I have a neighbor that went through that and built their home off grid with a windmill, battery back up solar array and propane generator. After 5 years the windmill still doesnt turn because they saved money and put it on a too short tower. We dont get enough sunshine in southern Ontario to keep the batteries fully charged and the propane truck has to refill their tank weekly to keep the lights on and the electronics powered. They ended up hooking up to the grid and spending $$$$$$ going underground on their 1km long driveway because it was cheaper and easier to keep the lights on that way. More reliable too.
Solar Panels on poss. unpermitted structure question
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I have a neighbor that went through that and built their home off grid with a windmill, battery back up solar array and propane generator. After 5 years the windmill still doesnt turn because they saved money and put it on a too short tower. We dont get enough sunshine in southern Ontario to keep the batteries fully charged and the propane truck has to refill their tank weekly to keep the lights on and the electronics powered. They ended up hooking up to the grid and spending $$$$$$ going underground on their 1km long driveway because it was cheaper and easier to keep the lights on that way. More reliable too.
Carl_NH
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We installed 7.2KW 300W LG Panels with Solar Edge Optimizers/Inverter on our south facing garage roof and went live December 2014 for $26K (we bought the panels) and received a 30% tax credit in Feb 2015, and state rebate, brought the total out of pocket cost to $13K so in two months we got back half the investment.
Over 5 years we have generated 36,000 KWH or just over 7000KWH per year and the net metering rules here pay $.22 per KWH what we push back to the grid, and adjust yearly as electricity prices change. We consume/need roughly 9000KWH per year, so the net result is instead of paying $2000/year we are at $600 net cost per year. So in 5 years we have saved $7K, and are on track for less than 10 year ROI.
There are so many local, state, and then electric company rates, rules and regulations means each installation will yield different ROI.
I researched for 6 months, got three bids, and went with the highest bidder (by $1000) since they did all the permitting, power company contacts, and filed all the rebates, and had the best technical responses not sales pitches, and more local installations.
LD1
Epic Contributor
IT sucks that you live in an area with such a high electric cost.
If you lived where I live......about $0.12/kwh you would go from a $1080/year to $240/year. You would only save $840/year on a 13k investment.
What is most impressive in your situation IMO is the fact that you only average 750kwh/month:thumbsup: Are you all electric or do you heat and cook with gas?
Carl_NH
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Heat and hot water with oil boiler 550 gal per year for 3000 sf house and propane stove - electric dryer - 3 mini splits Mitsubishi - two in house for supplemental heat/ac and one in 800sf garage /office for heat/ac.
Main reason I put in solar was to fix costs in retirement in a few years.
Carl_NH
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Biggest current draw and electricity users are the dryer, 1.5 HP well pump then probably fridge - if we irrigate when it’s real dry in summer which I do only if necessary the bill will jump 30-40 month
Oaktree
Super Member
I knew someone who was in the same situation (except I don't think they had a windmill)...off grid with a roof full of solar panels with a backup generator. It was more or less adequate in the summer, but couldn't keep up in cold weather, or if there was a long cloudy spell. They too ended up hooking up to the grid too...as you said, cheaper and more dependable (though expensive to get installed...the house was probably 1/4 mi from the nearest pole). I don't know if they can backfeed the grid...this was a former co-worker I've lost touch with.
I'm sure off grid solar can work in some parts of the country, but northern New England isn't one of them.
NorTracNY
Platinum Member
Sorry, I read the article, but I question all news sources too much and would have to click on too many sources to know how much the author spins. One item that seems lacking is addressing the cost to the taxpayers who don't have panels. As I said before, my >$30K system was mine for just over $5K. Too many people consider that government money, but I consider it tax payer money.
This paragraph stood out to me.
"In a forward-looking analysis of the financial impacts of net-metered energy on utilities and ratepayers, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that while high use of net-metered solar generation may decrease utility shareholders earnings, it will have a 途elatively modest impact on ratepayers. The report examined solar penetration levels that are 都ubstantially higher than [those that] exist today 10 percent compared to today痴 0.2 percent and concluded that 兎ven at penetration levels significantly higher than today, the impacts of customer-sited PV on average retail rates may be relatively modest. The report further said that utilities and regulators 杜ay have sufficient time to address concerns about the rate impacts of PV in a measured and deliberate manner?
The link doesn't work. I wanted to know what the study considered. Are they are ignoring the huge incentives from the taxpayers?
Just think about the aspect of a company which sells a product having to pay their customers full price if the customer decides to make some crappy knockoffs back to them.
