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Does anyone have solar panels?

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mellowyellowgirl

mellowyellowgirl

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I'm obsessed!!!! We just got solar panels plus a battery and have been generating electricity like crazy. We fully powered ourselves yesterday and the day before and I'm obsessed with my Powerwall app.

Haha hubby rushed home from work yesterday and the first thing we did was have a cup of tea and discussed our energy generation and consumption :lol:

Today we disconnected ourselves from the grid to check that if there's a zombie apocalypse we can still limp along on our battery until the zombies kill us!

Just wondering if there are any energy nerds on here?
 
Not yet but it's something we hope to get eventually! My aunt and uncle did get some just a little bit ago. I'm not sure if theirs are working just yet. Last I checked they still needed an inspection. But we are so excited for them!!
 
This is a topic I know little about, but want to know more. Thanks for posting.
 
Congrats -- that is super-cool!

We looked into this. For our climate and energy pricing and roof orientation, our "break-even" point was like 30 years. We check every few years but it has never come close to being cost-effective.

EDIT: But it apparently is for a few of our neighbors
 
Last edited:
Ooh just thought I'd include a few more stats.

So based on our system, we should offset all the carbon used to make the panels and the battery in 3-4 years.

The financial side is a bit trickier as it depends on how much you use normally and energy prices. We pretty much spent our lives in the cold and dark in winter (the doggo is the only person allowed a heater) or sweltering in summer (we only turned on aircon if the doggo needed it) so this is letting us consume energy in a more "normal" manner. We should break even in 8 years and if the battery lasts 10-12 years we will hit the green energy promise land!

We generated 26.9kwh of electricity today!!!!! And counting!!!! And it's a half cloudy day!!!! Am currently selling to the grid as per the picture because the battery is full.

The battery is 13kwh and we will use it tonight when the sun sets. We usually have 30% of it left by the morning.

It's super weird retraining everyone to let them know they can have heaters and leave lights on!!!

Screenshot_20230808-144906.png
 
Yes. Still ambivalent verging on regret. We average about 1/3 our total usage despite a sizeable array.
 
mellowyellowgirl said:
Bummer, is it cloudy where you are?

The nerd in me wants to beg you for your stats but I will calm down :lol-2:
Click to expand...

It is definitely cloudy :lol:.

We live in the mountains of western Washington state. Definite clouds and our trees need trimmed down to size a bit. We have slightly over a 10kW system on the roof using the Panasonic panels with micro inverters. No batteries at this time as it would have doubled the already high price of the system and just been too big in the garage. Electric company does a net billing of sorts so it isn't wasted exactly, but not a help when the power goes out.

DH and I were talking earlier today that there may be something either wrong or badly inefficient and not suited to the overcast area we live in. A woman a couple of miles down the road has a system half the size and produces enough for her entire house plus an electric car. I mean, we are almost exclusively electric here. No natural gas to the house. No good place to install a big propane tank. We do have a heat pump and new appliances plus use a wood stove to supplement heat on the cold days.

I just had hoped to be more wowed by something that cost as much as that beautiful pair of diamond and sapphire earrings I drooled over :oops2:
 
We've had solar panels since 2009. They do make a difference in the electricity bill. For a few years we were earning income from it as the amount we were feeding back into the grid was more than our usage.
No battery though.
 
llamacat said:
We've had solar panels since 2009. They do make a difference in the electricity bill. For a few years we were earning income from it as the amount we were feeding back into the grid was more than our usage.
No battery though.
Click to expand...

Do you have the same panels??? I'm really hoping they'll last for a long time!!!
 
Yes we have solar, we’ve just upgraded them after 7 years and added more as they are so good!
We are working towards having a 9 star energy rating home.
Good for the environment!
 
mellowyellowgirl said:
I'm obsessed!!!! We just got solar panels plus a battery and have been generating electricity like crazy. We fully powered ourselves yesterday and the day before and I'm obsessed with my Powerwall app.

Haha hubby rushed home from work yesterday and the first thing we did was have a cup of tea and discussed our energy generation and consumption :lol:

Today we disconnected ourselves from the grid to check that if there's a zombie apocalypse we can still limp along on our battery until the zombies kill us!

