Just sitting here doing some work on my network and

"R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet" (r-saldana)
05/01/2015 at 11:21 • Filed to: None

Trying to figure out if I get enough sunlight at my house to run solar panels and some Tesla batteries and stop giving my money to government backed utility companies.

DISCUSSION (26)

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:24

You most likely do.

My friend is already selling back energy from his panels in New Jersey. If he gets enough light there....

You aren’t in Seattle are you? haha.

HammerheadFistpunch > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:24

I’ve thought about solar. If I get the lottery drawing for incentives*, I will otherwise no.

*not everyone who applies gets the max incentive.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
05/01/2015 at 11:28

Middle Tennessee and I am in a newer subdivision in the country and TN has yet to pass any laws forbiding you from going off grid.

MrDakka > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:34

Kinja'd!!!

This doesn't seem right; I thought Germany was always under cloud cover, that's why they never smile right?

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:35

there are some companies, like the one my buddy in NJ used, that lease the solar panels to you.

Then, you don’t own them so when they need to be replaced down the road (I believe they have a set lifetime before the photo-cells fail, if I’m saying all this right) so they are responsible for replacing them.

It’s not 100% off grid, but I believe he sucks in enough to power his house, and share it out. If it wasn’t enough to share out, I can’t imagine the company would bother leasing them to people.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
05/01/2015 at 11:44

Interesting

William Byrd > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:44

I admittedly went over to Solar City (related to Speaker City?) and looked. It’s a 6-8 year break-even period. So I think it depends on how long you’ll be at your current residence.

Do the Tesla batteries do anything if you DON’T have solar panels? I guess they could act as a rudimentary generator when the power goes out right?

NotUnlessRoundIsFunny > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:46

We did a ton of research before installing solar a couple of years ago. It actually started to make financial sense for us, because our local utility charges a lot, and we had an electric car. So let me know if I can help answer anything for you.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > William Byrd
05/01/2015 at 11:47

I think the days of moving every few years to a new, bigger, more expensive house are gone for this generation. I feel like I will probably be at my new house for quite a long time. It wou ld be dope to move to a house with the land we wanted and make a substantial income from solar panel power sharing

William Byrd > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:56

I’m just annoyed at Musk, it’s amazing how quickly I went to research this. The man has a power over me! haha Actually, we had already researched solar panels, this was just a neat addition to the concept.

1111111111111111111111 > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 11:58

The big incentives here say that you can’t store your power. So no battery system and solar and incentives from the local pud.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > NotUnlessRoundIsFunny
05/01/2015 at 11:59

How intense an effort was it to convert from shore power? Or did you stay on grid? What were your approximate start-up costs? (You don’t have to be detailed you could equate it to say “Oh well it cost us roughly a Porsche Cayman GT4 to do it all”) Do the panels operate even when not in full sunlight (cloudy days?) And How often do you have power outages or shortcomings now that you are on panels? Do the panels cause one of those, “Well we can run the washing machine tonight or have air conditioning and cook a meal” scenarios?

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > William Byrd
05/01/2015 at 12:02

well, lets say hypothetically I wanted to buy around 24 acres of land. How much power could i generate from todays panels - the cost of replacements - maintenance costs ? Would this ever become a scenario that someone could make decent money on a smaller scale? Meaning would i be able to cover the expense and turn a middling profit?

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > 1111111111111111111111
05/01/2015 at 12:04

I don’t understand what you mean. PUD = Public utilities district?

And what state says you cannot store your power?

William Byrd > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 12:05

No clue. I’ve heard/read that the average rooftop array on a single family house can “easily” power that house and be self-sufficient. So multiply that out several times with a big array, would follow that you might be able to power parts of your neighborhood. There is some question as to “how”, do you just run some new mains (as Clarkson would say) up to their place? How do you set up the agreements, MOU/MOA/Contract?

1111111111111111111111 > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 12:06

Yeah, the local electric provider. They’ll give you many thousands of dollars for your solar setup, but only if you don’t store any locally.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > 1111111111111111111111
05/01/2015 at 12:07

Where do you find this out? TN as a longstanding history of selling stored hydroelectric power to other states, well until federal mandates prevented this because it generated no revenue for the federal government.

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
05/01/2015 at 12:07

How much did it cost your friend to do it and how much incentive did he get? Thinking about doing solar panels as well and live in NJ.

1111111111111111111111 > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 12:10

check out the incentives from the local utility....your state and federal incentives apply too. We’re probably going to do it in the next year or two, would cost about 7k after incentives for a pretty big system.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 13:59

Yeah he did all the crazy math to make sure it works out for him. (he’s like that) so he pays 14 cents per kwh instead of 18 cents through power company and avoids the 20k initial investment of a full solar system. so overall, he’s seen a savings in 2015 of like 60 bucks. not a big impact so far but summer is coming and there was no set up cost, it’s basically a free 60 bucks (and on going).

