Great! You’re lucky then 
Enjoy the new system!
Yeah, my home in the mountains is passive solar. 10 4x8 south facing windows. The heat will drive you out of here, gotta open the doors. Helps in deep winter too, the sun reflects off of the snow and you get a double whammy.
I’m glad that I can continue to depend on Sol.
We have the permit process that we have to go through, but I can’t imagine anyone will complain.
I’m sure this is good advice. However, our guys specifically warned me that our production would probably be disappointing, given our high usage and challenges with sunlight on our lot. They basically said “don’t expect the savings to pay you back the initial cost over 10 years.” He was right. We’re getting good, but not great results. April electric bill about half of previous year. May will probably be even better. In Winter the savings were about 20% per month.
Yeah. Nothing is perfect, and everything is overrated.
Once we sell our house in the mountains, we should have plenty to pay off the new house and the new solar system.
I sit in anticipation of cap gains though on sale of old house. I will not do anything, until I pay the IRS.
What I like is the idea that energy costs will/should be more predictable. We will be retired. That and of course doing better for the planet.
Our sunlight is good, though about 8 panels are facing west instead of south. I saw the drawings, and shade markings.
I’m a very curious person. In both senses of the word.
Nobody has appeared to address this question so it is worth just discussing some fundamentals for clarity. The solar panels and generator don’t ‘create’ electrons; they just provide ‘current’, i.e. an impetus for the electrons in a conductor to oscillate back and forth within the metallic lattice. Your connection to the electrical grid just measures the flow of current and doesn’t have any way to prevent it from reversing in direction if you are producing net power rather than consuming it. (Some smart meters will actually measure the ‘direction’ and other information for the purpose of controlling levels and how much you can provide to the grid.)
There is a kind of colloquially misunderstanding about electrical power that comes from terminology about ‘sending’ or ‘moving’ electrical power; in reality, the entire grid is energized and that energy in it will ‘flow’ virtually to wherever there is a potential difference, i.e. when you close a circuit and there is a device that can do some kind of mechanical or thermal work. Power (electrical or otherwise), by definition, can’t be stored or localized in some particular part of the system; it is a property of the system related to differences in potential energy and the ability of that energy to perform work such as illuminating a room, heating an oven, or pumping water uphill.
If you think of the analogy of your municipal water system, the energy is provided by a water tower or pumps that both keep the system at some net pressure and are able to supply the necessary volume of water to replace what leaves the faucet, but if you had a pump that generated more pressure than the system you would be able to force water into that system. The water is just the medium of conveyance of that energy, and you could technically generate power by letting the water flow through a turbine and then supplying it directly back into a reservoir that is pressurized by the system (if you could create a way to make the water system flow backwards briefly). In the case of electricity (and especially alternating current) the medium is the electrons in the copper wires and they are instantly ‘recycled’ for indefinite use.
I’ve got a sweet deal for you on some property on the jeweled beachfront of a large desert moon of a superjovian planet in the ε Carinae system. It is going to become the retirement mecca of this quadrant! Get in now while the prices are cheap!
Stranger
Thank you! Very helpful
Thanks, @Stranger_On_A_Train. I know it’s a loop. While I’ve always wanted solar, it was my wife that pulled the trigger.
We bought the house right at two months ago. Neither one of us are there full time, cause we are trying to move out of our old house. It’s a 3 hour one way drive, so, takes the weekend to do.
Just waking up and thinking now how did I miss the development of FTL that would allow me to choose a new “home solar system”
I think I can explain how you missed that.
That’s my memory, and usually ends in the statements… When, why and how? And the final one… What honey? OK, I’ll get to it tomorrow.
Hmm, just as a minor aside… probably not a huge risk, but depending on your state, if your goal is to “lock in” energy prices for the next couple decades, you might want to make sure the system will let you add batteries later on if you so choose, and either operate in a completely off-grid manner and/or handle time-of-use arbitrage for you.
I don’t know where you live, but out in the West at least (where solar has seen huge uptakes in the last decade), the grid-tied payback/buyback schemes are getting worse all the time. They started out extremely generous and good for the homeowner, but over time the solar credits became less and less valuable to the point of being worthless sometimes. At the same time, billing became much more complicated with time-of-use schedules that buy and sell electricity at different rates depending on the time of day and market demand.
All that is to say: Unless your rates are locked in by contract and/or regulation for the time period you’re concerned about, future changes to solar pricing may negatively impact grid-tied users. Utilities will often grandfather existing plans, but that might not be forever, especially if state or federal regulations become less favorable (which they might well be, if the Republicans keep winning). You’re still at the mercy of future tariff hikes and net-metering changes (and not to mention inflation, which can gradually raise the fixed fees on your bill). All in all it’s a small but non-zero risk.
If you want to guarantee pricing stability for your household, going off-grid (or at least having the option to, should you need to) would give you more stability.
Grid-tied solar is more like an occasional discount on your utility bill, sometimes hefty, sometimes not. I would definitely not expect it to go down to zero or anywhere close to it, year over year, unless you were grandfathered into the rules of 15-20 years ago.
For you and the solar marketers, household PV is thought of as energy independence.
But for the utilities, home solar is thought of as a giant pain in the ass that they are constantly fighting and very very reluctant to pay for. If it was up to them, they’d probably get rid of it altogether.
