I’ve just started looking into solar energy options, programs, financing, etc. and it’s rather overwhelming.
As it is, with SCE, I’m subject to outages and the rotating cycling-off of the compressor under the Summer Discount Plan. Could I bypass this and just have decently cool air whenever it’s needed if I go solar?
What’s the average cost? Are there good financing plans available?
If you’ve gone solar, I would like to hear from you. Thanks.
My in-laws have gone solar in California. The company installed it and keeps all the money from selling the electricity to the power company. So they basically payed nothing for it but the installer has a twenty year ownership on the panels. They claim that going off grid is illegal there.
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I’ve recently moved out of California but I went solar on the house I owned there prior to moving. It was very worth it for us. Electricity costs pre-solar were astounding, particularly in the summer. After getting one bill for ~$1000 for one month, I started calling. My costs were less than a third of that after. My sister (still a resident) also has solar and reports similar results.
You can buy or lease the systems. There are a lot of companies to choose from. The most irritating part of the whole process was how long it took the utility company (PG&E) to schedule the cut over. After all the paperwork was done, and the equipment was done, and the inspection was done, it still took months. Almost as if PG&E did not want me to stop paying them large amounts of money. Odd.
You can absolutely go off grid in California. When house shopping, I looked at several properties in the Santa Cruz Mountains that were built that way. There are restrictions in some areas on the amount of solar panels a home owner can install. Perhaps that is what drewder’s in-laws have run across?
I used to work for a solar company in California, and I would advise against going off-grid if your goal is financial savings.
Off-grid doesn’t just mean “add a bunch of solar panels and you’re done”. It means you’re doubling the cost, at least, with a huge battery bank, and then replacing that huge battery bank every 10-20 years depending on how you treat it.
Instead, you can opt for grid-tied solar plus a backup battery bank, much smaller than an equivalent off-grid one. The differences are:
But you still get the benefits of having a battery bank, meaning you aren’t limited to using electricity only when it’s cheapest (you charge the battery instead).
In the industry we call this grid-tied with battery backup, or solar plus storage, or some variation thereof, but it’s cheaper and simpler than off-grid.
For example you might consider a Powerwall, with or without solar. (There are other companies doing home battery banks, like Rolls, but I don’t think any of them except Tesla will last very long because it’s a difficult market. One of the hopeful competitors, Aquion, just filed for bankruptcy not long ago.)
There are a few significant savings to be had:
A potential misunderstanding here is that solar, in a grid-tied setup, does not directly power your appliances. Your A/C doesn’t get power directly from the panels. It gets it from your utility, as always, and your panels are separately selling power back to the grid. The only real relevance this has is time-of-use metering, meaning you should orient your panels so they produce the most power during peak pricing periods, NOT during periods with the most sun. (The utilities did this because they have an oversupply of solar during peak solar times, and not enough electricity during the rest of the day, so they shifted the price curve towards the afternoon to encourage new solar installs to produce more during that time.)
At the end of the day, solar really has nothing to do with when you’re able to use your A/C economically. That’s the BATTERY’s job. The solar just helps pay for the batteries by separately selling power to the electricity at other times of the day, completely untied to when you want to use your A/C.
On a separate note, if heating/cooling are your main costs, I would recommend getting a home energy audit (ask your utilities or town hall, or pay an independent consultant usually about $100 to do one for you). Basically some guy with an infrared imager comes around and checks out your house, seeing where heat is leaking in/out through windows, doors, cracks, etc. If you can identify some sources of major leakage and add insulation before or instead of a solar PV project, you may be able to save some money. Sometimes the fixes are as simple as adding thermal curtains to your windows; or you could get fancy and replace the windows and doors with higher-insulation ones, adding deciduous shade trees, etc.
I had built my own solar, um, system about 10 years ago out of some used scrap. Even tried to cobble together a lead acid battery bank for it. It worked…sort of. Never got all that much out of it. Recently I’ve been talking to Solar City about one of their systems (and looking into the Tesla Powerwall). They have several plans, including something like what drewder mentioned in the 2nd post, basically, they pay the capital costs and I pay a fixed monthly charge for power (about $150 a month I believe for 7 years, with an option to buy out the system for the remainder of the cost at that time). There are also various options for buying the system and owning it which I’m more interested in if I’m going to do this…I’m really interested in the new tiles more than the panels, but they don’t seem to be ready for prime time yet. I don’t, however, live in California so can’t help there.
Very good post!
I wanted to highlight this part. Very important information. We found a number of things that needed to be fixed or that could be improved for savings. Well worth doing.
Second note: Some appliances, like A/C units, can be set up to run specifically with your solar. I looked into getting a new unit to take advantage of this, but didn’t get around to doing it before we moved. If you are interested in this, do some research (CostCo was selling one, for example) and find out what you would need to do to have the appliances work with a solar system. If you have a swimming pool, you can also have a separate type of system (NOT panels) set up to heat your water. As reply noted, there’s more than just the panels to getting full advantage of a solar system.
