a good choice if you want to save (Score:4, Interesting)
For some people it's not only about saving money but being a good environmental steward.
Re:Wait to winter time when there is less sun to s (Score:4, Interesting)
It sure will. Even in California or here in Florida you have fewer hours of sun in the winter. Since most people on solar are trying to live on far less energy than a human needs to be comfortable in order to utilize technology that simply isn't cost effective yet, I have no doubt they will be borrowing from the grid in winter.
Of course, if you'd RTFA, you'd know that the author mentioned that and figured his overall power bill to go from $4000 to roughly $1000 yearly.
You'd also have known that he states his power usage is higher than your typical family home due to the fact that both he and his wife work from home, he's got two teenage daughters, a pc lab, and pretty hdtv setups around his house. (thus the $4000/yr electric bill in the first place)
If you wanted to be a crotchety bitch, which clearly you did, you would have mentioned that it'll take him roughly 11-15 years to recoup his investment of $40,000 for the equipment and setup. That's what I'd go with.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worse than that. The $11 bill was for 19 days, not a month. And 19 sunny summer days, at that. He won't save $330 per month. Let's see what the figures are after a whole year. My guess is that he'll save around $200, at most. For a $36k investment.
Seriously, if I had a $300+ monthly electricity bill, I would start by seeing how I could reduce the amount of electricity used.
Insane energy usage. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea, I was shocked at how much energy the family in this article uses. My GF and I average ~370kWh/month, 4,440kWh/year. We live in Mountain View, which is the next small city over from Sunnyvale. The family in this article is using 17,400kWh/year. If he expects a 20% drop in usage when the family becomes 2 people, that's still THREE TIMES what we use. I also have a home server and network.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Interesting)
While if 'everybody' installs these systems I do think that there's a good probability that less in the way of transmission lines would be needed(capacity wise), the 'power to next door neighbor' is actually fairly unlikely - on the whole, your neighbor is going to be using power the same time you are.
Is it dark out for you? It'll be dark for your neighbor. Is it hot enough to require AC? Then it's hot enough for your neighbor unless he's been creative and went for an earth home or such.
You'd want to run some nice long connections to get to areas in different time zones, different weather patterns, etc...
For example, a super conductive line from Texas to the Dakotas - the Dakotas sell power to Texas during the summer heat(probably from wind turbines), Texas sells power to the Dakotas in the winter for heating purposes.
Of course, in all of this I'd still build a bunch of nuclear plants to provide base load power.
Re:Not a month (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Interesting)
Posted by JavaManJim
Re:Something to keep in mind [slashdot.org]
Where would the homeowners fit into the power generator chain - do they go first before the wind turbines or do they go last
just before the last plant to go online?
Debate flares over wind power in Texas [dallasnews.com]
Use a lease/PPA for savings from Day 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
(Disclaimer -- I do work for SolarCity http://solarcity.com/ [solarcity.com], a leading installer of residential solar arrays in the SF Bay Area and beyond. I won't make a totally shameless plug here, I'm trying to be fair to the other good and clever solar companies out there. A rising tide lifts all boats!)
By bringing in a 3rd party commercial owner via an Operating Lease or Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) structure, the customer can save money from solar on Day 1.
The 3rd party (an investment fund, or perhaps the solar company themselves) owns the system and claim the full range of available incentives. As opposed to residential owners, commercial owners can take accelerated depreciation on the system, and can take the full 30% federal tax credit (rather than facing a $2k cap), and they also get whatever state/local/utility incentives are available as per usual. The customer has a low (or zero) down-payment, and makes monthly payments over a period of ~15-18 years. The tax investor receives a reasonable return on their investment over time, the installer makes reasonable margins on the installation, and the customers can save money from Day 1. Everybody wins!
So to use the parent submitter's house as an example of what we can do -- For a $300/month average bill in Sunnyvale, CA, we might recommend a 7kW DC system. Assuming the customer had decent credit (720 FICO), we would require no down payment, and then charge monthly lease payments of $181/mo, for 15 years. The monthly payments do go up at 3.5% per year (we could alternatively have 0% escalation, but of course that would require a higher starting payment and so it's harder to show savings right away... there are many possible variations here. Also remember that local PG&E utility rates are increasing at >5% per year on average).
With this 7kW system, they might expect their average monthly bill to go from $300 to $72 per month. Add the $181/month payment, and their new average monthly electricity cost is (181 + 72) = $153/month, for immediate savings of ~$47/mo!!
The installers offering these plans usually offer full service/maintenance for the life of the lease, including replacement of the DC/AC inverter if necessary.
