Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Roric]

What did the system cost? I think self installed is the only way to make it feasible.

We got 3 or 4 estimates to install, all were over $30,000.
This was just for my information, as I was an electrician
before retirement.
The self-install cost wereabout $11,000 for the panels,
inverter and optimizers. (I bought these from wholesale solar,
now unbbound solar) This was a 'complete' kit.
In addition, there were many permit fees,electrical equipment
needed to make this happen and equipment rental: (trencher).
Also the cost was a bit more for US solar panels that I chose
to use. Mission solar.
All costs totalled about $14,000. This was reduced by the energy
tax credit of $4200. Net about $9800.
The work was a breeze(a few weeks) but the red tape was a female dog.
It was worth it for us though.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

We got 3 or 4 estimates to install, all were over $30,000.
This was just for my information, as I was an electrician
before retirement.
The self-install cost wereabout $11,000 for the panels,
inverter and optimizers. (I bought these from wholesale solar,
now unbbound solar) This was a 'complete' kit.
In addition, there were many permit fees,electrical equipment
needed to make this happen and equipment rental: (trencher).
Also the cost was a bit more for US solar panels that I chose
to use. Mission solar.
All costs totalled about $14,000. This was reduced by the energy
tax credit of $4200. Net about $9800.
The work was a breeze(a few weeks) but the red tape was a female dog.
It was worth it for us though.

Thanks, I’ve gotten prices from wholesale solar several years ago. At the time I was looking at microinverters, but now think I’d go with regular large inverter, to someday add some batteries for non grid tie option.

However, the price still comes to more than what I’ve paid for electric in the last 20 years, so ROI just isn’t there.

Red tape for install is the other drawback.

I did all my own electrical work building my house, red tape was a pita 24 yrs ago, hate to see what it’s like now.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

The Vancouver Area does not have the refinery capacity to meet it’s needs.

Does Vancouver get its gas and diesel from Anacortes?

 

[Roric]

Thanks, I’ve gotten prices from wholesale solar several years ago. At the time I was looking at microinverters, but now think I’d go with regular large inverter, to someday add some batteries for non grid tie option.

However, the price still comes to more than what I’ve paid for electric in the last 20 years, so ROI just isn’t there.

Red tape for install is the other drawback.

I did all my own electrical work building my house, red tape was a pita 24 yrs ago, hate to see what it’s like now.

If I can put in 2 cents here:
I calculated our previous years usage when I was considering
installing solar.
This was $2,025 for that year. After rebate out of pocket cost
was $9,800. About a 4.8 year payback. This does not count
the 'rewards' check we get every year, about $650.
(This is for the REC credits the utility gets for our solar array.)
This amount more than covers the small bills we get during the year.
So the payback may be figured as shorter.
This means a bit smaller cash flow each month, which is nice.
The Department of War and Finance finds a place for this money to go.

Everything electrical I get is more efficient now and this will help.
Next year we will get a split unit AC for the upstairs.

As far as the red tape: State and city requirements vary widely.
I was familiar with these from my career so it wasn't much to overcome.
The real bear was the utility. If I was going to do it again I would
have taken advantage of the 'Permting Help' that was offered by
wholesale solar. Presumably their expertise in dealing with utilies
and their letterhead and engineers could have fought this fight for me.
They charge a fee for this but I'm sure it would have saved me time
and antacids.
Solar goods prices are about as low as I think they will get for a while.

Your milage may vary and only you can decide if this is the way to go.
Best to you.

 

[Roric]

And Batteries will at least double the cost. You could buy alot of generator for that kind of money.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Seems to be a bit thick with irony.

Without China goods I think Walmart would have to lock its doors.

Well BYD and Tesla have some things in common yet BYD is not the marketing Force that Tesla is.

In the USA Walmart has been talking about becoming car dealerships for at least 10 to 15 years.

 

[cqaigy2]

Turning Buildings into Batteries? Concrete Battery

 

[Roric]

Thanks, I’ve gotten prices from wholesale solar several years ago. At the time I was looking at microinverters, but now think I’d go with regular large inverter, to someday add some batteries for non grid tie option.

