Solar panels anyone?

[Momgonepostal]

Does anyone here have newer solar panels on their home? We just had a sales guy leave, after a very aggressive pitch. It sounded like it could be a good thing, but I know NO ONE who has done this. There's a cool federal tax credit out there now that would pay back 30 percent, plus another smaller, rebate from the local utility company. Any experiences, good or bad with this?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. I'm lining up estimates now. How bad an idea can it be in Tucson?

[Momgonepostal]

2. I'd be interested to hear more...

...when you get your estimates. Sounds like a GREAT idea, at least in theory, for Tucson. We're in Central CA, so we don't have the heat you do, but still.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. I'll post about it in the Arizona forum as I go through the process.

[hibbing]

3. hey

Hi,
You may want to cross post this in the Frugal and Energy Efficient Living group.

Peace

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. I'm very familiar with solar

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and no

I ain't selling.

Tell us what you are considering,

How many watts you want

How much sunshine you get,

and certainly, how much money do you have in mind to spend for this.

I have friends who live with a 1000W array on periscope type pedestal they rotate manually to grab the sun.

There are other systems that will "chase" the sun with electric motors, but as you may realize, these are more expensive.

So knowing your budget would assist in anyone giving you advice.

I started educating myself on this solar stuff over a decade ago

Pick my brains!

CC

[SeattleVet]

6. We just installed a 6kW system here in Seattle.

about 3 weeks ago, using the Silicon Energy panels and inverter. Today was sunny - our electric meter was running backwards for most of the day. When we look at the monitor display we see a smooth sinewave-like curve that started at about 6:12 AM and went until 7:48 PM, peaking right at 1:00. In the last 24 hours we have used a little over 57kWh (we have some greenhouse heaters that have to run overnight), and generated a little over 40kWh, so we only had to buy 17-18kWh from Seattle City Light.

At the end of the year (end of April, next year) we will be paid $.54/kilowatt for everything we generated over what we used (while we are paying about $.09/kilowatt). (The way it works here is that if all of the panels/inverters are made in the state there was no sales tax - this expired in June. We get paid 54 cents a kilowatt, but there is a lower sliding scale for out-of-state equipment.)

When we ran the numbers we figured that the total payback time for the system was about 6.5-7 years once we figured the 30% federal tax credit and production incentives.

We used the SolarizeWA program (http://www.solarizewa.org), which is going neighborhood by neighborhood around here, so we got a decent (bulk-purchase) type of discount on the panels and inverters. The program has also pre-selected 2 contractors to do exactly the same work for the same price. We had zero high-pressure, and the high-pressure would have definitely raised a red flag for us, since there are so many fly-by-night solar 'experts' trying to cash in.

Do you have a community center or organization that can help with finding a decent contractor, or that can point you to a similar type of community-based program that can help narrow down the selections and filter out the sleazebag contractors?

We had also installed a 40-tube solar hot water system when we had our remodel done - that and is another place where solar actually works pretty well, but it was a lot cheaper to do it while we were building rather than retrofitting.

[ConcernedCanuk]

8. How much does a 6000 Watt system cost?

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My neighbors, with a 1000 Watt system said it was over $20k - mind you,

they put it in almost 20 years ago,

I expect prices per Kw have gone down in that time.

CC

[SeattleVet]

9. Prices have come down a bit.

It was a little over $6/watt, installed, so around $38K for the full system. We get about 12K back as a credit on next years taxes (that can be carried over one more year if we need to) so the total comes out to about 24K before any of the sales tax or production incentives.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. My own mini solar system

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The pic below is 3 15W panels mounted on the base of a discarded office chair.

I can rotate it to get the sun.



use an inverter to convert it to 110 when needed.

have LED 12v lights inside the trailer to conserve battery.

CC