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Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

mattbruenig.com

71–80 of 510 posts

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#71

I'm always surprised about the price of solar panels in the US, I think we paid about €1.2/W. It's not like labor is cheap in Belgium.

It varies. A lot of solar installers will push the benefits of microinverters or optimisers, because they can make your system cope better with partial shading or panel failure. However, the microinverters or optimisers are expensive, and can easily double the cost of the system. They also have dubious merit, because if you design your system properly in the first place it will cope with partial shading and panel failure quite happily anyway. However, selling the units makes sense for the installer, because it's more money that passes through their hands. Remember, the installers are not necessarily working for your best interests.

You can buy panels off Amazon at about £0.73/W. Add in the various bits that you need to go along with it, and that probably pushes it up to around £1.10/W, if you're doing it yourself.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#73
This is interesting to me, I like reading people's experiences with solar panels since I'm waiting for the price to make sense for my own home. But as someone spending about $1,000/year, it's just not there yet. My options seem to be: diy, 20-30 year roi, find more ways to use electricity, or wait.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#75

My system generated 14.36 MWh in 2022, which comes out to roughly $4,308 USD. The ROI is about 5-6 years for the system itself. But a new roof was also in order.... so more like 10-12 years. Still a great deal if you can afford to invest for the long term. Especially with a 30 year warranty on most of the equipment.

> Especially with a 30 year warranty on most of the equipment.

Warranted by who exactly? A 30-year warranty from a company that’s been in existence for 2-3 years doesn’t quite have the same weight.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#76
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The panels, because they are black Doesn't seem like that would matter once covered by a few inches of snow. But otherwise your points seem solid.

You don't ever get a few inches of snow on the top of the roof. The point of the aggressive pitch is so the weight of the snow pulls itself off the roof so your roof/home doesn't have to support 5 tons of water weight. IDK if you live in a place that sees significant snow, if so, just drive around a neighborhood and notice what the snow looks like on the rooftops. Generally none on the top and some on the bottom. Tha…

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Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#77
I worked in the solar industry for years and this is a very good summary of the residential install process from the customer side.

I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#78
post #24

"per-kWh price of electricity was around 25 cents" This sounds like the total price of electricity, including distribution. However my understanding of net-metering means that you have to pay distribution fees to put your power on the grid, so you don't get back the full 25 cents, only around half that (the generation portion). If the author of this post is on here, could you please clarify?

It depends on your state and the laws surrounding net metering. Some will let you put it back into the grid at the full per-kwh price, even if some of that is for distribution. California used to, but they're rolling this back (I think old installs are grandfathered in).

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#79
post #61

I looked into solar in 2022. The bid I got for a 9.5 kW system and one Tesla Powerwall ended up being right around $50,000. No thanks.

Why a Powerwall?

Not sure, that’s just the way the company wrote up the bid. The Powerwall portion was around $16k I think.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#80

I paid ~15k to install solar in 2019. After tax rebates it was ~11k. I’m generating ~12MWh per year. My break even period is less than 5 years. I’m based out of California, and generate excess energy. My electric bill is now just ~$100/year.

Do you have a battery or are the excess directly dumped to grid?
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