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I've read, not sure how accurate, that the cost of installing them doesn't really pay off for quite awhile.
I have friends with solar panel pool heaters and they say that meter (separate from the normal power for the home) isn't really economically feasible.... to them, anyway.
how much credit do you figure you would get during the day?
id imagine one group of people that would be interested is people that dont want to be tied to the grid at all (or want to have the freedom to not be tied). that group may seem small now but may grow when unhooking becomes easier to do.
disconnecting from the grid should not be the end goal though. distributed power generation would be far more efficient than the current system with centralized generation. why let one's excess power go to waste? what if you generate more than you can store on a given day?
as far as credit, i'll generate enough credit during the spring/summer/fall to get me through the shorter days of winter, judging by my neighbor's experience. he's just over 1 year into his panels and he hasn't consumed his credits he took into the winter. and now we're entering peak season.
Just found out about this today. Some areas of NC have an electrical co-op with regard to solar panels. You buy the panel or panels and they are installed at the co-op solar energy field. You get a monthly deduction from your bill based on the number of panels you purchase.
This way you don't have to put those nasty looking panels on your roof, you don't pay for any wiring, no maintenance costs.
Of course we have lots of open space for solar fields instead of turning your neighborhood into a power plant.
Do they have that in NJ yet?
centralized generation results in wasted energy though. seems silly to pay for panels that would be installed miles away from your home.
my googling says that 6% of energy is lost in transmission. it would seem that the utility could make up for that loss by being more efficient than individual households in other ways.
Solar: not a good financial decision, and you won't be saving the planet by putting a few panels on your roof. One of the other posters mentioned hybrid cars. That's a good comparison. The technology is cool....no doubt! But as an investment? I - Think - Not
We're a little over $1700 away from paying the system off. Had them installed about 6 years ago.
We had a decent sized rebate (I think it was $14K) and have been selling the SRECs since we could - these are the only two sources we've used to pay the loan off - we borrowed from ourselves.
Granted the SRECs aren't worth what they used to be, but they're still $$$.
I haven't sat down to figure out how much we are saving on our monthly electric bill, but I can't imagine what it would be if we didn't have the panels.
We're a family of 5 and someone is always home - my husband works funky hours & I'm home all day so lights are always on somewhere. I typically keep a tv on for background noise. 3 kids make a lot of laundry so the washer/dryer doesn't skip a day of usage, dishwasher is run once a day if not two, microwave is used a lot, we have 2 zones for heating/cooling. When the kids are home from school? All bets are off. Lights on in their bedrooms, the bathrooms, computers on, televisions on, game systems (weekends only) used, iPads, cellphones, laptops are constantly plugged in, all 3 sleep with fans on (white noise) - little guy sleeps with his ceiling fan light on (it's on a dimmer) instead of a night light for MY sanity, I leave my front and back porch lights on at night. The kids go to summer school and or camp during the summer, but they're home many more hours during the summer weeks than they are during school weeks. And almost every day after they are out the door and on their way to school I have to walk around the house shutting off lights/fans/unplugging chargers charging nothing….because they're kids and they forget to. We have a large fridge in the house and a full fridge and full freezer in the garage - growing boys can and will eat you out of house and home.
One of my siblings who lives in a larger house than I do & also has the same 10kW system we do hasn't had an electric bill to speak of since his panels were installed. Two adults live in the house - they don't have kids (yet). They get up and go to work - are out of the door by 8am. Not home until around 6pm. Nothing going on while they're gone. His heat/air is programmed to adjust for those hours when no one is home. It could get to 55F in the house during the winter or 80F in the summer - they aren't there, so who cares? The heat/air kicks on to whatever they like it set to about two hours before either one is scheduled to walk in the door after work. If they had kids, the kids would be in daycare or school and some after-school program until one of them could pick them up after work.
So not only did he get the rebate and the opportunity to sell his SRECs when the selling was good, he's probably saved close to $15,000 in the 6 years he hasn't had an electric bill to pay.
Not a bad investment at all.
As far as aesthetics go? I personally would never put panels on the front of my house. Especially not the cheap "made in China" ones that you can see the grid lines in. Our panels are Sun Power (made in the USA - at least when we bought them) and low profile - not boxy looking and individually framed. Our shingles are black (had the 10 year old roof torn off and a 50 year shingle put on a few weeks before the panels were installed) as the panels are. The panels "blend" in with the shingles. The sit on the back of the house and I really don't care what anyone thinks they look like.
When it comes to resale? I'm not concerned about resale. I couldn't care less what someone 50 years from now might think about the " look" of my solar panels (if they haven't flown off the roof by then). They're saving ME money NOW. It's not about some buyer who doesn't exist. I couldn't imagine painting my walls, picking out fixtures, flooring, doors, kitchen cabinets for someone else. My house isn't an investment, it's my home. It's where my husband and I live and are raising our family. We're going to do what works for us & what we like.
my googling says that 6% of energy is lost in transmission. it would seem that the utility could make up for that loss by being more efficient than individual households in other ways.
ummmm.....how? distributed generation would mean that less than 6% would be lost. there's nothing about being more efficient than an individual household. honestly, your comment doesn't even make sense. if you generate power at a centralized location, you'll lose energy transmitting it to homes. the farther out, the more electricity is lost. the way to "be more efficient" is to decrease the distance between generation and consumption points.
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