Solar Panels for house

[JeffKeryk]

This is the issue. Most companies that install solar do not stay in business long. Good luck on the warranty. Or- they change their company structure to a new name/ organization so you are on your own with warranty. Solar companies in general are very sketchy.

Yes, could be trouble. In business we learn that the viability of the company is every bit as important as its products.
Infinity Energy was solid in early 2018, when I signed the contract. Perhaps NEM3 was the death blow.

Regardless, I love my solar. Maybe I shoulda used Sunrun. If I get in trouble, I will give them a call. All good.

 

[PandaBear]

If your house was on the grid when you signed up for solar - You are not allowed to cancel your account and disconnect.
Oh you could physically do it but the power company will red flag your house as being in violation of electrical code with your registering city and you will be fined until you reconnect or move and or see your homeowner insurance cancelled.

Nem 3 works on an avoidance, vs net metering, and if you want any hope of an ROI you must export during peak house so forcing inst the right word - its constructed in a way that almost no ROI exists without selling during peak hours.
There is an emergency provision that allows them to pull from your battery regardless of your preference to do so or not.

Again, this is 2024 and I don't see ANY reason someone would want to be completely off grid unless they have no choice (or they get cutoff due to fire risk in rural California, because PG&E doesn't want to be sued), just like why would anyone get off the internet completely. You are likely going to spend way more with battery storage and wasted solar output just to make sure you don't blackout, vs a smaller amount of panels and battery and pull from the grid on demand. If you really don't want to waste money selling to the grid at a discount, you can just install less and basically never sell, only buy, from the grid and use solar to supplement. This makes a lot more sense.

About "if you want any hope of an ROI", there is none if you want to do it financially unless you are going to reduce heating of your roof and match your output to your AC. Anything more than that is just an inefficient way to generate and transmit / store the panel output. The grid will find a way to charge you for the infra if you need one now or in the future if they are losing money on you. I don't believe anyone would be in business permanently to lose money to a specific customer.

Emergency provision: it can happen but so would all sorts of things. Fire, police etc would also access your home in emergency, but battery drain from your home to grid wouldn't be regular. If you really don't want to do it, you probably have to install just enough panel and battery, and match your load (AC) to your solar output.

I still don't see the point of all the anger. Being on the grid is like being on the internet. You can go back to the days of copying DVDs borrowed from library but it gets old very fast. You can be upset about paying $35/month to get cable internet and go dark, but it is much more convenient than worrying about how much your home battery charges you have and worry about regular blackout.

How many $ are we talking about here? or are we just upset and want to make a statement to the utility?

 

[PandaBear]

This is the issue. Most companies that install solar do not stay in business long. Good luck on the warranty. Or- they change their company structure to a new name/ organization so you are on your own with warranty. Solar companies in general are very sketchy.

I think this is also a reason if I were to go solar back then, I would pick a power purchase agreement and let some investment bankers take the risk of dealing with the surplus solar. This way I don't have to deal with the what ifs without a grandfather.

Then again, why stop at power purchase agreement, why not just tell Silicon Valley Clean Energy I want my account to switch to GreenPrime and let them buy solar from a grid scale farm somewhere? That's probably cheaper too.

 

[UncleDave]

Again, this is 2024 and I don't see ANY reason someone would want to be completely off grid unless they have no choice (or they get cutoff due to fire risk in rural California, because PG&E doesn't want to be sued), just like why would anyone get off the internet completely. You are likely going to spend way more with battery storage and wasted solar output just to make sure you don't blackout, vs a smaller amount of panels and battery and pull from the grid on demand. If you really don't want to waste money selling to the grid at a discount, you can just install less and basically never sell, only buy, from the grid and use solar to supplement. This makes a lot more sense.

About "if you want any hope of an ROI", there is none if you want to do it financially unless you are going to reduce heating of your roof and match your output to your AC. Anything more than that is just an inefficient way to generate and transmit / store the panel output. The grid will find a way to charge you for the infra if you need one now or in the future if they are losing money on you. I don't believe anyone would be in business permanently to lose money to a specific customer.

Emergency provision: it can happen but so would all sorts of things. Fire, police etc would also access your home in emergency, but battery drain from your home to grid wouldn't be regular. If you really don't want to do it, you probably have to install just enough panel and battery, and match your load (AC) to your solar output.

I still don't see the point of all the anger. Being on the grid is like being on the internet. You can go back to the days of copying DVDs borrowed from library but it gets old very fast. You can be upset about paying $35/month to get cable internet and go dark, but it is much more convenient than worrying about how much your home battery charges you have and worry about regular blackout.

How many $ are we talking about here? or are we just upset and want to make a statement to the utility?

No anger, in my case being laconic often sounds angry. It's business, not emotions.