Just wondering if there are any energy nerds on here?
Click to expand...

thats so cool
my workmate's hubbie brought a hot tub and a solar panel, its rigged up so if the power goes off the freezer, fridge and his work computer stays on - he works from home
 
mellowyellowgirl said:
Do you have the same panels??? I'm really hoping they'll last for a long time!!!
Click to expand...

We moved out of that house that we put panels on in 2009 and sold it last year and everything was working still. Yes they were the same panels. No maintenance issues ever in the time we owned it. It was a 1.5kw system as the house was small.

Our current house also has solar panels, newer ones from 2017 and they are more efficient than the ones on the old house. Our current house is bigger and now with kids, we also use more electricity. The current system is 3kw I think.
 
I’m in the US and my state in particular has really been going through it over solar energy since 2017 or so. The big power companies are determined not to let customers see a return on their solar panel investment, or at least new customers. We have fields full of solar panels but when it comes to individuals installing them on private property, there is no way to predict year to year what they’ll be subsidized so therefore they won’t be able to determine whether it’s a positive investment or not.

I got into all of this not because I had solar panels but because back in 2017 I was contracted with a company that did both plumbing and solar panel installation. I was writing blogs for both their websites so had to do some research on the bill that was introduced and then passed into law later, and the basic spin of the net metering blog was to persuade customers to get their solar panels purchased and installed before the law limiting net metering went into effect.

energynews.us

Indiana solar net metering rules go from bad to worse | Energy News Network

Changes being ushered in by utilities go beyond what the industry had been bracing for in the wake of a 2017 law that gutted net metering in the state.
energynews.us energynews.us

Like @TooPatient, people who weren’t grandfathered in may not see a ROI and this is dissuading potential customers from installing solar panels. If there’s no incentive, what’s the point in spending the money? You may or may not save on your energy bill. Someone may or may not consider your panels a value add when they look at buying your home. It’s all a shit show now.
 
monarch64 said:
I’m in the US and my state in particular has really been going through it over solar energy since 2017 or so. The big power companies are determined not to let customers see a return on their solar panel investment, or at least new customers. We have fields full of solar panels but when it comes to individuals installing them on private property, there is no way to predict year to year what they’ll be subsidized so therefore they won’t be able to determine whether it’s a positive investment or not.

I got into all of this not because I had solar panels but because back in 2017 I was contracted with a company that did both plumbing and solar panel installation. I was writing blogs for both their websites so had to do some research on the bill that was introduced and then passed into law later, and the basic spin of the net metering blog was to persuade customers to get their solar panels purchased and installed before the law limiting net metering went into effect.

energynews.us

Indiana solar net metering rules go from bad to worse | Energy News Network

Changes being ushered in by utilities go beyond what the industry had been bracing for in the wake of a 2017 law that gutted net metering in the state.
energynews.us energynews.us

Like @TooPatient, people who weren’t grandfathered in may not see a ROI and this is dissuading potential customers from installing solar panels. If there’s no incentive, what’s the point in spending the money? You may or may not save on your energy bill. Someone may or may not consider your panels a value add when they look at buying your home. It’s all a shit show now.
Click to expand...

Exactly. We are lucky that our electric company credits our account for any amount produced. That only covers up to the amount we use though so anything we make in excess of what we use is just gifted to them. (A bit more complicated as there is some sort of roll over and things, but that is the gist.) We only ever produce enough to offset about 1/3 of the usage so that part doesn't matter too much to.us but I know it upset those who thought they could get a bigger system for when they get an electric car or whatever in the future. We would need about $75,000 more (assuming same rate as previous batch) just to make enough on average for our normal use. That is without even getting into batteries to cover in case of power outage....
 
We’ve had solar for about a year now, got a Tesla battery. In the beginning DH was checking the app all the time and boring me to death with how much power we were generating, how much we were selling back to the grid etc. He doesn’t do it as much now, because our power usage has gone up since we got the pool. We still generate a fair amount of our usage, but when it’s over 100 degrees everyday for several months, the a/c is on a LOT.
 
