• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

Solar Advice

I should mention that my solar system is mounted on a metal roof of my workshop it's not mounted on my house at all and so therefore the roof was more than capable of supporting the weight it faces roughly southward so it gets very good exposure to the sun. And I wasn't affecting the shingles on the roof of my house at all because the solar panels weren't on the roof of my house.
 
Part of the point for me is being able to operate independently of PGE scum. I guess I'll just live w/ my gen setup for now.
 
kingmoochr said:
Part of the point for me is being able to operate independently of PGE scum. I guess I'll just live w/ my gen setup for now.
Click to expand...

Well I like the idea of being independent too and I sort of am because I don't pay them anything even though I'm connected to the grid. I actually do pay them something it's about $100 a year the last couple years but this year should be even less due to some other changes we made.
 
Another comment I want to address to all the people that are asking about this installing solar on your home and that is that I had four different quotes for install the solar system on my home. All of them were $25 to 30k.
The output of the different solar systems proposed varied from 6.5 kW to 8 kW.

The most expensive system quoted was just shy of 7 kW which meant I would have been paying PG&E probably 1, 000 to $2000 per year in addition to my solar.

They were all under sizing what was actually needed where I'm of the mind where you should oversize by about 10 or 20%. But PG&E doesn't want you to oversize they have all sorts of reasons why but mostly it's because they still want to collect some money from you and they don't want to have to pay you anything.
 
motomania2007 said:
Well I like the idea of being independent too and I sort of am because I don't pay them anything even though I'm connected to the grid. I actually do pay them something it's about $100 a year the last couple years but this year should be even less due to some other changes we made.
Click to expand...
I'll never have an electric stove, for me its the PSPS bullshit because they refuse to fix their infrastructure. I just want to keep the lights on and my meat frozen.
 
kingmoochr said:
I'll never have an electric stove, for me its the PSPS bullshit because they refuse to fix their infrastructure. I just want to keep the lights on and my meat frozen.
Click to expand...

We run on propane Now.
Those two 30 gal out the window last 2 years.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20210310-174658_Gallery.jpg
    Screenshot_20210310-174658_Gallery.jpg
    58.5 KB · Views: 44
I have a SunRun built/supported system on our house. Previous owner installed and paid off lease, so we pay nothing and it helps our PG&E bill.

Sadly, they sized the system at about half of what our family needs so I've been looking at getting more production. For me, it will end up with a second system with a micro inverter on each panel.

I've done the math on what we need for sizing based on 3 years of PG&E usage data. I highly recommend doing that yourself and making the judgement call on the size. The sales guy is going to lean a particular direction, but you're the boss and should spec the system to your current and future needs. For us, we have a household of 5 with the energy load that presents. But in 10 years, the kids will be gone and I anticipate not needing the same level of electricity. So it becomes a balance of forecasting long term usage vs. how much capital you want to wrap up solar vs paying PG&E. If I'm overproducing when the kids are gone, I'll probably start cryptomining. From my understanding, you aren't going to make money on the overproduction to make up for the higher cost of equipment. So sizing is very important if you want to get value/ROI quickly.

Consider looking carefully at the appliances you have in your house. Using electricity for heat sources is silly when you have natural gas as an option. Running solar and then trying to support electricity based heat sources like dryers, water heaters and stove/ovens forces you to build more solar than necessary when you could switch to gas and save more over time. And of course, LED lighting for everything.
 
I've also been looking at least vs buy.

The selling points of leasing are that they guarantee a certain amount of kwh per year and maintain the equipment to meet that agreed level. But if you extend out the math.. for us the system would have been double at the end of the 25 year contract.

Conversely, buying out right you receive the same 25 year warranty on the equipment and you can include monitoring/service as part of your contract at a much cheaper rate than the lease. So you're effectively buying the same thing at half price.
 
I've had my system up for four and a half years now and the maintenance has been zero other than cleaning the panels a couple of times a year.
 
Re: Oversizing

HOW MUCH IS SURPLUS ENERGY WORTH?
The NSC rate is based on current market prices. The rate averages around $0.03 cents per kWh and varies each month. The CPUC approved this rate in 2011. Payments to our customers began in the fall of that same year.

My PG&E pricing(average) is $.28 per kWh. If you spend hundreds or thousands more in solar equipment to oversize, you might be hard pressed to make that money back at a tenth of the rate back to you. But there's value if you never have to pay that $.28 per kWh by producing more than you consume. You just accept that you're getting the shaft on the overproduced power and hope that you didn't spend too much money to overproduce by a lot. I think that's the challenge in considering sizing/price. How in the heck are you going to know what your energy usage will average out to over time? Hard to predict and then make a decision on just how much you want to spend on solar vs how much you'll pay PG&E. Adding a battery just adds an extra layer of complexity I don't even want to dive into. That revolves again with how much are you willing to spend on batteries vs the cost of buying power (over time).
 
motomania2007 said:
I've had my system up for four and a half years now and the maintenance has been zero other than cleaning the panels a couple of times a year.
Click to expand...
Mine was installed in 2014 and I agree nothing until this month, we had a ground arc fault problem at the inverter due to a little moisture(dew) intrusion. Sunrun guy was out about a week after they detected it and all is well again. According to my lease(paid off by previous owner) I've got 19 more years of this service ahead of me.