The limitation in installation size is a byproduct of the current net metering agreements in place. PG&E and SCE will buy back your excess electricity but only if your system is (roughly) appropriate to cover your typical use. My system produces approximately 120% of what was my usage at the time of install* and that was on the upper end of what they’d sign off on.
*I deliberately oversized cause I knew we were adding A/C soon and wanted the capacity to cover that.
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Instead, you can opt for grid-tied solar plus a backup battery bank, much smaller than an equivalent off-grid one.
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When I bought my system, none of the battery options pencilled out and none of the potential installers I interviewed recommended such a system. I’m curious to hear what the positive of having a battery is in your view.
The net metering agreement is so favorable that I couldn’t find a scenario where the battery paid for itself. Essentially, buying electricity off the grid at night is more than 100% offset by the excess electricity I produce. The battery in this case costs me money to buy and results in no savings.
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A potential misunderstanding here is that solar, in a grid-tied setup, does not directly power your appliances. Your A/C doesn’t get power directly from the panels. It gets it from your utility, as always, and your panels are separately selling power back to the grid.
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I’d like to question this as well. During the day, my SCE meter runs backwards, indicating I am pushing excess power out to the grid. If I am a net-producer at a given time, I don’t see how I am also pulling from the grid simultaneously. I need to take a closer look at my breaker panel, but I believe that the configuration is Solar Array -> Inverters -> Solar Meter -> House Panel -> SCE meter. In fact, one of the options I had for my install was a switch to separate myself completely from the grid (like if you had a home generator) so I could continue to power the house from the solar array in a grid outage situation.
Thank you! It’s a bit unfortunate that as Americans we have this idea that energy is just an interchangeable commodity, that as you use more you just have to pay more or get it cheaper, and figuring out what’s causing it and not using as much in the first place so rarely enters the equation 
It’s more difficult with retrofits than new construction, but still entirely possible!
PG&E even has a free tool library that you can borrow tools from, including IR guns and whole-house draft test systems, if you wanted to do your own inspection.
HOWEVER… because of Chinese price dumping, these days sometimes it might actually make more sense to just throw more panels up rather than reinsulate your house. PV is becoming less of a conservation tool and more of an investment tool, able to pay for itself and then some. But still, it ought to start with a home energy audit. A $50 fix (changing lights to LEDs) is definitely worth it. A $500 fix (like thermal curtains) is probably worth it. A $10,000 fix… probably better to just spend that on more solar panels instead. A good audit will let you understand the options and do the math.
The trouble is that most PV installers are in it to make money, obviously, not necessarily to help you save energy. In fact, the more energy you use, the bigger the system they can sell you and the more profit they’ll make.
But homeowners and environmentalists should definitely figure out why they’re using that much power to begin with.
The average house in the US uses 900 kWh/a month, which at 12 cents a kWh (California average) should only be about $110 a month. In California apartments, my electricity bill was usually $20-$40 a month. If you’re using way more than that, figure out why (and make sure you’re separate electricity from natural gas, which can be billed by the same company but which PV won’t help with).
This is news to me, and very cool! Judging by one installation manual, it works by basically jury-rigging the heat pump between your panels and your household electricity, diverting solar output first to the heat pump while it’s on. Beyond that, it uses standard solar panels and Enphase-brand microinverters.
This is actually a great solution that can bypass the need for batteries IF you tend to use your A/C when the panels are producing most of their power, i.e. in the middle of the day. If you don’t tend to run the A/C until later on (like if you’re not home until the late evening), this solution may not be as good. It’ll take some mathing to figure out…
A/C pulls a lot of current. What amount of power do you pull off of solar cells, and how much area do they cover? They must be large to charge batteries to run A/C at night.
I have a 5.3KW system. This time of year it produces about 30 KWh a day. I don’t have batteries, but what I pull off the grid at night is offset by what I overproduce during the day.
In the old days, it used to be that you can install a home solar system and sell it back to the California utility at retail pricing (like 12 cents a kWh) no matter when you were generating that power.
Because of an oversupply of solar, the utilities redid the payment schemes, and new solar installations are usually put onto a time-of-use scheme.
A battery bank may allow time-shifting demand. With an older installation it doesn’t matter because you get paid the max no matter when you generate that power and you probably pay the same no matter when you use the power.
With a new solar install, they will probably move you onto a time of use system and so now you have to try to balance home production vs home consumption on an hourly basis. It gets complicated =/
It’s still possible (perhaps even likely?) that a battery battery bank is economically infeasible for most households. But if somebody is using way more power than normal, and they don’t have the roof/ground space to infinitely expand their system to cover more than enough of their use, a battery bank MAY help fill that gap. It does depend on the math.
Essentially, it’s not as easy to just overproduce during the day to make up for your usage anymore.
This is possible! Thanks for pointing it out.
Are you sure about that? You’re not just thinking of an AC disconnect switch that disconnects the solar from the grid, but typically does not continue providing power to your appliances?
Most grid-tied inverters are, by regulation, designed to shut off household power as soon as the grid power goes out (or you disconnect it manually). They do this to avoid frying linesman working on power lines, ostensibly.