The customer is given the opportunity to purchase the system after years 6/10/15, or if they have to move or sell their house. The panels are warranted by the manufacturers to last 25+ years, so a long-term buy-and-hold strategy is solid. Or, if the customer looks around in 15 years and sees a better/cheaper technology, or just doesn't wish to renew or buy out), they are free to end the lease and we'll remove the panels at our cost.
The customer who understands Net Present Value (NPV) calculations can easily demonstrate that this offers far superior savings compared to either a) doing nothing, or b) purchasing the system for cash.
So before you all roll your eyes about solar being a poor investment with a 12+ year paybacks, please consider such alternative financing approaches.
Re:Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
Very old panels (over 25 years) still produce a good amount of power. A lot are "retired" at 75% output and you used to be able to pick them up cheap.
Another data point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:1, Interesting)
Whoever had the bright idea of privatizing a utility should be shot. Fundemental public services should not be privatized they should be public and operating in a fully transparent manner. Roads, Schools, Libraries, Utilities, and Health Care.
Just because you have experienced a poor implementation of a privatised society (the US typically does not have enough regulation on private enterprise) does not mean that privatisation is a bad thing.
In Australia we have had a privatised electricity market for nearly a decade and it has contributed to much greater asset utilisation overall, reducing the taxpayer costs over the long run. Higher utilisation means less need for new power plants. Better yet, a privatised market means that new infrastructure risk is taken by private investors, meaning that the public purse is not used to back new investments. If those investments are a failure, then the people who pay for the failure are not the general public but the people who made the poor investment.
Another example is healthcare. Private healthcare in this country is a much better option than public healthcare, though public healthcare is provided. Until the recent idiotic changes by the federal government, everyone on a decent wage either had to join private healthcare or pay a premium on their taxes. This meant that a significant number of people joined the private system, freeing up government cash to focus on the public system (not that our wasteful state governments were any good at managing it).
In nearly all cases a privatised system is going to provide a much higher level of service than a public one, but there needs to be regulators in place to ensure sufficient competition. This is a particular problem in the US.
Yours was a left-wing, partisan rant which fails to see that private enterprise can exist in a "fully transparent manner". It's just that the US business environment is one that promotes monopolies not competition and so you probably have never experienced the benefits of a competitive market environment.
Re:Not a month (Score:5, Interesting)
Window shade use keeps the house at 70 degrees during 100 degree weather without the need for fans or AC
Howzat? Even with no windows, no doors, great insulation, etc. I don't see how you can maintain a 30 degree temperature differential for more than a few hours.
Re:Insane energy usage. (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived "off the grid" for a while in Alaska. One thing I realized was that you could do pretty much everything you do now with a lot less electricity. Thats an important skill when you only get 2-3 hours of daylight for a good chunk of the year.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Interesting)
I Gather you think the government actually uses your dollars as they should. Obviously they are doing so well with what we are giving them now. /sarcasm
Don't get me wrong I pay avg bill of 350.00 a mo to PGE. I'd love to pay less. But nothing government ran ever works at anything but creating more government and costs that skyrocket.
I work for state government and it's horrid. They make up silly rules just to provide a job for someone.
A for instance, Rule: We must buy at least 35% of our supplies/parts etc from Small Business and 25% from disabled vets. OK.. that is terrific. Except some administrative type comes along and says: We're going to do 100% or I'm going to be very unhappy. "with a mean leer"
So now we have a job a single person was doing that now takes the manpower of six people.
We cannot go to the lowest priced place and buy product because if it's available at 2x the cost at Sally's Product and she's a Disabled woman vet. You can f'in bet where we are going to buy it.
If government was ran like a business I'd be all for them having control over utilities. Right now You'd get your power 80% of the time at a cost of double what you pay. But it would ALL be justified on some piece of paper in case you wanted to look.
Meh.
Re:Rookie mistake (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't easy maintaining a beowulf clusters of generators, ya'know.
The CDC in Georgia agrees with you, generator operations is hard.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/07/12/cdc_power_outage.html [ajc.com]
Re:Insane energy usage. (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. Getting used to the lack of water seems more to be the problem.
I lived in Fairbanks for a bit, and it always seemed like the "no running water" bit would bother me quite a bit more than the electricity.
However, I had quite a few friends and coworkers that lived in that sort of arrangement, and as is typical for Alaskans, they were resourceful and made the most of it.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:1, Interesting)
I am in Australia too and I call bullshit. My electricity bill went up 30% upon privtisation, I frankly have seen NO benefits. I also have had excellent service from public healthcare. Which nbranch of the liberal party do you belong to by the way? Your's is the partisan rant full of disinformation, I laughed out loud at the higher level of service, you muct be joking. When I was a telephone tech in the 70's we repaired 90% of faults within 24 hours, even in the country.under your wonderful privitisation it now takes up to 5 days in the city and 14 days in the country. Explain again these so called improvemnets of service, or take your head out of your behind and have a look around!