However, the price still comes to more than what I’ve paid for electric in the last 20 years, so ROI just isn’t there.

Red tape for install is the other drawback.

I did all my own electrical work building my house, red tape was a pita 24 yrs ago, hate to see what it’s like now.

Before installing a standby battery bank, I would wait a bit and
see if V2G takes root here. This is Vehicle To Grid and it is
being done in other countries (such as Japan). This uses the
electrical vehicle battery for power to a home during outages, power
use during high demand times ('brown-outs')
You have seen hints of this if you've seen the commercials for
the electric F150 lightning. The truck plugs into the house for
power during an outage. Inverter power.
The advantages of using an EV for this are many.
However, we are waiting for the USA (mostly it's utilities) to
move on this. Lets hope they can move on it.

Of course I'm still waiting for my flying car that Popular Science
promised me long ago.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

This DIY guy has done a lot of work on solar options and cost.

Ground mounted racks will work for our location and I'm going with this guy's idea and I'm going to have some the bank South facing and some of them west facing and may actually do a bank eastward facing depending on how the Sun and my trees get along.

 

[ning]

This DIY guy has done a lot of work on solar options and cost.

Ground mounted racks will work for our location and I'm going with this guy's idea and I'm going to have some the bank South facing and some of them west facing and may actually do a bank eastward facing depending on how the Sun and my trees get along.

irection:
For direction, I'd advise consulting a solar calculator.

If you have no time-of-use rate change (in California TOU makes afternoon cost - and pay back - more, and later afternoon even more), having all of the panels pointed directly south is likely to give much better average power than having some pointed in different directions. If you have TOU that tilts costs towards the afternoon, pointing the array somewhat west (like 200 instead of 180) will lose a little overall power but it'll generate more when the power costs and pays more.

If you were trying to be off-grid -- or if your power provider doesn't do net metering -- and you have a lot of morning electric load, having a chunk pointed southeast would probably be good to handle the morning load, but I'd be surprised if you have enough morning load to need more than a fraction of your total array (assuming the array is sized for a decent amount of the maximum house load).

Those panels that are pointed more east will have little generation in the later afternoon, which is when load tends to be peaking.

:Ground vs Roof mount:
I used a ground mount because the ridge of the roof on my house is N-S running, and there's a big tree shading much of the roof on the west side... and the roof was just barely enough for how much wattage I wanted today, and I wanted to set things up to be able to add more "later" without too much effort if I want later. Also, the roof is old, but doesn't need replacing yet. I would've needed to do the roof before putting solar up.

Where I live, we've got an interesting code, and any construction requires a setback of 100' from water. I have an irrigation canal as the border on the long side of my property, and a pond almost in the middle; this left very little legal room (without getting an exemption, if possible) to place the ground mount. Yeah, I think it's a stupid code; I can till fertilize run cattle whatever right next to that canal, but I can't put a completely water-neutral feature like a solar array within 100' of it..

It just so happened though that that setback put the array within 50' of the best spot for sun on my property... but it still required a 500' trench back to the house area. That distance definitely added a chunk of change to the project, and overall the installation was much more pricey than a roof mount (assuming a good roof not included in that cost to be fair), but I felt that the benefits of ground mount...

• "Ideal" orientation vs determined by the roof direction
• "Ideal" elevation vs determined by the slope of the roof
• All portions of the ground mount have great sun much longer than any spot on the roof (hill to our west shades mid-evening can't be helped, but the ground mount is farther east so even that affects it less)
• Easy access for cleaning if necessary
• No possibility of roof compromise via attachment brackets
• Higher efficiency due to better air circulation
• I put in 10kW and all of the bids I'd gotten 2 years ago could only get up to 8kW on the house because of shading issues, though higher wattage panels now probably would close this gap - but at significant cost - I got a highly rated panel that's not cutting-edge for nice prices)
• Plenty of space for another 5kW right next to where my ground mount is - with capacity already on the combiner, 4/0 cable, and main power switch; all I'd have to do is dig a short trench from the new mount to the current combiner, and buy the 5kW panels & edge inverters & mount -- completely impossible with my roof.
• Easy for me to do all the work on the ground vs being on a 2-story roof

... far outweighed the costs.