Anyone use solar panels at home?

Ray, thanks for the posting. We have a Grundfos comfort pump installed for our upstairs bathroom. It really works out great. Funny, it didn't affect our electric bill at all. Perhaps that is because of hot water not wasted.

The comments about the crawlspace are timely. We are in an old farmhouse, in the PacNW that has a post and pier construction and are putting a real foundation on it this year. I will look into the buildingscience website to learn more. How does one stop the musty soil smell from permeating the house if it becomes part of the living space? Is the no vent method acceptable to most building codes?

I sure would like to know how you get your electric so low. Is that winter or summer consumption? We have compact fluorescents, dimmer lights, energy efficient washer, electric clothes dryer and a 1995 refrig. Yet in winter we are up to 1008 kwh usage. Summer is 838kwh. That's for a family of 4 in a 2000 sq. ft house.

 

If you're happy with 10 years, you'll positively flip out when you hear that mine "paid back" the same day I turned it on. (though I'm pretty sure I already posted that on this thread). And just about anybody living in a state with good subsidies can enjoy the same thing. If you finance the installation, the savings on your power bill will be higher than the amount paid for the loan, on a monthly basis. My system also cost about $11k, and my loan payment for that amount was under $70/month. My power bill savings averages OVER $70/month. So... I was paid back on day one. When my loan is paid off in another two years, I'm making money. I couldn't afford NOT to do this.

Instead of thinking of this as money out of your pocket, think of it as an investement, and stop thinking about "payback." Think Return on Investement. Investing in solar all but guarantees a better reaturn that in investment in the stock market. And yet look how many of us invest in stocks that don't help the environment!

And to really put it into perspective, how much return will you get for the GPS, or leather you put in a Prius?

 

Wow. We've got a 1350 sqft, family of 3 (but one is only 6 mo old) and our electricity bill rarely gets over 500 kWh/mo. It's usually in the high 300's to mid 400's. We have a radiant range, and an ancient fridge. We also use CF lights almost everywhere and have an electric dryer and washer (2001). We do use a swamp cooler instead of AC so that REALLY helps during the summer when it's hot.

Does your furnace run a lot? The blower that pushes the air through the ducts can use a lot of power. How well insulated is your place? You have on demand water heating, right? Do you also have a standard water heater? An electric one?

 

I'm beginning to suspect - 1, a lot of computers running long hours and 2, my office heater (elec.). The furnace rarely runs. We burn a pellet stove and wood. Though summer usage is still 800+ kwh and that's with no AC, hmmm.

 

Arizona
lights off, heat on at 69, pool set to run minimal hours, kwh for winter 2000
summer AC set at 83 pool runs 8 hours, kwh 3800 to 4000.

Bill an average 200-250 winter, 300-350 summer.

all electric house

 

Just for a data point.

Sacramento Valley, CA
2,250 sq foot home, family of three. Two are *mostly* home during the day.
We average 600 kWh/ month. Higher in the summer (AC) and lower in the winter.
And here's the kicker. This amount of usage ALSO covers the fuel for our primary car - and we drive that car about 11,500 miles/year. So again, 600kWh/month covers our houshold usage (gas furnace and gas hot water, everything else electric) AND our main vehicle. And yet how often do I hear about all those extra dirty power plants that we'll need to build in order to have EVs running around all over the place?

But wait... it gets better. Our PV array actually covers the cost of ALL of that electricity. So... if there were a few people out there who didn't want ot shoot me before, I'll bet I have a perfect record now!

 

We are installing elec solar on our house, should wipe out the bill, but the years to return the $$'s is out there. but the house will be green!

 

Yeah, I bet that heater draws close to 1.5 kW. If you run that thing a lot you'll really rack up the kWh.

Lots of computer and the routers ect. probably chew up a bit. Do you have flat screen or CRT monitors?

If you have a lot of remote control aware devices around the house you might have a pretty substantial ghost load as well.

 

Heater is 500w, computers all flat screen, just running long hours. I've wondered about the ghost load. It would be good to measure.