Re:Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, if I had a $300+ monthly electricity bill, I would start by seeing how I could reduce the amount of electricity used.
Exactly. By the sound of it, he has an active family. Thus, I suggest replacing any CRT/Plasma televisions with LCD versions. OLED would be better, but they're still a few years off. Replace all appliances with energy star ones. If you want to start moving out of the mainstream, there's further items. Like switching from electric heat to a heat pump system. Let's suppose he's on electric hot water and his family uses lots of hot water, and using less isn't an option. Well, there are a number of flavors of heat pump water heaters - from the desuperheater units on many heat pump systems to actual heat pump units that pull heat from the surrounding air. Or a solar water heater. Adding more insulation to the house.
Heck, I was just considering what would happen if you took a straight electric dryer and instead of just exhausting the hot air outside if you used a heatpump (think dehumidifier or window size AC unit) to move that heat(very efficiently) to the incoming air before using direct electric heat to warm it up. You'd probably need to add a line to a drain, and a pump to empty out the condensate, but most dryers are located next to washing machines, and they have a drain.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM makes me work 60 hours a week. You see, my employment is contingent on something called utilization. My target and tenure is such that I can't meet my target unless I work 60 hours a week.
The utilization target is computed without taking into account vacations, holidays, and sick days. If I take all 3 weeks of vacation I've earned, then I won't make my utilization target, and I won't have a job.
It's time to fucking unionize the place. Or if that doesn't work, I'll just continue slacking for 60 hours a week. IBM gets an honest 30 hours out of me whether they know it or not. Fuck them.
Re:Do the math -- is he really saving money? (Score:3, Interesting)
The other problem is simply the stock market itself. Getting 10% a year out of it might be possible over the long haul, but volatility in the time-frame of a decade could give you anywhere from -20% to +20% a year, or worse depending on what you are invested in. Plus if you have to take money out regularly then you have to take profits and you wind up paying a big chunk of those profits in taxes to the government and, depending on your income level, you can even push yourself into a different tax bracket. It isn't cut-and-dry.
On the flip side, it might be possible to take a tax credit for the money spent on the solar system, and if you can manage to spend the money up front it does in fact improve the value of your home and also significantly improves your monthly cash flow. Some people tend to burn their cash reserves regardless of what they think they've saved and burning it on something more worthwhile, like a solar system instead of a vacation, would definitely be an improvement. If you see the solar as a long-term investment then those improvements can, in fact, be more beneficial to you.
In any case, a standard California home does not need a 4KW system. 2KW will do just fine. I have a 2.5KW system and a fairly large house and if I didn't have 12 computers running 24x7 my electric bill would be nearly zero.
You get the most payback by cutting away the top tier electric rate. You hit diminishing returns if you cut away the entire electric bill. A 2KW system costs a lot less then a 4KW system. The best price point for a consumer inverter such as a Sunny Boy is 2.5KW.
I strongly recommend that anyone getting a solar system get it professionally installed. A solar panel system with a high voltage DC inverter setup (~400VDC, typically one or two strings hooked in series), grid-tie (no battery), requires zero maintainance.
Another thing people should consider, even before considering a PV system, is to get a solar water heating system. These don't use PV panels but instead convert sunlight directly into heat (pipes and glass basically). The efficiency is very good and the cost is far lower then a PV system, and will chop off a good chunk of the gas bill from your water heater.
My Solar System [backplane.com]
-Matt
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand the reasoning for such a restriction
It's to keep home generation from going commercial. The inverters tie to the grid by going in sync with it. They are required to shut down in a power outage to prevent islanding and frying linemen. With too many of these of too large of a capacity, they may become large enough to island a small block. With the size restriction, loss of grid ensures shutdown regardless of the powerfactor the neighborhood may provide.
The system in the article has no battery and no transfer switch. It is unable to provide power during a full power failure. He rejected two other bids which had 2 inverters. Most likely, one was grid tie and the other for running critical load with battery backup for power outages. The 2 inverters was not explained well in the article. My dad's system has no grid tie. It is battery and critical load inverter. It sells no power, stores some, and picks up about 65% of the typical load. These systems cost more and have higher maitnance due to the batteries, but are great for end of the line unstable power.
government (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, and the voting public seem to fall for it every single time. Either by not caring, or by caring yet not having the attention span to remember about it when they are in the polling booth.
