🏡 Better Homes OffshoreDrilling's (mostly) DIY Solar install extravaganza.
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Why Solar?
Economics of Solar
This is the amount of generation I was expecting for winter. Still down an inverter right now too
Full ish sun. Sun angle vs panel angle vs partial filtering through trees with no leaves. I’ve run enough now that I’m confident there’s nothing wrong. Just the quirks of my particular installation conditions on the house.
My neighborhood is pretty much a forest, I have the biggest lot and one of maybe 10 homes with a south facing roof which gets my house far enough away from the lot lines to have free and clear sun.
I’ve had a few days of what I think is acceptable production for this time of year. Xmas has been the best day so far, today looks like I’ll beat that though.
I’m down about 1500w worth of panels that could potentially produce right now, this is in excess of 50% capacity which I think is pretty good for winter. It’s about half my daily usage right now.
Electrical billing is for the net production of the entire year so this isn’t a concern.
This is what production looks like at this moment.
The “NC” panels are the ones with a bum inverter, the 0 panel is physically not there because it wouldn’t fit due to chimney, the panel above that with 133W has the chimney shadow on it.
The six panels on the right are on my garage roof, everything else is on 2nd floor roof of house. House is facing 197* roof is a 4/12 pitch.
Bump.
I’ve gotten as far as “we’ll put you in touch with someone in our company that deals with troubleshooting” and then no response for 40 days after repeated emails.
Once this is all sorted out, 100% giving these guys a bad review. For a company that markets themselves as helping you DIY, communication is a god damn joke. Someone should be available to return a phone call or email same or next business day.
I’m not sweating too much because there’s no way I’m climbing around on an icy roof anyway.
If this isn’t resolved in a few months I’ll just buy a new microinverter and be done with it .
I’ve gotten as far as “we’ll put you in touch with someone in our company that deals with troubleshooting” and then no response for 40 days after repeated emails.
Once this is all sorted out, 100% giving these guys a bad review. For a company that markets themselves as helping you DIY, communication is a god damn joke. Someone should be available to return a phone call or email same or next business day.
I’m not sweating too much because there’s no way I’m climbing around on an icy roof anyway.
If this isn’t resolved in a few months I’ll just buy a new microinverter and be done with it .
I’ve got a phone call scheduled with a company this afternoon to sell my SRECs as well. Really curious how that goes.
On a positive note, I knocked $24.80 off my bill last month.
Sooo it sounds like I may be out of luck on getting paid for SRECs. Company I called said they couldn’t help me but I should be able to get ahold of the state and they could help. Reading through a FAQ, it doesn’t seem that I am able to do so as an individual.
The state phone number for the program is a dead end 1980s robot answering service. Shot off a message in their “contact us” form online.
Also reached out to the company I bought my shit from but not expecting to hear from them for a month.
The state phone number for the program is a dead end 1980s robot answering service. Shot off a message in their “contact us” form online.
Also reached out to the company I bought my shit from but not expecting to hear from them for a month.
Well that sucks. Guess you'll be charging the neighbors a fee when the power goes out and they want a taste.
I should have researched better. It’s still worth it but I had expected more money back and payoff will take longer. Just filed taxes yesterday, $5799 back for my solar tax credit. Net system cost of $13,534.
$1.54/watt
ALL THE POWER!!!!
Still down 3 panels but making some juice today.
So if my normal daily usage is 19-31kwh, this would basically be paying for my day to day? If I use 23kwh and generate 28kwh, does that extra 5kwh go back into the grid and the electric company gives me a credit/pays me?
This is my real usage the last couple of days.
View attachment 151886
This is my real usage the last couple of days.
View attachment 151886
It depends what your utility offers for net metering agreement and size of your solar array.
PVWatts
Estimates the energy production and cost of energy of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) energy systems throughout the world. It allows homeowners, small building owners, installers and manufacturers to easily develop estimates of the performance of potential PV installations
Project Sunroof
Enter a state, county, city, or zip code to see a solar estimate for the area, based on the amount of usable sunlight and roof space.
sunroof.withgoogle.com
And yes it would be paying for your day to day. I’m billed hourly, when I generate excess it’s a credit that goes against usage. The credit rolls over for a year. So, summer you generate a lot of excess and that is credited against your usage in the low generation months.
The idea is to size generation to match usage over a year. Utility won’t pay you, only credit against usage. So, it doesn’t make any sense to build excess generation unless you plan on increasing your usage in the near future.
The idea is to size generation to match usage over a year. Utility won’t pay you, only credit against usage. So, it doesn’t make any sense to build excess generation unless you plan on increasing your usage in the near future.
Last couple days of generation:
Saturday with intermittent clouds
Sunday with clear skies all day. Also my best day so far. Cool that you can see the difference in how smooth generation is.
Saturday with intermittent clouds
Sunday with clear skies all day. Also my best day so far. Cool that you can see the difference in how smooth generation is.
Every time it rains I’m just waiting for a roof leak after installing all of this.
I made 120ish holes in my brand new roof and had to get them all done correctly.
So far so good.
I made 120ish holes in my brand new roof and had to get them all done correctly.
So far so good.
Broke 1 MW of generation yesterday!
Also, electric bill is looking healthy for this month.
The angle of the sun has finally gotten high enough to keep the panels totally out of shade until it’s the last hour-ish above the horizon. You can see the upward trend of the sunny days.
Also, electric bill is looking healthy for this month.
The angle of the sun has finally gotten high enough to keep the panels totally out of shade until it’s the last hour-ish above the horizon. You can see the upward trend of the sunny days.
Also, FINALLY heard back about that inverter. I have to get them a video of the status LED and some other basic info. Expecting the run around for a couple more months at this pace but at least making progress.
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