 

Just started looking into this for our house. Step 1 for me was to look at the electric bills for the last year. 3200 Kwh per month is what we use on average. Nope, I do not have any 0's misplaced. That's even with natural gas heat.

I think my next step is an audit of what the heck is consuming it, and attack this from a conservation point of view first.....

 

I would *not* want to pay your electric bill!

What I don't understand is that when I still had my super-insulated house in the Burbs, I had a 4,500 watt electric heater in the attached double insulated garage. It was one of those ugly yellow construction heaters with a NEMA 6-30p plug.

I used that thing to keep the garage at around +8 C when it was -40, and with gas heat and electric hot water tank I never had a monthly consumption higher than 950 kwh.

FYI 3,200 kwh here in Manitoba would cost around $185 with tax.

 

absolutely! If you really want to make a dent in your bill get your consumption under control. 3.2 MWh is a tonne of electricity!

 

hmm does anyone think that solar panels will do extremely good here in sugarland, TX(suburb of houston), we dont have any shade, how much paneling do u think wed need for 5000 sq ft house? i know that home depot does solar panels

 

SOLAR PV MAKE GREAT ECONOMIC SENSE

I have a 10KW PV system on my home in NJ. It produces about 12,000 kwh per year. If you live in New Jersey you are crazy to NOT install solar electric. We have the best rebate and SREC program in the country. My system will pay for itself in just under 4 years and after that it will be a huge cash machine.

I have had the system a little over a year. There was no federal tax credit then, but that is a trivial number anyway. At the time I put the system in NJ was offering a rebate of $5.50 per watt, so my rebate was $55,000 towards the cost of the system.

If you figure $0.12 a kwh the electricity I generate is worth about $1,400 a year. Add to that the Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECS) that you can sell in NJ. The power companies here are required to produce a certain amount of power from renewable sources, if they don't they pay the state a penalty of $300 per MW. One way they meet this goal is by buying SRECs which they can then use to claim they are using renewable sources. My 10kw system generates 12 SRECS a year which I am able to sell for between $210 and $250 each. Thus, the SRECS are worth about $2,700 a year. So, the total annual return from the system is about $4,100. That figure should go up each year as the price of power rises.

This system adds greatly to the value of the house too.

My system is comprised of 54 Sharp 185Watt panels hooked up to three Sunnyboy 2500watt Inverters and one Sunnyboy 1100watt inverter. They tie into a Sunnyboy controller that collects data and logs it onto my computer automatically so I can track what the system does over time.

If anyone wants more info I would be glad to share it, and anyone in NJ that would like to see the system is welcome to a tour.

 

Hi Emu Man,

not sure I understand your question - if you have no shade, and you're in TX, solar is for you!

To know how much generating capacity to buy / install, first figure out what your annual load is. Then see how much you can reduce that by conservation, conversion, and avoidance. Conservation is like replacing incandescent bulbs with compact flourescent, and/or replacing that old refrigerator from the '70s with a new top-rated Energy-Star rated model. Conversion is changing an electric water heater to a solar hot water system - this is entirely possible in TX, not necessarily so here in the northeast. Avoidance is using less air conditioning in the hottest part of the day.

Then when you know what your revised consumption is, you figure out how many watt-hours you need per day, and divide that by the average number of full-sun hours per day in your area. This is something like 3.5 here outside Boston. I imagine it is more like 5+ in Sugarland. Anyway, divide watt-hours/day by hours/day and you get watts, which will be the generating capacity of the array needed to replace your grid-supplied power with PV solar-supplied power. Then you get a system with something like that much capacity. Of course, if it is too expensive then you get a smaller system, and get the balance from the utility.

 

Solar is not necessarily more effective in the south than the northeast. While you may have more hours of stronger sun you also have much higher temperatures. The efficiency of the panels drops of dramatically as temperature rises. My highest production day ever was a perfectly clear day last February when the temperatures were close to zero!

As to sizing a system you should have on your electric bill what your total consumption was for the past 12 months. Further, most states mandate what is known as net meterign. With netmetering when you make excess power during the say your electric meter actually spins backwards while at night you draw from the grid and it goes forward.