We've had solar for a couple of years and with soaring energy prices it has definitely made a difference, we have a 6.5kW system and in the summer we generate up to 70kwH per day. Try to do all our washing and energy usage in daylight hours to use the solar and anything we don't use is sent to the grid where we get credited on our bill.

One thing I learnt is the inverter and it's efficiency is very important, my neighbours have the same size system setup on the same side of their roof and I get a full kWH more of generation than they do thanks to my inverter being a lot more efficient.
 
TooPatient said:
Exactly. We are lucky that our electric company credits our account for any amount produced. That only covers up to the amount we use though so anything we make in excess of what we use is just gifted to them. (A bit more complicated as there is some sort of roll over and things, but that is the gist.) We only ever produce enough to offset about 1/3 of the usage so that part doesn't matter too much to.us but I know it upset those who thought they could get a bigger system for when they get an electric car or whatever in the future. We would need about $75,000 more (assuming same rate as previous batch) just to make enough on average for our normal use. That is without even getting into batteries to cover in case of power outage....
Click to expand...

gee
i thought this was a given that surplus would go to the grid and would be credited
but im not in the US
 
Daisys and Diamonds said:
gee
i thought this was a given that surplus would go to the grid and would be credited
but im not in the US
Click to expand...

Daisy some places in Australia will pay you up to a certain amount but if you sell too much energy back to the grid, they will give you negative rates and actually charge you for feeding them too much electricity!!!!! So must check the fine print.

Lol I made a grand total of 95c yesterday selling 12.5 kwh to the grid!

But it is very feel good to know that we have generated all of our own electricity in the last few days.
 
LilAlex said:
Congrats -- that is super-cool!

We looked into this. For our climate and energy pricing and roof orientation, our "break-even" point was like 30 years. We check every few years but it has never come close to being cost-effective.

EDIT: But it apparently is for a few of our neighbors
Click to expand...

We number crunched , and that was our take also. And if you sell your house you can’t take them with you. Lol.
 
Austina said:
We get credited for any electricity going back to the grid, but the electric company pays us less per unit than they charge us @Daisys and Diamonds
Click to expand...

Are you in TX by chance? Their energy situation is SO weird. Having all different power companies to pick from versus it being one entity.
 
Yes we are @Mreader. We didn’t get a choice of provider in our area.
 
We are having them fitted to our new garage block a week on Monday. They will hopefully power the car chargers in their entirety during the summer months, but there is a battery going in to store surplus & divert back to the house.

I shall report back in a few months with efficiency etc.
 
Ally T said:
We are having them fitted to our new garage block a week on Monday. They will hopefully power the car chargers in their entirety during the summer months, but there is a battery going in to store surplus & divert back to the house.

I shall report back in a few months with efficiency etc.
Click to expand...

Oooh please share what system you have if you don’t mind.

I need to test on a few more cloudy days but so far we are generating 20kwh on very poor and cloudy winter days.

We have an EV on order and I am just twitching every time we have to fuel up. I waaaaaaant my EV! The car is on its last legs so that’s why we went the whole hog with solar, EV etc.
 
We went solar in June after our new roof was installed (thanks Hurricane Ian!). Kinda surprised we don’t see more residential solar in SWFL, tbh …

The solar system (believe it’s an IQ or IQPlus8 ) was designed & sized to produce ~110% of our usage because we’re also having a pool built this fall. Rather than get batteries, we got a smart switch so we can leverage daytime solar if the grid goes down, which is fine for our needs. The cost of batteries for now just didn’t make sense for us. Our meter finally got switched out by the utility company in late July, so will probably be another 2-3 weeks until we see or first real ‘new’ utility bill … which should be <$15 for taxes/fees.

I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but as best as I can explain our set-up: the energy we produce goes to the utility company, and we basically get a 1:1 “credit” to use any amount of energy we produce/send. Any extra energy we produced is like “rollover energy” to use later in the month/year, or can be sold back to the utility at the end of the year. And if we produce a little shy of our demand/need, we pay for that.

Attaching a screenshot of one tab from our Enphase app … that was live at the time/date in the upper left corner. You can always tell when that heavy afternoon cloud cover rolls through during rainy season. :D
 

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