Residential Solar Panels
- Thread starter VTXCyRyD
- Start date
Wow, great point. I can't believe no one has done a total life cycle analysis of cradle to grave solar panel emissions against traditional sources like coal.
Oh wait, they have, hundreds of times, and unanimously shown the total emissions of solar, wind, and nuclear are all a tiny fraction of coal.
I put up a 11K system in August for $24k so that would equate to $37K for a 17K system so $60k seems high.
Whatever you do stay the hell away from the financing option through these solar companies. One outfit came out quoted some ridiculous number to finance it. I told him he was to high and was going to look at company 2. Guy tells me company 2 only offers cash deals and no financing. Then he proceeds to give me a “cash” price that was $8,000 less. So basically they charged a 28% fee up front to give us the privilege of financing thru them. I kicked his ass out of my house about as bad as I have anyone before. They charged $42k for financed 10+K system and 34k for cash and was still $10k more then the company I ended up going thru. Very happy with them so far and I’ve only been actice since October 18th.
I think there's a lot of things that can be done besides Solar. Solar can be an option in very select circumstances, but not a widespread solution.
Nuclear seems to have the most promise. Even the outdated designs being utilized currently are far superior to solar and wind, and there is potential for a lot more efficiency with design updates.
So...solar produces less greenhouse emissions than coal? That's your argument?
Go read this thread.
So, instead of being a douchebag why not just state this as your reply? It's a decent argument but nobody will take you seriously now.
That is absolutely my argument, supported by the NREL report above summarizing data from hundreds of other similar studies. Your refute: a Twitter thread, from this morning, written by a nuclear energy advocate, who referenced the same NREL data linked above, mischaracterizing the underlying assumptions and brushing it off as "Theranos-like" That's your argument?
Not in terms of total life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Wind, solar, and nuclear are all far superior to coal in that regard. From the NREL report linked above:
I just did say it and will continue to say it.
Solar is a net polluter and the only reason people are using it is because of tax subsidies. It can't stand on its own.
I was just asking about nuclear vs solar. I have solar panels, but know that nuclear is a far better energy source than the panels that I had put up.
I can’t wait to have my own personal nuclear plant on my roof to give me enough energy to offset my electricity requirements.
If the power companies get the okay to do what the RECs do and only pay their power purchasing costs to consumers, the payback will lengthen in time. Purchasing costs are about 3-4 cents per kW on my last statement. The local REC has been upping the cost of basic service set-up also. I can see in town providers doing this in the future. The lines to provide power have limited life expectancy, decades down the road, it may be that you have a large connection fee so you either have to decide to be totally off the electric grid or latched to it.
The net metering varies also. Some used to do it monthly (alliant did this the first time I considered panels I was told), some daily, my local REC for where my panels are, are 15 segments.
The net metering varies also. Some used to do it monthly (alliant did this the first time I considered panels I was told), some daily, my local REC for where my panels are, are 15 segments.
Finally got the go ahead to turn it on today, 5+ months after install to get approval from Alliant. I guess the only positive is that those months were during the winter, low solar producing months, but man that's a long time.
Anyone have any experience with SolarDirect? I'm looking into solar also and this thread has provided a lot of information but wonder if anyone knows anything about this company?
An update after about 5 months of solar. TL;DR version-- so far, so okay but big regret on the batteries.
System is 19 Panasonic panels, 360W each, with IQ7 microinverters, and (3) Encharge 3.3kWh batteries.
The good news is that everything is working and the batteries even kicked on once for about 5 minutes during an outage.
There are a couple minor annoyances:
1. The battery monitors consume a noticeable amount of power. Like 1.4kWh per day. That adds up and was NOT something I expected at all. It wasn't in the system size calculations either. Is it a huge deal, no, its less than a panel, but it does bother me that it was a "surprise".
2. The Enphase app isn't quite working right. It shows my generated power as instantly consumed. The system works right, it just doesn't show right in the app. They thing something was installed backwards, but haven't come to fix it yet. That's annoying.
3. A relay failed, and right now my load shed is jumpered. It's been like a month waiting for a replacement part. So that failsafe is currently not functioning, although I did the math and as long as I don't run the dryer, the whole rest of the house can be on and it would be OK. So no dryer if the grid goes down. OK.
4. I am a little concerned about performance. So far I am getting about 70-80% of the power in the projections. Now, it's only been 4 months, so maybe it's just been cloudier than average. But I am definitely keeping an eye on it.
However, there are some big things I would have done differently, related to the batteries. Frankly, I wouldn't have added the batteries at all. They were about half the cost of the system, and I discovered better options for me after the fact.
First - our biggest power outage concern is our well - gotta have water. But I could have just as easily put a small rechargeable battery and a soft start on it for maybe $1,000. No power for anything else, but would have water. Unfortunately I didn't know this until an electrician told me that is what he was planning to do when he went solar.
Second discovery is using an EV as the house battery. Now instead of dropping $20k on batteries, you can drop $40k on an EV and use it as the house battery. And the capacity would be 5-10x more! I could run my house for a week off the Tesla Y, even in January. Still a cost to "plumb" it in, but getting the dual use of backup power (rarely needed) from something you use frequently and have to have anyway (car) seems like a no brainer.
System is 19 Panasonic panels, 360W each, with IQ7 microinverters, and (3) Encharge 3.3kWh batteries.
The good news is that everything is working and the batteries even kicked on once for about 5 minutes during an outage.
There are a couple minor annoyances:
1. The battery monitors consume a noticeable amount of power. Like 1.4kWh per day. That adds up and was NOT something I expected at all. It wasn't in the system size calculations either. Is it a huge deal, no, its less than a panel, but it does bother me that it was a "surprise".
2. The Enphase app isn't quite working right. It shows my generated power as instantly consumed. The system works right, it just doesn't show right in the app. They thing something was installed backwards, but haven't come to fix it yet. That's annoying.
3. A relay failed, and right now my load shed is jumpered. It's been like a month waiting for a replacement part. So that failsafe is currently not functioning, although I did the math and as long as I don't run the dryer, the whole rest of the house can be on and it would be OK. So no dryer if the grid goes down. OK.
4. I am a little concerned about performance. So far I am getting about 70-80% of the power in the projections. Now, it's only been 4 months, so maybe it's just been cloudier than average. But I am definitely keeping an eye on it.
However, there are some big things I would have done differently, related to the batteries. Frankly, I wouldn't have added the batteries at all. They were about half the cost of the system, and I discovered better options for me after the fact.
First - our biggest power outage concern is our well - gotta have water. But I could have just as easily put a small rechargeable battery and a soft start on it for maybe $1,000. No power for anything else, but would have water. Unfortunately I didn't know this until an electrician told me that is what he was planning to do when he went solar.
Second discovery is using an EV as the house battery. Now instead of dropping $20k on batteries, you can drop $40k on an EV and use it as the house battery. And the capacity would be 5-10x more! I could run my house for a week off the Tesla Y, even in January. Still a cost to "plumb" it in, but getting the dual use of backup power (rarely needed) from something you use frequently and have to have anyway (car) seems like a no brainer.
The Solar panel financing options should be investigated for fraud.
I had numerous tax clients put in these solar panels. They give me the letter that shows how much they paid to put it on the tax return for their credit. The solar company tells them you are going to get $XX back from your taxes and if you take that tax refund and use it to pay us (the financed loan) you'll save $YY dollars on your panels. The problem is the solar company doesn't tell them that the credit is nonrefundable, so when the credit amount is limited to their tax liability and their refund isn't what the solar company told them they are all pissed. I have to explain to them why it is limited and that the remaining credit will be carried forward to next years tax return.
Pain in my ass.