Recognizing and combating power quality issues in solar power systems – pv magazine USA
Clark6x20
New member
I have 15,600 wats of ground mounted solar. I installed it 10 years ago. It produces roughly 18 Megawatt hours per year. there has been no loss of production over the 10 year span. I currently pay .015 per kilowatt when you add in all the fees. It is considerably higher in the summer as Consumers Energy charges a premium if you consume over 600 KW per month (summer months only). I heat 7,000 sf with Fujitsu Mini Split air to air heat pumps and have a 450 gallon hot tub, electric stove etc... in lower Michigan. In the summer I produce more than I need every month again cooling about 6500 sf (I heat my garage in the winter its a nice luxury to get into a warm car everyday) the excess generation carries forward into the winter months when the sun fails to shine most days here. I will typically pay $7.00 per month even when I overproduce for connection fees. In the end I pay about $1500.00 a year to consumers for power however I earn $365.00 per megawatt of electricity produced for the REC's that is $6,570 in actual cash received therefore in my mind I am ahead of the game by $5,070 per year and my solar covers all of my heating costs. Here is the rub currently it is my understanding that new systems brought online in Michigan must sell the REC's to Ohio? There the selling price is $5.00 per Megawatt? with this in place the viability for new systems seems less than ideal. My system is certified in Washington and grandfathered in where the REC's bring the highest market price. The only saving grace for the new installations would be the cost has dropped dramatically since I put it in. The bottom line is you need to do a great deal of research in your specific area to determine if solar will work for you and certainly get in touch with a company like Sol Systems and find out what your options are for the REC's before you make any decision.
deezler
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Good questions, and I certainly don't know all the answers myself. But! It's certainly not "crappy knock-off" power, its every bit as good as what comes from the crusty old coal plant. My neighbors all easily absorb the extra daytime power my PV array puts back onto the grid, without a hiccup.
NorTracNY
Platinum Member
It's not every bit as good.
Why rooftop solar is disruptive to utilities -- and the grid
I'm not a subscriber so I can't view the full article...
Diane Cardwell reports in the NYT that many utilities are trying desperately to stem the rise of solar power, either by reducing incentives, adding steep fees or effectively pushing home solar companies out of the market. The economic threat has electric companies on edge. Over all, demand for electricity is softening while home solar is rapidly spreading across the country. There are now about 600,000 installed systems, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. In Hawaii, the current battle began in 2013, when Hawaiian Electric started barring installations of residential solar systems in certain areas. It was an abrupt move — a panicked one, critics say — made after the utility became alarmed by the technical and financial challenges of all those homes suddenly making their own electricity. "Hawaii is a postcard from the future," says Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a policy and advocacy group based in California.
But utilities say that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts. "At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don't keep that balance things go unstable," says Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility's main control room. But the rooftop systems are "essentially invisible to us," says Ching, "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them." The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. "Hawaii's case is not isolated," says Massoud Amin. "When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there's going to be problems."
From someone on another board...
"EE working for a utility here, and I agree with all of this. The utility I work for, and a lot of others, don't even generate any power, we just do transmission and distribution, i.e. "poles and wires". Solar still causes us headaches. Don't get me wrong, I love solar, and I want reduced fossil-fuel usage, but the issue really is more nuanced than the public perception of "the utility just doesn't want us making our own power so they can keep charging us money".
Most people seem to operate under the assumption that power distribution is a network, where it flows in any direction. On the transmission side, yes, this is true. For distribution, it's generally false, except in large cities. More common are radial feeds, where several circuits, also called feeders, come out of the substation, each one typically having multiple branches and serving a certain area. Think of it like an artery system. The main trunk of the feeder has larger size wires that can handle more current, the branches have smaller sizes, etc. It's designed for power flowing from the substation to the customers, and not vice versa. There are a number of issues that arise when this expectation is violated. As a few examples:
If the homeowner at the end of the branch puts in a large solar installation, the wires and distribution equipment may not be sized to handle the power he's producing.
The variability of generation and inability to measure it is definitely an obstacle. Let's say there's an area with 20MW of load, and 15MW is being provided by solar. The solar output is unpredictable, but to the utility, who probably only has real time metering at the substation, it just looks like 5MW of load, so they don't know that when the sun goes down or a storm passes through they're going to see a major load increase.
It's a safety issue. The utility does not, and absolutely never will, assume that a customer has a properly functioning transfer switch that prevents backfeed during outages, which can be hazardous to both linemen working to restore power. There are certainly safety precautions that linemen can take, but it's still a danger.
On the billing side, the utility still needs to maintain equipment to provide whatever class of service the homeowner has. They need to be able to provide, for example, 400 amps, even if the homeowner gets solar and winds up having a bill of $0 from the utility. The O&M costs for such customers wind up being effectively subsidized by people who don't have solar.
I like solar, and I'm not afraid of it putting me out of a job, at least in my lifetime. I think when battery technology is more mature, it could help alleviate a number of issues that currently exist. But the public perception that its conspiracy by big bad utility is just trying to stifle competition is untrue. I'm not going to say that anticompetitiveness could never be the motivation for a utility to fight the proliferation of solar, but from an engineer's perspective, there are real obstacles that exist that many people don't realize or appreciate."