Just like I wouldn't pay for star link and a cable modem, once you have your own generation, storage and backup why do I need to pay for PG&E's poor performance or subsidize others electricity just like they don't want to pay for mine.

You are right about matching generation to consumption as being the best bet.
Storing electricity only makes sense if you can arbitrage it for lots of money.

Thing is you are locked into a size limitation from day 1 so you cant really grow past a certain point unless you create microgrids even if your needs grow - so its back to buying electricity. You dont get to decide not to sell - you are told what you will be selling for and forced to do it, sure you can choose to produce less with a smaller system, but you are back to subsidizing public companies and states.

Once I added irrigation to the load I went from exporting three megawatts in a year to 1.
If I add an electric car I'll be backwards.


My deal isnt too bad - but going forward the new homeowners get a forced bad deal.

My own ROI looks to be about 5.7 and Im two years into it.

 

[oil pan 4]

A single axis tracker usually buys 25-35% and a dual axis tracker 10% more.

Most opt to just add more panels vs a tracker and its associated cost and ongoing maintenance.

Trackers are stupid. They at least double the cost of an install. If you got money to burn, put up double as many panels.

 

[PandaBear]

Trackers are stupid. They at least double the cost of an install. If you got money to burn, put up double as many panels.

Didn't know it cost that much. I guess it was a solution for back when panels were expensive and motors are cheap.

If it cost double, I would have my panels point either 1/2 south east and 1/2 south west, or point all of them south west (to match the duck curve), to split up the generation to widen the curve (sort of like tuning your engine for a wide powerband instead of a narrow one).

 

[PandaBear]

No anger, in my case being laconic often sounds angry. It's business, not emotions.

Just like I wouldn't pay for star link and a cable modem, once you have your own generation, storage and backup why do I need to pay for PG&E's poor performance or subsidize others electricity just like they don't want to pay for mine.

You are right about matching generation to consumption as being the best bet.
Storing electricity only makes sense if you can arbitrage it for lots of money.

Thing is you are locked into a size limitation from day 1 so you cant really grow past a certain point unless you create microgrids even if your needs grow - so its back to buying electricity. You dont get to decide not to sell - you are told what you will be selling for and forced to do it, sure you can choose to produce less with a smaller system, but you are back to subsidizing public companies and states.

Once I added irrigation to the load I went from exporting three megawatts in a year to 1.
If I add an electric car I'll be backwards.


My deal isnt too bad - but going forward the new homeowners get a forced bad deal.

My own ROI looks to be about 5.7 and Im two years into it.

In business you can't win them all. When everyone wants a money losing deal and the business have to honor it, they would go out of business. They have to come up with some way to make a profit to stay afloat, and it is just the way it is. The problem really is more of a monopoly nature of a grid, whether they are the one who sell us the electricity or buy from us.

I do think if you have micro-inverters you can gradually add more panels as you go. Whether it makes economic sense is another matter (I don't think it does). The cost of residential / roof top system are usually heavily labor intensive, and the fewer times you have to get on the roof and deal with sales and quotes, the better off you are.

About new home owners weren't getting as good a deal as before. The older ones took a lot of risk installing roof top solar when they were still new and more expensive, and things could have gone very wrong very fast, so the incentives were to make them a better deal. This wasn't something that should have gone this popular to the point of causing duck curves when they design it, and they never anticipate it to cause this much problem to the grid. I don't blame the utility for demanding battery storage for solar, and I don't blame them wanting to add emergency clause in there.

sure you can choose to produce less with a smaller system, but you are back to subsidizing public companies and states.

You can't run a business like that. Sometimes, you have to pay for someone else to carry the bag. If you can't triple your system size just in case and waste a lot of generation, you have to pay and let someone else do the work. Business pay others for excess capacity or supply all the time, they don't make as much as if they make everything themselves, but they don't get into problems of surplus and run into cash flow problem either, they can just let the supply deal with it. This is really more of a trade off between fix vs variable cost. I don't see buying some from PG&E leaving money on the table, I see it as letting them deal with a problem too big for myself to solve.

 

[oil pan 4]

Didn't know it cost that much. I guess it was a solution for back when panels were expensive and motors are cheap.

If it cost double, I would have my panels point either 1/2 south east and 1/2 south west, or point all of them south west (to match the duck curve), to split up the generation to widen the curve (sort of like tuning your engine for a wide powerband instead of a narrow one).

Yes trackers where the S when the panel prices were measured in dollars per watt and the panel prices was most of the cost of the install.
Now they're mainly used when a solar project has taxpayer money to burn or in places that are really remote so shipping costs are your main expense or in places that are particularly terrible for solar performance like way up North. Sometimes both of those last 2.

