Posted: 8/11/2009 6:52:04 PM EDT
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Ok I have been thinking about this for a few weeks. Has anybody solar power? Do you like it? Do you ever sell any back to the power company?
Thanks |
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I think the lack of response is due to the vagueness of your question. What are you trying to find out?
I had some in my last house; a setup for Y2k to provide power; we used it everyday to power the well pump, provide house water pressure, and run a couple lamps...twas expensive. If you are leaning more towards a grid-tie system to roll back your power meter, or mostly power your entire house, that's an entirely different critter and much more expensive. I can say be prepared to spend over $25-30k for that kind of setup. |
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I have it. I like it. It's expensive. To really do it it costs more than most gun collections or cars. Some months I sell, some I don't. I have a hybrid system with batteries so I still have power if the grid goes down.
If you have specific questions I'll try to answer those. |
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yes it works, company power is cheaper if you can get it, my driveway is 1/4 mile long and it would have cost 20k or more
to get power to the building site, it was cheaper for me to go solar, but I am an electronic tech so it was natural and easy for me. I started with 300 watts and added a panel or two a year until I have about 1kw, I also enjoy messing with stuff to find the best way. If you go solar you may have to learn/change some habits, I think my system has paid for itself, and it is still working well (about 10 years) here is what I started out with 12 used arco 16-2000 panels from corrizo flats I paid $800 sometime when 486 dx75 computers were hot. they are 26 years old and still look and work fine, the output has gone down to 1.5 amp from 2.2, I have 6 left and I am selling them for $100 each, thats a pretty good return after using them all that time. 
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I don't have it yet but I am preparing to start playing with it some. If I were to build a new house today I would go so far as to pay to have a set of dedicated DC curent lines/circuits run in the house that would be seperate from the AC Power system. From what I have read you can use normal household wire to do this but run them to a second fused DC panel where you would connect to your DC power system. From what I have looked at, most "greenies" suggest one outlet per room for DC as you can then run your laptop, radios, and items that would benifit off running off DC directly from the DC power.
The expensive part of Solar is the battery bank and solar panels but the prices keep comming down and the capability of the systems keep getting better, I am willing to bet a lot of money that our next generation will have some sort of DC based power system in their homes to run all the obects that we use transformers with now (laptops, phone chargers, radios, etc, etc) as well as to charge their cars. A lot of energy is lost in each of those AC to DC inverters we use - those square boxes on our power cords). I am not afraid of the technology and given that you can get energy out of the investment that would work when the grid might fail is reason enough for me to start looking at it. I am also planning to buy a small piece of property to build a cabin and I am planning to wire that for both grid and off-grid power. Do some Google searches and there is a ton of info out there! |
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Well It is getting cheaper, I heard in the last year it went down half the cost. I saw on one website I could get 10 x 125w panels for $6k. I figure 12.5kwh times 10 hours a day is 125KWH. 125KWH times the retail $0.10 a KWH is $12.50 a day. times 30 days is $375 a month. It would pay itself off in less than two years and be making money after that.
These are rough optimistic estimates. I just wondered how much power I would actually get off of a 125kw panel in a day. If power companies bought the power back at retail prices. If anybody got a system without a battery system could you sell it to the company and then buy it back when you needed it (like at night.) If it works really well I might just start a business putting solar panels everywhere. I just wandered if it would work, if solar panels are reliable, how much maintenence, if it decreased cooling expense if it was on top of your house. Your thoughts? |
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In TN TVA is a major power provider. If I understand correctly they will buy back power from a rate payer at about 1/3 or 1/4 the retail rate. If they charge you 48 cents a kWh, they only pay back 16 or 18 cents.
IOWs, it doesn't pay. CO has an aggressive campaign for residential power production. |
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Just ordered a ~4 kw grid tie system (twenty 230-watt panels). After all the fed/state rebates it'll be about $20K which includes pro installation on a concrete shingle roof (sounds like a huge pain to remove them all then install the panels then replace the shingles with cutouts for the supports), they pull all the permits, etc. No battery capacity yet - that'll be a later addition.
The last two months we had giganticenormonstrous electric bills and a lot of that was because we were getting into the more expensive tiers. When you're paying $.28+ per kwh the economics get a little more favorable. Grid power costs are inevitably going to go much higher in coming years. Our area is rated for ~5.8 hours of sun per day averaged over the year, which strikes me as pretty conservative. Figure 8468 kwh generated per year, by keeping us out of the $.28+ tier we're looking at over $2K in energy savings per year and a 10-year ROI in the worst case, which isn't bad. And of course there are benefits beyond a reduced electric bill. |
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Straight from the TVA green power switch website (cliffs notes at bottom):
A renewable generation system is installed by a residential, commercial, or industrial power customer served by a participating power company of TVA power Eligible resources include solar, wind, low impact hydro, and biomass. TVA will purchase all of the green energy output at a rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar and 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for other renewable generation as a premium payment above the retail rate and any fuel cost adjustments. For example, if you pay your power company 10 cents per kWh for the electricity you use to your power your home each month, then TVA will pay you 22 cents (10 cents plus a 12 cent guaranteed premium) per kWh for 100% of the green energy generated from your solar photovoltaic system. Moreover, a 2 kW solar photovoltaic (PV) installation in the Valley averages 200 kWh per month or roughly $44 per month Generation Credit: 200kWh X $0.22/kWh (average retail rate of $0.10 + solar premium $0.12) = $44 All new Generation Partners participants will receive a $1,000 incentive to help offset start-up costs. The participating power company will provide monthly statements showing the energy used and any credit due. Power bills will be reconciled either monthly or annually, at the discretion of the participating power company. Energy consumed at the home or business, whether it is generated at the site or delivered over the local power distribution system, is billed at the standard rate. The customer is guaranteed payments for 10 years from the start of the agreement with the local power company. In other words, TVA will actually subsidize your solar project, bringing the payoff time down. From what I can tell, it's still an expensive proposition. |
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You better read the small print when you sign up. Because customers that took advantage of one of the TVA incentives on solar found out they were not getting what they were told.
"Basically, the customer is charged for all of the energy that is used in their home whether it is energy from the local power company or energy from their (at-home system)." It turns out that TVA was representing a 15 cent payment, but for solar providers it turned out to be less than 6 cents. Thus my statement that they will only pay about 1/3-1/4 of stated rate.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/may/19/solar-power-plan-gets-heat/ What you posted is what looks like the beginning of a better program than they were offering in Jan when I investigated incentives for an install. But I wouldn't be the first to sign up until you understand the program fully and see real world results with your local power provider. After all, TVA (a gov subsidized power provider) has now run up a 1 billion dollar cleanup bill to date with this coal ash spill. They knew about the leaking levee for yrs and last year the top exec pulled a million dollar bonus. Also all other states received a larger discount on power rates due to the economy than TN. For some undetermined reason TN's rate wasn't lowered as much. edited link |
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We put up one 100W solar panel to run our porch lights. It was a fun experiment, we built the panel with cells we got on eBay.
However, what it taught me is that it's a lot of work to put together and wire and mount, and batteries are expensive and somewhat of the weak link in the system. |