Sadly, we don't produce enough so I'm shopping a second system to eliminate my $3000 annual true-up.
 
insyder said:
I have a SunRun built/supported system on our house. Previous owner installed and paid off lease, so we pay nothing and it helps our PG&E bill.

Sadly, they sized the system at about half of what our family needs so I've been looking at getting more production. For me, it will end up with a second system with a micro inverter on each panel.

I've done the math on what we need for sizing based on 3 years of PG&E usage data. I highly recommend doing that yourself and making the judgement call on the size. The sales guy is going to lean a particular direction, but you're the boss and should spec the system to your current and future needs. For us, we have a household of 5 with the energy load that presents. But in 10 years, the kids will be gone and I anticipate not needing the same level of electricity. So it becomes a balance of forecasting long term usage vs. how much capital you want to wrap up solar vs paying PG&E. If I'm overproducing when the kids are gone, I'll probably start cryptomining. From my understanding, you aren't going to make money on the overproduction to make up for the higher cost of equipment. So sizing is very important if you want to get value/ROI quickly.

Consider looking carefully at the appliances you have in your house. Using electricity for heat sources is silly when you have natural gas as an option. Running solar and then trying to support electricity based heat sources like dryers, water heaters and stove/ovens forces you to build more solar than necessary when you could switch to gas and save more over time. And of course, LED lighting for everything.
Click to expand...

Don't neglect to forecast new loads as well, not just the kids leaving. Electric car/truck are likely in most everyone's future, commercial natural gas for heating is already starting to get banned (look for residential right behind it).
 
We considered installing natural gas or propane for the dryer and the water heaters however the cost of doing that was many thousands of dollars plus we were going to end up paying for that gas when you took that same amount of money and enrolled it into the cost of additional solar to support the electric dryer water heater and HVAC It made a heck of a lot more sense and dollars wise.
 
I was wondering did anyone tried doing the same thing that parking lots do, but them being over the driveway? So basically make it in to carport.
I'd that even allowed?

Seems like less PITA then having them on the roof, and makes for descent size array I would think.
 
UDRider said:
I was wondering did anyone tried doing the same thing that parking lots do, but them being over the driveway? So basically make it in to carport.
I'd that even allowed?

Seems like less PITA then having them on the roof, and makes for descent size array I would think.
Click to expand...
One of the things that I see getting in the way (quite literally) is trees. I see solar array's on houses that have their sunlight significantly blocked (50% of total) by trees planted outside of their boundary.

Also, ideal is a roof angled towards the south. A flat roof won't cut it.
 
UDRider said:
I was wondering did anyone tried doing the same thing that parking lots do, but them being over the driveway? So basically make it in to carport.
I'd that even allowed?

Seems like less PITA then having them on the roof, and makes for descent size array I would think.
Click to expand...

I have seen that done in several places. Usually setting it up as a carport

There are also a couple of local dairies that put solar panels of the roofs of their covered feeding areas.
 
My brother has a 100 year old 2-story barn on his property- he put all the panels put on it, enough to run the barn, the well pump, his home and an ADU. No muss, no fuss- all underground cabling.
 
NorCalBusa said:
Don't neglect to forecast new loads as well, not just the kids leaving. Electric car/truck are likely in most everyone's future, commercial natural gas for heating is already starting to get banned (look for residential right behind it).
Click to expand...
Yep. That's what makes forecasting challenging. At the end of the day, you build what you build and hopefully it should work out. I assume a panel system with microinverters on each panel could allow adding more panels to the mounting system easily if the need came up, but I'm not sure on that.

With the natural gas bans I guess we'll see how that battle pans out in cities nationwide. It's interesting for government to mandate an electric only infrastructure when our major electricity utility has significant issues "keeping the lights on" when the wind blows too hard in the summer.

Climber said:
One of the things that I see getting in the way (quite literally) is trees. I see solar array's on houses that have their sunlight significantly blocked (50% of total) by trees planted outside of their boundary.

Also, ideal is a roof angled towards the south. A flat roof won't cut it.
Click to expand...
There are new, high wattage panels available that can help address that issue. If you have less usable square footage, you should be able to yield the power you need with less panels.

https://news.energysage.com/technology-update-500-watt-solar-panels/
 
Ran into my neighbor again. He's happy with his system but he says the customer service for Tesla (motors) Solar has gone to shit. You read online people waiting months, them not refunding the $100 deposit, or accepting more money and not doing anything.

I'm giving them the chance to come back with a proper plan but so far their web form has been broken, their plan is incompetent, and they are slow to respond.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top