Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Residential Solar Panels?

Those look pretty damn slick.

I have a 7.75 kwatt system but they put a 7.6 kwatt inverter on it so I max out at 7.6. It cost me about $20,000 cash price in Dec of 2019. They sold it to me claiming it would be a 7 year payback after tax credits. The problem is that it is not big enough for my home and I still get power bills.

It's net metered and they calculated it would generate about $140 / month worth of power at our rates. It only produces about $100 a month worth so I'm looking at a 10 year pay off. After tax credits my cost was about $12,000.

I did it because the tax credits were still good and the net metering credits were still at the retail rate. Just after I signed up the state agreed to let the power company pay a lower credit for net metered power but I was grandfathered in as long as I don't add more than 1 kwatt to my system.

The company that did mine was terrible to work with and almost cost me my credit by not getting it installed on time. A bunch of crooked lying dirt as.

I hope my system holds up because they were horrible in working on the one problem I had. I have 25 310 watt panels but efficiency seems to have already dropped quite a bit. I don't know if it's just because the panels are dirty or what. The first few months it was in my system would often Mac out the investor at 7.6 kwatts during peek sun. Now it rarely hits above 6 kwatts. I used to get 55 kwatt days and now I rarely get above 40 kwatts. I don't think I'd do it again especially without the tax credits.

Bb

Problem is, the demand FAR outstrips supply, and Tesla roofs are, well, silly expensive. They do solve the aesthetics and hail damage concerns, though. Still, I’ve been looking at an off the grid house site, and for a new roof install, it’s cheaper than paying the power company $20K to run power, and put on a conventional roof. And I just got an email that Starlink is now available at that location, so I may end up sending Elon some money in the next couple of years.

It's varied over the years.
When I first got heavy into it I scored on a dozen deep cycle 2 volt batteries, they were great.
I'd got them at a auction new, telephone company was getting rid of them, they'd use that type for some sorta battery backup system they had.

I used them for about 8 or 10 years and got rid of them when I moved, they were huge and too heavy to deal with.
I'd paid next to nothing for them and sold them to a guy that wanted them for his system for more than I had in them.

After that I went into a phase of using cheap12 volt deep cycle marine batteries and still do at times.

My main batteries now are 12.8 volt lithium's.
They do great and I use less of them than the old marine deep cycles buy they cost too much and I ain't sure they are worth it.

Maybe they'll last a lot longer, just been using them about two years, time will tell.

I can buy a dozen cheap deep cycle marine batteries for what one of these cost, I can get 4 or 5 years out of those or even longer.

The biggest thing has been cutting back on my electrical demand.
I've gotten real use to it over the years and just don't require that big of a system.

The people paying 35K for home solar are trying to power their 3500 sq ft all electric homes, I just see that as crazy. If you want that kinda place I guess you pay your dues one way or the other.

When I go through a week long storm with no sun, it'll cost me 10 bucks worth of gas in my Honda 2000 to keep my batteries up enough to squeak by.
Just need plenty of panels to take all the advantage you can when you have good days.

I'll probably never setup a true professional system, I've had too good of luck just tinkering around.

I'm just a low budget high output kinda guy. If it cost a dollar I'll find a way to get it for a quarter.

Two questions,

Have you ever cleaned your panels?
How much do you figure your system has added to the value of your home?

Something else to keep in mind is that the technology is still rapidly improving. LG just introduced a panel with 22% efficiency ( most retail systems now are somewhere around 17-19%). In the lab, they are achieving amazing efficiencies into the 40’s by layering silicon and perovskites.

If it’s not economical today, it may well be in 5 or 10 years.

Long shot question, anyone have experience with nickel iron batteries?