Some have an even shorter attention and or memory span than that. It was government meddling that caused the health care problems to begin with. During WWII the US government passed price [mises.org] and wage [montrosepress.com] control laws. Employers weren't allowed to offer employees more by law. However government saw how this harmed businesses so the let employers offer fringe benefits such as health insurance to their employees, and gave them tax breaks for doing it. Those tax breaks are still on the books so there is no free market in health care and insurance. If government gave those same tax breaks to people who bought their own insurance then you could have a freer market. If they wanted they could join a health care coop [ghc-hmo.com]. Or buy private insurance. They'd be able to open a health savings account [wikipedia.org] which they could then use to pay normal medical expenses while buying catastrophic coverage to pay catastrophic expenses like cancer.
Falcon
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have a big corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to the corrupt government.
Of you have a small corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to some big corrupt company that bribes the small corrupt government.
Either way you end up being screwed.
You get all those libertarian fools thinking "Oh if the current big bad government is smaller, things would be wonderful".
Then you get the other fools thinking "Oh the current big bad government (that's already screwing me) should expand its role to take care of this".
It's not how big or small. It's how BAD or GOOD. When voters vote based on big or small, and not good or bad, what do you think they'll get?
If you have a good government, and it knows it has the ability to do "Natural Monopoly X" well (and will continue to do so for near future), nothing wrong with it doing X - after all it is supposedly answerable to the voters in a democracy. If it realizes it does not have the ability, it can get some company (or more) to do it, and if the government lacks the ability to even know whether the company is doing a good job or not it can appoint a regulator to do that.
Lastly if just because Company X gives lots of money to Candidate Y, means people vote for Candidate Y, then people sure are stupid. In the absence of Diebolded elections, you don't have to vote that way. If Coke and Pepsi are the biggest advertisers it shouldn't mean you continue drinking either Coke or Pepsi if both are bad for you.
When voters vote based on how much money Candidates get from companies, guess what they get?
So far it sure looks like voters have got what they have been voting for.
Maybe in the future companies like Diebold will save voters the trouble.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Interesting)
did't you get into EU by the same time ? I remember our own electricity prices jumping by the time we got into talks about joining ... the argument was that we "had an unfair advantage" because of low electricity prices ... to bad a minimum of 30% (up to 60% in good years) of that electricity was from hydro and some 12% from a nuke, which are rather less expensive than what those that complained about our unfair advantage used (gas and coal).
Re:Do the math -- is he really saving money? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've yet to figure out why everybody doesn't have a whole-house flash water heater - the top-of-the-line model I have was about 4 bills on EBay. They heat water only when you need it, not all the time like standard water heaters. And I've got mine set where only half the burners operate when it comes on because the water I'd get if they were turned on fully would be so hot that it would be unusable.
My average gas bill 2 years ago before I installed my Bosch was almost $100 a month. Since I installed the thing, my bills are averaging about 1/5th of that - it finished paying for itself in January of this year. And I could take that bill down even farther (almost to zero) by installing a solar water heater.
Re:Solar is not a good choice if you want to save (Score:3, Interesting)
I would actually not recommend solar panels like the OP used, but rather look into solar-thermal generators.
Solar panels are only 15-18% efficient, and stationary ones only achieve peak output at high noon, so you need to cover most of your roof with them.
There are solar-thermal plans with a collector less than 6' in diameter (looks like a satellite dish) that follows the sun for peak output whenever the sun is out. They're more like 60% efficient, replacing 12x the area in solar panels. One 6' generator should put out 1500W, enough to power the typical household, and more can be added to power electric cars for example.
If everyone had one for their home and replaced their cars with electric cars and matching generators, greenhouse gas emissions would drop by 73%. If they were ever to be mass produced, the retail price should settle under $1000, even lower if they were subsidized. That is the most realistic solution to global warming I've seen.
Re:Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
Worse, in places where electricity isn't as expensive we're talking about 20 year paybacks. I'm paying ~.10/kWh for wind generated power (100% of the generation portion of the bill goes to an account to fund wind generation). This cost has generally been around around ~$100 a year extra for me to offset carbon output. I've got a good sized ~1800sqft house and we've been keeping it fairly comfortable this summer, 73F -- my last bill [just came today] was 1037 kWh for $115. Windsource was nearly net 0 cost due to how expensive natrual gas is right now.
I agree with some posters -- figuring out how to cut a few hundred kWh should have been priority number one. Sealing/insulating the house might have been in order, too.
It'd be nice to be off-grid, but I really can't justify it at these prices.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind about California that their legislature voted unanimously for that "deregulation" plan.
A unanimous vote like that in a public body like that on anything should be (as least for US'ians) the first sign that you (as a citizen) are about to be screwed. With a system as corrupt as ours, it's a fairly safe assumption that a unanimous vote just indicates all the lobbyists agree on the vote. Extreme public scrutiny should ensue immediately and persistently.
Based on our own history here in the US we should be able to watch out for these things [opensecrets.org] and to see them coming. Sometimes we do, but usually it seems we don't. Memory hole [wikipedia.org]?
-Matt