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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#291

Post by cjhopman »

cjhopman wrote: post #290

> If Southern California Edison's residential rates continue to rise annually by 2.2 percent, as they have on average over the last decade, Jug's total electricity outlay having gone solar would have cost about $6,000 more over 20 years. Isn't the math that came to that conclusion completely fucked up? $115 (1.022 ^ 20) = $177 $75 (1.029 ^ 20) + $17 * (1.022 ^ 20) = $159 In fact, I'm about 100% sure that that $6000 f…

Okay... way at the end of the article they say that $115 isn't the real amount he was paying, he was only really paying $79. Making that change gets a lot closer to their -6000/+4000 for 2.2%/4.75% electricity increases.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#292

Post by selimthegrim »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #164
jpeg_hero wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, you’ll still have your 80% but that will be compared to the state of the art at the time as a trade off. The production of contemporary panels should (hopefully) be much much better. Imagine the advances in the next 2 decades: higher efficiency, lighter weight, more module, standards we can’t conceive of. Like the other poster in this thread said: sure your Athlon 500mhz is still runninnfine, even at 80% effici…

I'm a bit disappointed in your response. Did you look up Shockley–Queisser ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi... )? The maximum theoretical single p-n junction efficiency is low 30%s. Sunpower is the best consumer grade product and they are in the low 20%s right now ( https://us.sunpower.com/products/solar-panels/ ). There is not that room for improvement. There are higher efficiency pv ce…

Who told you Shockley-Quiesser is a hard cap or "non-negotiable physics"? Maybe in silicon PV but there are newer generation concepts that go around it.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#293

Post by analog31 »

someguydave wrote: post #247
analog31 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I just don't take their word. If they point out something that I was genuinely unaware of, and I can verify it, then of course it's in my interest to consider it. But as a general rule, I hope that I don't have to ask the salesman for any information.

Have you ever purchased something custom for business use?

Yes, definitely. The products that I help develop for my day job contain numerous custom components ranging from machined parts to high-level assemblies.

Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not. Sometimes it's our fault, sometimes the vendor's. I'm often not the only person involved in the purchasing process, and there are a number of different interests from engineering, operations, and so forth. Likewise on the vendor's side, we may be talking to salespeople, engineers, and so forth.

I'm often the one who has to bear the bad news: "Hey, this thing doesn't work at all."

We do a great job of tracking service and warranty replacements, and the top-ten list is entirely populated by buy-in subsystems.

Certainly "don't trust any salesman" is an over-simplification that may hold pretty well for consumer products, but not so well when a product is complex and technical. But verifying that the vendor is actually capable of what they claim to do, is still considered to be vital.

The vendor isn't always being dishonest. They may believe that we are over-spec'ing something, and that their product really will fit our needs once we are able to lay our hands on it and use it.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#294

Post by wkearney99 »

Ugh, I do wish there were more neutral sources to learn more about residential solar. Everything seems like such a con. I've got plenty of roof and reasonable capital to purchase gear but nowhere near the time to ferret out what's legit, what's a pie-eyed-pile-of-crap and what's an outright scam.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#295

Post by misterpoopoo »

There’s a couple things wrong with this article and I have a decent understanding of why Jug (RIP) did what he did. (I worked at Sunrun and created this fake account to hide identity; I worked in finance). Not to bash the sales reps or trainers, but they are so far removed from the financing of the product they don’t know what’s going on.

First, at the end the sales rep who provided the #s is bullshit. The sales reps are notorious for inputting whatever #s they want into the internal SFDC system so the average monthly bill isn’t accurate. This isn’t an exception, it’s their own rule to accelerate sales (management does not tell them to do this. To be specific)

The 2.9% escalator is an aggressive and risky product, but requires zero upfront and an incredibly low initial $/kWh. He more than likely was saving money and would have been for at least several years. I don’t know his intentions but you can read between the lines and I don’t want to talk about the dead.

Also, I forget if Conedison does tier pricing, but if it did with all his gadgets, his bill would have been through the roof.

Lastly, Sunrun does offer cash/loan/0%/1.9%/prepaid products, and if I were to go for a cash deal, I would use Sunrun/Vivint/SolarCity because it’s a huge headache to coordinate with developers and file all the correct paperwork.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#296

Post by throwaway5752 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #292
throwaway5752 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit disappointed in your response. Did you look up Shockley–Queisser ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi... )? The maximum theoretical single p-n junction efficiency is low 30%s. Sunpower is the best consumer grade product and they are in the low 20%s right now ( https://us.sunpower.com/products/solar-panels/ ). There is not that room for improvement. There are higher efficiency pv ce…

Who told you Shockley-Quiesser is a hard cap or "non-negotiable physics"? Maybe in silicon PV but there are newer generation concepts that go around it.

I'm a very interested amateur. Is there a residential scale tech besides silicon pv? I was not aware of anything, but that would be great news to me.

I should not that I didn't say it Shockley-Quiesser was a hard cap. I said it was the theoretical limit of a p-n junction cell. I said, "hard cap is insolation".

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#297

Post by selimthegrim »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #296
selimthegrim wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who told you Shockley-Quiesser is a hard cap or "non-negotiable physics"? Maybe in silicon PV but there are newer generation concepts that go around it.

I'm a very interested amateur. Is there a residential scale tech besides silicon pv? I was not aware of anything, but that would be great news to me. I should not that I didn't say it Shockley-Quiesser was a hard cap. I said it was the theoretical limit of a p-n junction cell. I said, "hard cap is insolation".

It's not residential scale.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#298

Post by lakisy »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #40
imgabe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. Ok? That is standard practice when you own a home. You are responsible for all the maintenance on your home. What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I assume they have to be cleaned every so often. Anything else? Maybe you have an electrician come and retorque the connections once a year? It's not like they have a lot of moving parts assuming it'…

Have you owned a multi-kW inverter before? Because if you know one that is mostly free of drama I would love to know the brand! Solar photovoltaic systems are not as maintenance free as one might wish. They still make a ton of financial sense if you own them outright, but inverters and critter damage to wiring can be unwelcome surprise costs.

   We bought our solar panels from Solar Edge.It's a 4.5-5 KW system 
   We are in our forth year. I've done nothing to it, no  maintenance. It just works. Every now and then it rains and that cleans up the panels enough.
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