another hiccup to going solar?

[MAX-24-Dean]

You asked good questions, my friend. I have the same question. My place is on top of a hill and frequently has 4-30 mph winds. It also has 4-6 days of rain or overcast. My solar is "adequate" and I just added another battery. (5 panels and 5 deep cycle batts). I'm looking into swapping my 100 wt panels for 200 wt panels. The vertical wind generators are tempting but, like you, there are many no wind/light wind days where it would be useless. Looking for reader input.....

Does anyone here have a wind turbine or two to supplement solar? I have been looking at smaller vertical axis wind turbines, in addition to solar.
No decision yet.

I have worked on small wind turbine projects installing grid tie services as an electrical contractor, the only long term happy customers of small wind were 10 kw Bergey wind turbine purchasers.

Solar vs wind, after reading this link should be enough to convince propective customers of small wind to stay away from the small wind headache!
The link is one of the best reads I have seen for describing small wind resources and wind requirements for power production.

The Truth About Small Wind Turbines – Solacity

Installing a small wind turbine? Get the information you need for an informed decision: The good and the bad, just the literal truth to help you choose.

www.solacity.com

 

[Mtsoxfan]

I have worked on small wind turbine projects installing grid tie services as an electrical contractor, the only long term happy customers of small wind were 10 kw Bergey wind turbine purchasers.

Solar vs wind, after reading this link should be enough to convince propective customers of small wind to stay away from the small wind headache!
The link is one of the best reads I have seen for describing small wind resources and wind requirements for power production.

The Truth About Small Wind Turbines – Solacity

Installing a small wind turbine? Get the information you need for an informed decision: The good and the bad, just the literal truth to help you choose.

www.solacity.com

Wow, very long read but very enlightening as well. I've thought of wind over solar, being a former very happy solar owner. Solar always won out for me. But this is firm proof I made the right decision. When we moved to VT, looked into solar, but the amount of sun compared to CT was considerably less. So again thought about wind, but the payoff wasn't there. Thanks for the post.

 

[ponytug]

They didn't "make" solar a 20 yr payback.

Solar was already that or more. Til govt forced them to subsidize residential solar . That cost was passed onto all non solar customers. So non solar customers paid a lot more, solar customers were way over compensated.

They just balancing the playing field back to what it ought to be

I think you indirectly raise a good point about how to pay for "the grid", everything beyond our home electrical meters. Traditional power plans have charged low meter fees, and have used large power consumers to foot the majority of the bill for transmission lines, transformers, substations, etc. by charging a bundled $/kWh rate. When homeowners invest in solar, (or wind, or cogen), they do not pay as much toward "the grid" as they used to, and yes, that leaves others paying for it, not paying more for it, just paying the same $/kWh rate.

I think that this is early days of sorting out how to pay for common goods, like transmission lines, especially interstate transmission lines, and roads in ways that we all agree are fair. It is changing, and like many changes, I expect the new change not to be on target, and need fixing with another future change. There is I think always going to be some group that feels that another way of paying for common goods is better. I would argue that things like schools, roads, interstates, bridges, and community power are good things, and worth paying for. I don't think there is a "one-size-fits-all" solution, but I do recognize the need for some other price mechanism for things like power and roads.

I can't speak for your locality, but herein California, solar has had a 5-7 year payback for many sites, due to a combination of high utility power costs, some amount of credit for excess solar production, and credit for solar production annually.

When the latter two are removed, as was recently done in California, then the payback period (not even return on investment), goes out to long periods of time, like twenty years.

Having run many solar cost / benefit analysis, I know that whether there is a reasonable investment can be a very local decision, usually coming down to what is the local solar installation market like (costly, or not), what are the local utility costs for power, and price schemes for excess power.

All the best,

Peter

 

[hube2]

... some amount of credit for excess solar production, and credit for solar production annually.

When the latter two are removed, as was recently done in California, then the payback period (not even return on investment), goes out to long periods of time, like twenty years.
...

Excess production was never planned for my installation and I'm not sure what credit for annual production is. In NY net metering is over a year. The excess I create in the high production months gives me KW credits that I use up during the low production months. I have only once ended up with a credit on my annual payout date.

My installation was planned to provide my average electric use for a year. The company that put my system in looked at my usage over the previous 5 years to use as an average and planned the system to create 99% of that number.

My actual usage has gone up since then because I installed heat pumps, but that's another story.

It is generally a bad idea to plan on producing more power than you use because you only get wholesale or less rates for excess produced for the year. I'm better off producing 95% of my annual usage than I would be if I produced 105%. If you put in a system that produces more than you need it will cost you more to start and that will lengthen the payback time exponentially because the extra power is only giving you a tiny percentage of the value of the power you create under your usage.

 

[ultrarunner]

One of the utility engineers said if everyone with solar turned it off in the heat of a summer day the grid would be toast.

Sometimes the contribution made by solar is too easily dismissed.

 

[orezok]

The advantage my solar has for SCE is that all my production stays local. No cost for the utility to build additional production facilities or expensive long distance transmission costs.

28% of CA electric is from solar. If solar was eliminated how much do you think electric cost would go up for everyone for production and distribution?