 

[DriveHard]

Looked into it here in Iowa...the return is a no go. Laws prohibit the utility provider from paying you back if you overproduce, so you have to size your system to just underproduce. Well, my monthly electrical is lower than what the monthly payment would be for a bank of panels. By the time I re-coup the cost, it is most likely time to replace. I love the idea, I just couldn't make it work financially.

 

[oil pan 4]

In business you can't win them all. When everyone wants a money losing deal and the business have to honor it, they would go out of business. They have to come up with some way to make a profit to stay afloat, and it is just the way it is. The problem really is more of a monopoly nature of a grid, whether they are the one who sell us the electricity or buy from us.

I do think if you have micro-inverters you can gradually add more panels as you go. Whether it makes economic sense is another matter (I don't think it does). The cost of residential / roof top system are usually heavily labor intensive, and the fewer times you have to get on the roof and deal with sales and quotes, the better off you are.

About new home owners weren't getting as good a deal as before. The older ones took a lot of risk installing roof top solar when they were still new and more expensive, and things could have gone very wrong very fast, so the incentives were to make them a better deal. This wasn't something that should have gone this popular to the point of causing duck curves when they design it, and they never anticipate it to cause this much problem to the grid. I don't blame the utility for demanding battery storage for solar, and I don't blame them wanting to add emergency clause in there.



You can't run a business like that. Sometimes, you have to pay for someone else to carry the bag. If you can't triple your system size just in case and waste a lot of generation, you have to pay and let someone else do the work. Business pay others for excess capacity or supply all the time, they don't make as much as if they make everything themselves, but they don't get into problems of surplus and run into cash flow problem either, they can just let the supply deal with it. This is really more of a trade off between fix vs variable cost. I don't see buying some from PG&E leaving money on the table, I see it as letting them deal with a problem too big for myself to solve.

Micro inverters are giving far longer service lives than string inverters.
String inverters run hot and at high DC voltage, heat + HVDC = shorter life spans.
Micros tend to be more expensive initially.
Micros tend to not catch on fire when they fail.
String inverters fail more as a matter of when, not if.
String inverters beat micros in low light and cloudy performance.
Micros are clearly the choice for hot sunny areas and string are the choice for cooler cloudy areas, but they seem to be used indiscriminately the installers just use what they like using.

 

[oil pan 4]

Looked into it here in Iowa...the return is a no go. Laws prohibit the utility provider from paying you back if you overproduce, so you have to size your system to just underproduce. Well, my monthly electrical is lower than what the monthly payment would be for a bank of panels. By the time I re-coup the cost, it is most likely time to replace. I love the idea, I just couldn't make it work financially.

Same here I did it solely as an FU to the utility company.
Some evil energy conglomerate was trying to buy up the co-op then in about 9 month 24 of us put on solar panels up. The deal to sell the co-op was on a 2 year time table that hadn't even started yet, so there was a very high possibility that hundreds of people would be on solar by the time the deal closed. Thus a poison pill.

 

[thastinger]

On a side note - we have a few solar field installation projects here in South Carolina. Some are right next to the interstate - makes sense as that land generally isn't wanted for much else.

None of these installs track the sun. That part seems stupid to me - for the cost of a cheap circuit and gear motor, you could probably get 50% more power a day from the panel.

Anyone know why? Utilities just too stupid? I know the installations in Australia the middle eastern desert's do track the sun?

All of the solar farms in SE VA, that I have seen, do have trackers. The costs for the farms appears as a special charge on our Dominion power bills.

 

[alarmguy]

Im all for the fed subsidy removal, but almost everyone gets the California "subsidy" wrong.

If anyone is interested in knowing where the real subsidy is in California ask one simple question.

Why cant people with solar panels can't legally disconnect from the grid?

The narrative that California's poor subsidized the rich purchase of panels was debunked by Lawrence Berkley labs who concluded that although it existed, its actual impact was utterly inconsequential amounting to pennies.

Thanks to a full court ad campaign big power in ca now gets its go forward solar power for free paid for wholly by new home owners who HAVE to purchase solar systems - and give their power away for almost nothing.

Good Post
With that said, what is the cost if you are connected to the grid but dont use any of their electricity ? Meaning turn off the main breaker or disconnect but keep the account?

and as I read down the thread. I see that you can completely disconnect from the grid and cancel your account if I am reading @PandaBear posts correctly.

 

[oil pan 4]

All of the solar farms in SE VA, that I have seen, do have trackers. The costs for the farms appears as a special charge on our Dominion power bills.

Yeah they put the farm on trackers to up the install cost 2 to 4 times what fixed panels cost.

 

[thastinger]

Yeah they put the farm on trackers to up the install cost 2 to 4 times what fixed panels cost.