It’s an adversarial relationship mediated by favorable regulations passed decades ago, and you should not assume that the utility is on your side or will play fair for the next few decades.
9 megawatt hours isn’t a power at all. It’s an energy. Watts (and their multiples like kilowatts and megawatts) are a unit of power. Watt-hours are a unit of energy. If your subdivision uses 9 megawatts (a bit on the high side for a subdivision, but on the edge of plausible), then 9 megawatt hours would be enough energy to power the subdivision… for one hour, and then the energy would run out. On the other hand, a 9 megawatt power source, like a small generating station, would continue running the subdivision indefinitely, as long as its fuel or sun or wind or whatever keeps coming in at the scheduled rate.
It’s not doing both at once. If you’re producing more than you need, it’s flowing out. If you’re producing less, it’s flowing in. It’s like a body of water: If one part is (for some reason) lower than another, water will flow to even it out. And even if water normally flows one way, sometimes it can flow the other: This is seen at some river mouths, where the river temporarily reverses at high tide.
Thank you. I’m 64 years old. I learned long ago that nothing is written in stone, and you will likely get screwed one way or another.
BUT if you can take advantage of a thing that is not totally screwing you over yet, go for it.
I’ll still turn off lights that we leave on for no reason. But the stats I’m seeing, is that our bill should go down to nearly zero. I could be very wrong.
But I’m doing the correct thing (sucks that you can’t say ‘right’ thing anymore).
I donno. It’s just the two of us. Yes, plenty of other of stuff, but, I think should bring the price way down.
Yes, I’m a bit o a pessimist. But I expect the best, and plan for the worst.
Well then, may your days be partly sunny, not partly cloudy!
That’s why we’re here. Please post all of the intricate details that cause people at parties to excuse themselves to refresh their drinks.
On the current Ewan McGregor motorcycle travelog Long Way Home they visit a solar farm above the arctic circle. They have panels on both sides of the stands to collect the light that reflects off the snow.
Nearby in the same state, I do often see solar setups with two meters. I do not know how it is wired.
Just a Word To The Wise…I have heard reports that some public utilities (California?) are starting to object to the net metering concept, thinking that their monopoly is being threatened by alternative sources. They may eliminate this.
It’s not a new thing; they’ve been fighting it for decades. It is really hard for utilities to handle home solar at scale, especially in sunny, large population states like California, due to the duck curve and other issues. California has way too much solar for its ancient grid (and PG&E’s shitty infrastructure) to reliably handle, so it’s a constant struggle between homeowners who want to get paid maximum dollar for production, utilities who already have too much solar and don’t want anymore at all, and the state officials caught in between them trying to work out more and more complicated compromises.
The situation is only going to get worse, too, and there’s not an easy solution to it. It’s part of the reason the utilities and governments keep trying to push for smart meters, smart grids, smarter appliances, time of use, smart EV chargers, etc. (so that algorithms can handle all the complex supply and demand, buffered by both utility-scale batteries and household-level draws and generators and batteries)… but it’s not easy. There’s not much public awareness of the issue and it’s just not a very sexy topic, not to mention all the conspiracy theories about the government wanting to control when you can run your A/C or dryer (which isn’t really a conspiracy theory because… well… that’s part of the lifestyle changes we’ll have to make to make this stuff work at scale). The solar companies don’t particularly want to discuss it either, because it makes the future look uncertain and confusing.
People, including myself, really like the hydraulic analogy, but it has a few issues with it, so let me give you an alternate analogy.
Imagine you have a fat mechanical axle coming into your house. It’s always rotating. When you aren’t using it, it just slowly turns. It doesn’t consume or supply any power in this state, except for the tiny amount lost to friction in the bearings.
Most people draw power from the axle when they use it. They hook up some gear system and the axle turns the thing they want to power, like their washing machine or blender. They might need to speed things up or down with gears, but regardless, all of these devices work to apply drag to the axle. The power company measures this drag and charges you for it.
Of course you can’t actually slow down the axle by a meaningful amount, since it’s supplied by a huge source shared by everyone. Nevertheless, your appliances do slow it by a tiny amount, which can be measured.
Say the power company now wants to adopt net metering, so that people can put power into the system. You get some horses, set up a gearing system, and now put power into the axle. Of course the horses could be obstinate and let the axle drag them around, consuming power. But when things are working right, they push power into the system, speeding up the axle by some tiny amount. Again, the power company can measure that instead of being a drag, your house is now acting as a generator.
Even though the axle is still turning in the same direction, the power has now reversed direction, since you’re now working to speed it up rather than slow it down. Or, in the neutral case, there’s no power flow at all–your horses are supplying just enough to power your local appliances, with no net draw or supply.
Real-world electricity is AC, while the analogy above is DC. But it doesn’t change much. It just means an analogous AC axle is oscillating back and forth rather than turning in just one direction. If you want to push power back out the axle, you have to time your pushes to be in line with the oscillation, but that’s easy to do.
Yup. The salesman told us that. I haven’t seen many solar set ups in that area. But, we are getting $500 off the system because they have a lot of crews in the area putting up systems, so we are probably ok.
Anyway, we do need permits, permission from the power company, and I guess our metro district. The panels will not be visible from the street (on back of the house) and we have about 200 feet of open space behind us.
You asked for it. My wife will get the worst of it though. “Honey, we are making over 9kw!!!”