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I have worked on small wind turbine projects installing grid tie services as an electrical contractor, the only long term happy customers of small wind were 10 kw Bergey wind turbine purchasers.

Solar vs wind, after reading this link should be enough to convince propective customers of small wind to stay away from the small wind headache!
The link is one of the best reads I have seen for describing small wind resources and wind requirements for power production.

The Truth About Small Wind Turbines – Solacity

Installing a small wind turbine? Get the information you need for an informed decision: The good and the bad, just the literal truth to help you choose.

www.solacity.com

I had a friend who bought a bunch of 30 kw wind turbines used. He had to refurbish the blades, which took a lot of labor and a little fiberglass, which is why they were so cheap. I think he paid $2000 each for the turbines, and towers. The inverters were not suitable for residential use and would not meet power company standards, so they were extra. I think he sold about a dozen of them for $20k apiece installed. He said he about broke even, 20 years ago.

As for their wind map, over on the NW coast the problem is as often too much wind as too little. Once you get past 40 mph, the important thing is to keep them vertical. Even feathering props, you better have a really stout tower. The coast here gets 80 mph winds 3-4 times a winter. Nobody but fishermen notice because the only place below 100' is the beach, so storm surge is not a problem. There are commercial wind sites all over both coasts.

I think electricity has become an obsession for both solar and wind. If you want cheap, useful solar, use it to heat water. Wind has been used to pump water for over a century, and I have sometimes contemplated hooking a heat pump to a windmill to condition a water tank for heating and cooling. I didn't contemplate too hard because my location has the lowest average wind speed of anywhere in North America.

 

[CoolTech]

It is generally a bad idea to plan on producing more power than you use because you only get wholesale or less rates for excess produced for the year. I'm better off producing 95% of my annual usage than I would be if I produced 105%. If you put in a system that produces more than you need it will cost you more to start and that will lengthen the payback time exponentially because the extra power is only giving you a tiny percentage of the value of the power you create under your usage.

Generally I would agree with you but I am yet another SoCal (SCE) customer and having done the math, I chose to significantly "over-build" my system. This is a new home that we built and it is where we will spend our retirement. It was important to me to not have a utility bill. The house, by intention, is all electric - we have no natural gas or propane. We do have (2) 5-ton heat-pump AC units, a heat pump 80 gallon hot water heater, electric dryer, oven, etc. The good news is that CA's Title 24 requirements ensure that the house is extremely efficient.

Anyway, we over-built the solar for a couple of reasons. First off, sooner or later, the daily car(s) will be EV and I want to be able to charge for "free". Good thing we planned for this because within the past 6-mos my at-home daughter purchased a Bolt and my wife just got a Lyriq. The second reason for overbuilding is to offset the silly SCE NBC's. NBC = non-bypassable charges. In brief, despite that we are on an NEM 2.0 plan, the utility company still wants to charge us ~.03 to $.035 per kWh for any powered delivered... even though within that TOU period we could over-produce. As such, I have had a bill of ~$40 per month. Compensation for my over-production will offset these charges and bring the bill back to net $0.

 

[hube2]

It was important to me to not have a utility bill.

It would have been nice to have no bill when I retire, but I'll settle for a extremely small yearly bill. Although, I have been contemplating adding more panels. I was not expecting to add heat pumps when I installed the solar 7 years ago.

 

[ning]

Generally I would agree with you but I am yet another SoCal (SCE) customer and having done the math, I chose to significantly "over-build" my system. This is a new home that we built and it is where we will spend our retirement. It was important to me to not have a utility bill. The house, by intention, is all electric - we have no natural gas or propane. We do have (2) 5-ton heat-pump AC units, a heat pump 80 gallon hot water heater, electric dryer, oven, etc. The good news is that CA's Title 24 requirements ensure that the house is extremely efficient.

Anyway, we over-built the solar for a couple of reasons. First off, sooner or later, the daily car(s) will be EV and I want to be able to charge for "free". Good thing we planned for this because within the past 6-mos my at-home daughter purchased a Bolt and my wife just got a Lyriq. The second reason for overbuilding is to offset the silly SCE NBC's. NBC = non-bypassable charges. In brief, despite that we are on an NEM 2.0 plan, the utility company still wants to charge us ~.03 to $.035 per kWh for any powered delivered... even though within that TOU period we could over-produce. As such, I have had a bill of ~$40 per month. Compensation for my over-production will offset these charges and bring the bill back to net $0.

I somewhat over-designed my system, with an eye toward the future: I have 10kW of panels, but the combiner box + main power cable + rest of system can fit another 50% amps, and I've got a spot where I can build another ground mount right by the existing one and add another 5kW panels & microinverters and barely have to change the rest of the system.

The 10kW handles 90-95% of our yearly, and building with extra capacity only cost a couple hundred extra dollars in going up a size in my main power cables (from the ground mount to the main system switch). If we add an EV charger, I'll likely build out further, but for our purposes our current ICE cars are more economical (vs buying an entire EV -- I'm not saying that a operating a new EV would be less economical, we're talking the whole package).