That’s just the way they are designed because it’s not worth it (wiring and cost complexity) for most homeowners to design a household grid separate from the utility grid that can still keep going during a grid outage, but remain disconnected from the grid so it doesn’t hurt electrical workers. It’s possible to do this; we called it “micro grid AC coupling” but is rare and expensive and mostly unnecessary. It’s a variation of a grid-tied battery backup system.
(This was not my expertise, but) I believe that in the house panel, both solar and grid is connected to the loads. But the solar won’t keep producing power without a grid connection, as above. The battery bank (and appropriately configured inverter) lets you do that by creating a separate system, and also by storing energy from hourly production for use with peak power usage. Smaller PV systems can’t produce enough power to keep a large A/C unit going at peak power draw, which is where the grid or a battery bank would help.
^ Sorry, missed a clarification.
The battery bank as time of use shifting only makes sense if you’re using peak power at peak pricing periods. Sorry for not understanding your question earlier.
If you’re using most of your power at night, then yeah, it makes no sense to use a battery. You can just buy it from the grid for cheap, way less than it costs for a battery.
But if you’re using most of your power in the afternoon, when it’s hottest, then you’re also paying the most for power then. THEN something like a directly-connected heat pump or a battery bank that bought cheap power during the night (or got it from solar) might make sense. PROBABLY not, but the Powerwall 2 is a LOT cheaper per kWh than other battery banks, so it might be worth it to at least do the math and see…
I also want to apologize for causing some confusion here. Pork Rind brought up an important point that shouldn’t be missed while we discuss technicalities:
A battery bank, even a small one, probably isn’t worth it. The vast majority of households will see a better payback just by adding more panels.
A small battery bank might be financially worthwhile in certain situations, but I think those are rather rare right now because PV is so much cheaper. In general it’s probably safer to assume, as Pork pointed out, that more PV (a bigger system) is a better deal, even with time-of-use metering.
I apologize for the confusion!
Ah, that makes sense. I got in on the old net metering system in time to be grandfathered in for the next 20 years (well, 18 now) which was key factor in my decision to buy when I did. I haven’t followed the news enough to realize they hit the benchmark that triggered the renegotiation. 'Cause I love getting that check from SCE every year.
And lemme rethink my position on drawing from the panels vs. from the grid. I think you and I are saying the same thing in different ways. Certainly my system requires AC from the grid to be present to power the inverters for the safety reasons you mention. There was an expensive option to buy an automatic switching device that would allow me to stand alone during an outage (during the daytime only) but they said literally no one every bought that unless they were building a comprehensive off-grid setup out in the boonies or somewhere where power wasn’t reliable.
I think the core of my question about the solar array not immediately powering the house during my net production hours comes from the fact that the SCE meter is running backward all that time, suggesting that I’m not actually pulling anything from the grid (other than the signal indicating presence of the grid that the inverters need to light) and must be running on my produced power. This may be a limitation of my understanding of electricity vis a vis the water hose metaphor.
I missed the second part of your questions. Quick math tells me the 20 265W panels I have covers about 360 square feet.
Yeah, exactly. While it’s possible, it’s just rare and more expensive. My understanding of it was that even an auto transfer switch required a battery bank, but there could be a system like that I’m not aware of that can directly move power from PV to appliances without an intermediary battery bank… if you find one, please do let me know so I can learn about it.
On the electron side, I’m not sure either. Maybe some of the charge is actually moving from PV to appliance before it goes out to the grid? They’re all connected together in the main breaker panel, I think <– Not a physicist
But from the payback side, that differentiation is important because now the timing of power use matters too, it’s not just power in vs power out. The meter doesn’t just “spin backward” but actually tracks consumption vs generation on (I think) 15 minute intervals.
New advice for TOU customers is that panels shouldn’t be oriented for maximum annual production anymore, but maximum annual payback (production modified by hourly pricing). This means that solar noon is not always the prime target for generation anymore. It also means usage can be disentangled from production, opening up the discussion for cooling before peak hours and using insulation to keep it cool, or using a battery to time-shift demands, or using a smart grid to automate some portion of the above… shit’s gonna get real complicated, real quick!
vivalostwages
It looks like SCE doesn’t move to Net Metering 2.0 until this July 1! If so, you might want to really hurry and talk to some vendors/installers in the next day or two to try to get in on this program before they switch to the less-favorable agreement like the other utilities have done. Hurry!
https://www.sce.com/wps/portal/home/residential/generating-your-own-power/net-energy-metering/
Oh wow, yes. If you can grab the current net metering agreement, do it.
Yeah, do it!
Google will help you get set up:
Type in your address and it’ll give you vendors and financing offers to choose from.
If you want the DIY route, PM me. But hurry the heck up.
I don’t see how you run A/C. A ton is 3500 Watts. I believe that my central A/C is 3 1/2 tons.
Your cells produce 5300 W, and there is loss in inverting DC to AC.
The AC is not running at peak demand 24/7. His panels can produce sufficient power over the course of a year, presumably.