It was through Solar city and he gets a referral bonus (he’s on here every once in a while if you want to help him out) if you sign up.

also, I saw your post below about not moving every couple of years. Moving is expensive. I’m staying in the house we just bought in September until kids are in college at the least (which is a long time, 1 is two and the other isn’t going to be born until October haha).

We were in our first house for just shy of 5 years, made a profit and got to a much better place. Worked out well.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts.
05/01/2015 at 14:02

well if you do it let me know i’ll get you his referral number, he gets a bonus (and pops on oppo every once in a while).

The incentives go straight to solarcity because they buy, install, and maintain the panels.

He basically pays 14 cents per kwh instead of the 18 to JCPL. he said he’s saved 60 bucks so far this year on his electric bill and it was zero start up cost.

I think it’s more of “If you don’t mind seeing solar panels on your roof, why the hell not” and with summer coming and clearer skies, maybe he’ll do even better.

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
05/01/2015 at 14:05

It’s super tempting, I also live in an area that looses power a lot so if I can be 90% self sufficient that would be awesome. Need to do the numbers with the wife and figure this out.

NotUnlessRoundIsFunny > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet
05/01/2015 at 15:12

Great questions. Let’s see what I can answer.

How intense an effort was it to convert from shore power? Or did you stay on grid?

We stayed on the grid. We don’t have outages that often and the cost / headaches of the battery solutions at the time were substantial so we opted not to do that. The Tesla battery solution might change that for us a little.

What were your approximate start-up costs? (You don’t have to be detailed you could equate it to say “Oh well it cost us roughly a Porsche Cayman GT4 to do it all”)

Ours was expensive up-front, because a) the financial case made more sense over the long haul and b) I wanted to obsess and specify exactly what I wanted in the design, from the exact panels and installation to the type of inverters. Which means we paid out of pocket to have the system installed—it was about $40,000 up front for about a 5kW system, and we got around $10,000 back in tax benefit. So call it $30K.

Do the panels operate even when not in full sunlight (cloudy days?) And How often do you have power outages or shortcomings now that you are on panels? Do the panels cause one of those, “Well we can run the washing machine tonight or have air conditioning and cook a meal” scenarios?

The panels operate even when they’re not in full sunlight, they just don’t generate as much power. BUT, the design of the system also makes a difference. For one thing, we were lucky in that our entire roof is open to the sun; no tree overhangs etc. And the back of our house faces almost dead south, which is close to ideal for the homeowner with solar, if not the local utility.

There’s also the issue of inverters.

The most common way this works is all the panels feed direct current to a central inverter on the side of the house, which converts direct to alternating current (what your appliances use). This is tried-and-true, but has a couple of limitations. For one, having all the panels tied together like this has the side effect that if one of the panels gets shaded, it brings down the output for the whole array. For another, you now have a central point of failure in the system: if that inverter fails, your whole system is down.* *The alternative is to use “microinverters,” where there’s one little inverter per solar panel. Each panel feeds DC to its inverter, which then outputs AC into the system. If a single inverter fails, you lose the output of that one panel but the rest of the system hums along. If one panel gets shaded, it affects the output of that one panel but not the others. It also might make it easier to add more / upgraded panels down the road. This approach is a little more expensive and it’s newer, so they don’t have the kind of field reliability history as the central inverters, but they do have warranties.

We’re still connected to the grid, and our system doesn’t keep us going if the power goes out. But we never worry about what we can run and when. We have a “net energy metering” plan with the utility, so whatever power we generate offsets whatever power we use over the course of a year. During the day we’re putting power onto the grid, and at night we’re pulling power from the grid; in summer we’re generating more than we’re using so we build up “credits,” and during the winter we’re using more than we’re generating so we’re drawing from our credits. It’s not worth generating a bunch of extra power beyond what we use, because the utility only pays about $0.04 / kWh as opposed to the $.35 / kWh they charge us.

In the end, we went from spending around $3600 / year for electricity pre-solar to a total of $25 (twenty-five) for our first year with solar.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts.
05/01/2015 at 15:33

Cool. If you want his referral number let me know I’ll get it for you.

Where you at in NJ? I grew up in Morristown.

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
05/01/2015 at 17:34

I’m in next to the Delaware 10 minutes from Lambertville.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts.
05/04/2015 at 11:14

Ahh, cool spot, I used to canoe on the Delaware all the time.