I am now running on solar.

[Spider-Dan]

Unless you live in an area without net metering (or bad net metering). Then batteries allow you to store the daytime production when you're not at home anyway and use it in the evenings/mornings when your usage spikes, but production is lower.

Good point.

[Pappy13]

Pappy, in what State do you live?

I live in Grand Prairie, Texas which is near Dallas, so the Northern part of Texas and yes it does make a difference where you live. Obviously the southern tip of Florida is a different situation from most of the US. I'm curious what that website I mentioned shows for you Dave. All you have to do is put in your address and monthly electric bill and then select if you want to buy, lease or loan. Try it and see. I'm curious how accurate it is.

[Dave Gray]

I just used your website calculator.

The install cost to purchase said that it was 56K.   I paid about 41K. 

I do know that the cost of the materials did go up some after I started the project and I was locked in to the contract rate.  That was a little over a year ago.  I doubt it would be 15K more though.

It does list the Federal Tax Credit accurately, though, in the estimate.

[FinFanCR]

And the amount of direct sunlight you get. If you don't have a roof with a lot of space for panels that's pointed in the right direction with no trees around to block the sunlight etc, then the panels just can't produce enough electricity to make it worth it. This is step 1 in determining if solar is right for you.

https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/

Here's the results using my address and selecting the loan option:

Up Front cost: $0
Total payments over 20 years: $79,335
Total cost of electricity over 20 years: $58,731
Total 20 year saving: -$20,604.

After 20 years I'd have lost $20,000. How is this a good deal for me? Now if I buy it outright, then yeah I could save around $11,000 after 20 years with a break even around 16 years into it, but I don't have around $50K to spend on solar at the moment and if I did I certainly wouldn't spend it on Solar as there are a lot better investment options.

Not to mention that you don't know what's going to happen five or ten years down the road.   If you planned on staying in that house for the rest of your life, then maybe it's a good long term investment but people don't do that anymore these days.

[Dave Gray]

The panels would increase the sale price of the house by more than the cost of the panels, I would think.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Seriously consider PPA, no upfront money.  The solar company owns the panels.  In exchange for access to your roof they sell you the electric for considerably less.

[Fau Teixeira]

Eversource (my electric company) came yesterday and replace my meter for a net meter. So i can turn on my solar panels today .. *woot*

[Fau Teixeira]

Update - I am now running on solar, i see no difference obviously, power is power .. but hopefully my bills will be alot lower

[Dave Gray]

I'm not sure what this means for me, as I haven't seen a bill yet, but my highest day of production was 47.16 kWh.  My lowest day was 29.90 kWh.  They came on consecutive days.

[Spider-Dan]

Unless you are already maxing out your capacity, you should see increased daily production as we approach summer and the sun's rays are at a more direct angle.

[Dave Gray]

This might sound ignorant, but you don't know what you don't know until you ask, but...

What are the panels actually collecting?  Radiation?  Heat?  Light?

[Spider-Dan]

Electromagnetic radiation in the form of visible light.

[fyo]

This might sound ignorant, but you don't know what you don't know until you ask, but...

What are the panels actually collecting?  Radiation?  Heat?  Light?

Slightly more geeky answer, other than "light":

Sunlight contains light of a bunch of different colors (as seen in a rainbow or through a prism) and solar panels actually only use a fairly narrow range of colors (frequencies or wavelength, if you prefer), with the rest either being reflected by the panel or absorbed and turned into heat. That's the main reason why solar panels are only about 20% efficient at converting incoming light to electricity.

We can actually make photovoltaic cells (aka solar panels) that are more than 3x as efficient if only a single wavelength (color) of light is used. Combining a bunch of different cells that use light of a different color isn't easy, since the sunlight would then need to pass through the top cells (that use one color) first. This reduces efficiency and increases costs (which are already high), making the gains smaller than the ideal.

Heat also decreases the efficiency of solar panels and stacking layers usually directly results in a warmer panel.

The latter is also why you can expect your production to fall as much as 20% during heatwaves compared to cool, windy days with the same amount of sunlight.

As a side note, you can actually get "solar panels" that use heat instead of light, although they are usually specifically referred to as solar *thermal* panels. They look a lot like regular solar panels, except a bit more "plain". Solar thermal panels are incredibly efficient, something like 70% with good sunlight, but the downside is that you are only generating heat, not electricity. So it's great for warming your water, but that's about it. Converting heat directly to electricity is ridiculously inefficient and even with the best lab-grade kit, you would wind up with something more inefficient than regular solar panels.

[Fau Teixeira]

Yesterday was a sunny day and i produced 49 kWh, that seems like a decent baseline for april this far north

[Dave Gray]

It was overcast and rainy here and I produced 32.

It's interesting that cool days are better.  I am interested in getting some monthly averages to see.