Solar on home....anyone switch recently?

In my case I wouldn't benefit from solar unless it was paid for up front. I would be better off doing home efficiency improvements. Right now I'm getting quotes for cinderblock drill and fill since they aren't insulated.

 

I got so many questions... Spent my first summer out here and my stuff is outrageous.. SVP was hella cheap... I'm considering pawning off my AC units, (yes 2 of them) to a solar system with a battery

 

Solar was a no-go for me. It wasn't going to save me more that $20 a month. Home efficiency upgrades would be better for me.

 

I'm debating this myself... I'm weighing my options with windows, since mine are ancient, and upgrading my 2 AC units into a single bigger more efficient unit.

 

A light colored metal roof supposedly does wonders too.

 

lol, not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I got a good chuckle out of it... As it reminded me of the Navy, built a 1.5 mil shade structure. and it was hotter under it, than out in the open. while our division couldn't afford tp from supply.... so we all chipped in for Charmin for the remainder of the year

 

No...if you google it, some of the roofing sites say that they can help your efficiency by up to 30%. The light colors reflect the heat instead of it going into the attic.

 

Oh, I see... my place has orange clay tiles.. so I'll have to look into that and compare it to my style of roof

 

I did solar a couple years ago and very glad we did. Owning it outright is the only way I'd do it, I felt like leasing it was just switching to a different power company.

Electric Portion of our bill was usually $150-$200 in hotter months, but that was with wifey turning off the AC sooner and setting it warmer than I liked because she was worried about the bill.

We were doing a refi on the house anyway so we pulled out some extra to buy the system. Right at $20K for a 5.3Kw system, which included upgrading the 100A main from 1958 to a new 200A panel.
I gave them a 12 month running history of our usage and told them it reflected using the AC sparingly.

I said "I'm adding a hot tub, and I wanna' be able to run the AC whenever the EFF I want, so size it accordingly."

They asked "Do you have, or will you EVER have an electric car?" Nope... Apparently they would've needed to add a lot more panels for EV charging.

Rough math puts the delta for payoff between 10-12 years. (That's at current prices if SDG&E never raises the rates, so actual payoff will certainly be sooner.) My panels have a 30 year / 97% output guarantee.

We got 26% of that $20K back on our taxes, which paid for putting a 600W system on our little travel trailer, We got 26% of THAT back too.

Looking at my real-time monitoring app, I'm currently producing 3,771 watts and consuming 3,237 for a surplus of 534 watts.

That tells me my AC is running, either wifey is home or she left it on so the pups are comfy. AC just cycled off so I'm selling them about 3,200 watts.

I'd say they sized the system pretty well, you want to produce more then you consume, but just barely... otherwise you spent money on panels you don't need and you're just giving away free energy to the power company. (They'll give you credits for your surplus against usage but they will not pay you actual money)

My annual settle up with SDG&E for the first full year from the time we went live was... wait for it... $52

That's basically just the fees to be tied into the grid.

I'm in San Diego (so usually fairly sunny) and I have a big open area of my roof that faces and slants to the south, so pretty ideal.

In these screenshots the red bars on top are consumption, green bars on the bottom are production, and the blue bars are net grid impact. If the blue bar is above the middle line I'm buying power, if it's below I'm selling.

First graph is for the last 12 months, second is since going live, third one is the last 3 hours.

 

Holy Shit!!

 

With electric bills like that, it'd probably only take 3 or 4 years for your solar pay for itself.

 

I might take out some student loans to pay for a system. I wouldnt want em on the house, i could use the shade.