With the bi-facial panels coming online now, trackers don't seem to make sense.

 

[oil pan 4]

With the bi-facial panels coming online now, trackers don't seem to make sense.

Yeah the bifacial ones make trackers even more useless.

 

[UncleDave]

Good Post
With that said, what is the cost if you are connected to the grid but dont use any of their electricity ? Meaning turn off the main breaker or disconnect but keep the account?

and as I read down the thread. I see that you can completely disconnect from the grid and cancel your account if I am reading @PandaBear posts correctly.

Thanks, it works differently in different states.

You cannot disconnect. You are forced into a continuous connection.

The system is architected in such a way that when the power goes out (pull the main/power outage) the system shuts down. In my case when my system senses an outage the main flips over and my backup gen starts.

Sure you could try to keep your use down, but they want you connected and paying to maintain the system which is fair if they are buying or allowing you net meter and use your overage as a "credit account", but not if the deal has become too thin to invest.

One could buy a an AC coupled hybrid inverter system that would work, and in many places people do, but California law requires you to stay connected if at any point you ever were.

 

[UncleDave]

In business you can't win them all. When everyone wants a money losing deal and the business have to honor it, they would go out of business. They have to come up with some way to make a profit to stay afloat, and it is just the way it is. The problem really is more of a monopoly nature of a grid, whether they are the one who sell us the electricity or buy from us.

I do think if you have micro-inverters you can gradually add more panels as you go. Whether it makes economic sense is another matter (I don't think it does). The cost of residential / roof top system are usually heavily labor intensive, and the fewer times you have to get on the roof and deal with sales and quotes, the better off you are.

About new home owners weren't getting as good a deal as before. The older ones took a lot of risk installing roof top solar when they were still new and more expensive, and things could have gone very wrong very fast, so the incentives were to make them a better deal. This wasn't something that should have gone this popular to the point of causing duck curves when they design it, and they never anticipate it to cause this much problem to the grid. I don't blame the utility for demanding battery storage for solar, and I don't blame them wanting to add emergency clause in there.



You can't run a business like that. Sometimes, you have to pay for someone else to carry the bag. If you can't triple your system size just in case and waste a lot of generation, you have to pay and let someone else do the work. Business pay others for excess capacity or supply all the time, they don't make as much as if they make everything themselves, but they don't get into problems of surplus and run into cash flow problem either, they can just let the supply deal with it. This is really more of a trade off between fix vs variable cost. I don't see buying some from PG&E leaving money on the table, I see it as letting them deal with a problem too big for myself to solve.

On adding panels after the original install. I'm using micro inverters, and can physically add panels any time I want.

CONTRACTUALLY I'm limited in what I can do.

I can only add 1KW above the original install before my NEM 2.0 contract become nullified and Im forced to NEM 3.0 trashing my whole ROI.

 

[UncleDave]

PG&E has the most expensive electricity in America. The bill can easily be car payment sized for a big household and this is only going to get worse as transportation electrifies.

The billpayers absolutely subsidize their incompetence and greed and pay their bonuses to boot.
The State forces you to subsidize everyone in it with fee after fee to pay for the clean energy everyone voted for, but now cry poor and want to push the bill to everyone but the people that voted for it.

How do you get out from under this car payment sized bill? If it were a car you pay it off.

The smart money WAS to buy solar. Well sorry Mr billpayer - we're going to get your money regardless of what you do.

If one decides to put up panels to deal with problem long term then "you are being subsidized by the poor and a terrible person" (its not true but that narrative has taken hold) - so we need to change the deal to keep you paying.

So you say - Well then just stop the subsidy and let me do it all on my own - but guess what? - you cant do that either!

You MUST keep paying for everyone else, and the power companies salaries, bonuses and mistake and problems and the people that didnt know what they were actually voting for, but did and are now running away from the bill.

 

[UncleDave]

Micro inverters are giving far longer service lives than string inverters.
String inverters run hot and at high DC voltage, heat + HVDC = shorter life spans.
Micros tend to be more expensive initially.
Micros tend to not catch on fire when they fail.
String inverters fail more as a matter of when, not if.
String inverters beat micros in low light and cloudy performance.
Micros are clearly the choice for hot sunny areas and string are the choice for cooler cloudy areas, but they seem to be used indiscriminately the installers just use what they like using.

mmmmm... not so sure about lifespan.

There are plenty of guys at work with midnight solar/ outback, and SMA/ sunny boys that are 10-20 years old with no failures.

The solar edge clients have the most trouble in my own group.

My own experience with Enphase is that the core of the system is susceptible to failure most specifically the gateway and consumption transformers. I lost this part and was unable to record production and consumption for about 3 months last summer.

Note the gap in last years reporting.