OK, so we just bought a place in what may be the hottest damn place on earth: Monck’s Corner, South Carolina.
Our power company here is a co-op and offers financing for the installation of solar power cells on the property. Given that A) it’s rained once in six weeks and B) there’s no large tree cover nearby it strikes me that that might be a good idea. Here’s the scope from the coops website:
It seems affordable from a dollars and cents perspective. But I simply don’t know enough to ask the right questions. Do you? Or does someone you know? I’d appreciate any advice or guidance.
I’ve never done it, but I’ve researched solar systems before and it seems like a good deal to me. Would they be installing it, or would you install it yourself and then they reimburse you? Unless you’re an electrical engineer it’d be a good idea to hire someone to do all the wiring. Do you have a southern facing rooftop? Do you have a place to store all those marine batteries? You’ll need to store about a dozen car batteries (more or less that size) somewhere, and they’re heavy.
Also, is it windy there? You could also look into installing a windmill for those cloudy windy days too that’ll hook into the same system if you have enough property to do so.
That would be a good reason not to do it. Electricity in my neighborhood from the power company costs about $.13. What is it in yours? More than 20 cents?
May I point out that putting panels on your roof is a silly idea, not for the reason you may think … you need to clean the surface of the cells to make it stay efficient. Are you down with climbing onto your roof several times of the year to clean the surface of the cell panels?
Do yourself a great favor and mount them on the ground. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to do routine maintenance and repairs.
And yes, the interior of SC is the hottest area on the Eastern Seaboard, and possibly the hottest area east of the Mississippi. Having lived in Columbia, SC and Florence, SC, I can attest to that. During the summers, the weather maps that showed the 10° gradations in the day’s high temperatures would often have a circle around the central part of the state.
If you’re north/west of I-85, you get some cooling from being in the foothills, and if you’re close enough to the ocean (which I guess you’re not quite), you get some cooling from that. Otherwise, South Carolina is just one big fucking furnace in July and August. As you know, I’m a pretty outdoorsy guy even during the summer, and DC-area summers never chased me indoors for long. But South Carolina summers sure did.
As far as questions are concerned, having never done this either, I’d ask about durability - IOW, if you take out that 20-year financing, will you have a few years left over at the end where you’ve got solar power, but you’ve already paid it off? Or will you have to buy a whole new rooftop of solar cells after 20 years? And if some of the cells die well before you need to replace the whole thing, what do repair costs look for replacing a smattering of cells here and there over the roof?
And I’d ask about maintenance, to see if their take on it squares with what aruvqan said.
My friend has 6 “Grape Solar” panels with Enphase inverters producing about 8 KW per day here in Virginia. They put out up to 1,100 watts at the peak of the day. I think the payback period is around 8 years, but as soon as the electric rate goes up the payback period will get better.