Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Lee
In addition to needing a lot of sun, it depends on how far north or south you are and then which direction your house faces. Then it depends on how much you can sell your overage back to the grid for vs. what you pay them to buy when you underproduce. If you're 80 yrs old, you ain't going to break even anywhere. And then it depends on what the gov't. and local utility subsidy deal is at the time you sign. I have a customer (I'm not in the solar biz) who was getting killed on electric bills, but she had solar. Problem was her solar panels weren't working and she'd didn't have wifi or any Internet service, so the the solar company couldn't monitor her production and their guarantee. She bled thousands of dollars before I happened upon her and got it fixed, which wasn't even part of my job. But I figured getting that problem fixed would make it easier for her to afford what I sold her. My parents really think they're making a killing with their solar panels, because they don't get an electric bill anymore. Ok, but they won't live long enough to save the $40k they wrote a check for to have that stuff installed.
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Could also add the maintenance cost. What do you do if you need to fix the roof in the area where the panels are? As mentioned above it doesn't really pencil out in many cases. The first thing you can do is review where you are using electrical power and take some steps to reduce the usage - e.g. LED lights.
I would trust this calculator -
https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/