Today is a sunny, happy day.
 

I just got authorization from the local power company to turn on my (new) roof mounted solar system, & turned it on fifteen minutes ago. It's no longer an expensive ornament. That makes this a good day. We've been in this house we designed and I built now for seven years. I had always intended to install a solar electric system, and the house is all electric. My decision to go with solar now was inspired by the perceived increase in electric rates. During past winters, we kept the heating system on during the nights. I thought my wife would complain about it getting cool in the house. The month of highest power usage caused a bill of around $425. This winter we decided to turn off the heating at night and turn it on in the mornings to warm the house up, and our highest bill was in the range of $525. That was the deciding factor in not waiting for the technology to improve more and costs to reduce more. We're also lucky to have gotten in on the net metering program where we'll bank excess power. Whooopee!

What kind of Solar system did you install? Based on your expenses what's your ROI?

The system is 25 LG panels with Enphase controllers. The panels produce 310W ea. According to the company, it should pay for itself in right at five years at the going utility rates. I'm positive those rates will climb substantially over that time. How true that is, I don't know. If it pays for itself in that amount of time - give or take, I'll be happy. The roof mount was more involved than they thought, but the whole system came in at $27K.

What's the charge per KW in CA? Depending on the plan you get in Texas, it can vary from 2 cents to 10+. I am not sure you would get a ROI in a reasonable amount of time in Texas, especially with the hail storms we get.

Summer Kw/hr. rates here are: Baseline - .18636, Baseline 101% to 130% - .21198, 130%+ of Baseline - .40846. Summer rates are a hair higher than winter rates. That's for San Diego Gas & Electric. Rates vary by area, but I don't know by how much. Sounds like your rates are pretty low in TX, compared to here.

So what type of battery setup do you have or is this just to augment the grid?

$425 and $525? Holy Carp!
My combined gas & electric bill is $50-$60 in 'winter' and $35-$45 the rest of the year.

Please post updates as to the "after" bill and how it works out for you!
Thanks,
Ron

Most of the solar panels are rated for 1.25" hail. San Antonio and Austin have city owned utilities. At up to $0.17/kWh, the systems pay off reasonably quick.

It won't have batteries at that price. Straight Grid-TIed

I'm not going the battery route. Too much cost, maintenance, etc. With the net metering program, I bank extra power to be used during times the system doesn't generate enough. I don't think that will probably ever happen. My neighbor got a ground mount system installed. It's slightly bigger than mine. She received a credit for a huge amount of KWhrs. her first month. Something like 700 KWhrs. if I remember right. The net metering starts on my next billing cycle, & I'm also curious to see what happens then. SoCal911T, my neighbor across the road has electric bills in your range - has propane for gas. Says his wife complains when it gets close to 50 on cold mornings. My low months run around $115 to $125 but electric heating during the winter months are killers.

I manufacture battery based systems. One of the other advantages to a battery based system is they continue to work when the utility is down. Straight to Grid systems shut down when the utility power is out.

As far as maintenance, the new batteries we use are good for 3000 cycles at 50% depth of discharge. At one cycle per day, they should last 8.9 years. They are sealed batteries so no maintenance. Charging system prevents off-gassing.

It will happen every night. 25 panels *310 Watts/panel = 7750 Watt array. In your location, the AVERAGE power produced per day will be around 46.5 kWh. I know you don't have too many cloudy days. But the power output will vary summer/winter. Winter will average about 30 kWh/day and summer will be about 60.

See the light blue line for standard fixed solar tilt. This chart is for an area with 5kWh/day production. You would shift the chart up, one kWh/day

http://www.solarpaneltilt.com/optsolargraph.jpg

Monthly value @ $0.20/kwh
Summer=$360
Winter=$180
Spring/Fall=$280
Yearly savings =$3400

Great info James. Thanks. I turned the system on at 8:30 yesterday morning & checked the power production last night. It produced 53.3 Kwh. I'm not too worried about the grid being down. In the past four years, I can only remember it being down twice for short durations like 45 minutes. We don't have violent weather events. We have earthquakes, but being located in a mostly bedrock area, they aren't as bad as the basin areas down below. The 5.2 quake last week east of here produced a gentle rocking motion for five to seven seconds. I took the payback period given by the company with a grain of salt and figure a payback period of seven to eight years is OK. If it happens sooner, all the better.