Solar Panels in MA

you were right down the street from us, must have been the only nice day we've had since labor day weekend
there has been a big push in the last decade or so, both public and private.
if you have a clear sky, it is a pretty short payoff, and at 24 cents/kwh, well worth it.

 

...when the cost REALLY IS $0.00......I'll be one of them!

Actually, our co-op allows their members to invest in a solar farm, allowing them to get some tax kickback money from uncle sugar.....so "statistically" some of my electricity is already "free."

When they start taxing solar energy.....then we will know that it's reached full economic viability.
Until then?
Yeah.....it's getting there in the northeast.

The sun shines there too......sometimes.

 

not in the last 70 days...

 

"Statistically" sunny.

Someday solar and battery tech will allow for sun worshipers even in the Frozen North to enjoy solar that is economic both statistically and 'real-world'

....just make sure you have a plan for Hurricanes, snow loading and Nor'easters.....

 

solar panels that could absorb economically on cloudy days would be amazing

 

I have a few small panels for aux lighting, some IOT sensors and one gate motor on my country place.

They spit out some watts even on cloudy days - something like 10-20 percent if I'm accurately informed.
For very low use items suck as motion activated aux lighting, sensor ops, and gate actuators.....I just have to budget for the overhead in the charge controllers and my electrical consumption - or - just guess and buy more solar than I think I need.

These are early days yet.
One for fox....
One for crow...

 

that's why we need gov incentives, to keep the r&d momentum going

 

Snow doesn't stay around long on PV panels. As soon as a corner gets clear, it starts heating up.

 

Or they are just mis-informed.

It is a matter or latitude; they work better the nearer to the equator that you are.
It has nothing to do with longitude, your position east or west.

There is a fair amount of geography that is farther south than California......all the way across the country.

 

i suspect he meant northeast, since that is where he was visiting

 

They work just fine in Minnesota. Certainly not as well as southern CA, but they are still cheaper here than paying the utility for the same amount of electricity (prior to any incentives).

 

Cheaper prior to incentives? I have not seen that idt

 

Cheaper over the lifetime of the panels, yes.
Just taking the full cost of the panels, adding repair/replacement costs for the inverters (as they won’t last 35 years), and dividing by the expected lifetime production, our costs is 12.5 cents/kWh. That cost won’t increase for the next 35 years. I doubt you would get the same deal from the grid.
With the federal incentives, that cost is about 8.5 cents/kWh.

This calculation is different for everyone. For example, I am in a stable area and don’t expect to move, ever. So I should see that full return (if I live that long). For someone renting, this doesn’t work.

 

The problem I see with the break even calculators is the future kWh cost. Hard to predict

 

Pretty easy to say it won’t be going down

 

Can’t argue with that

 

As mentioned, it is advantage solar panels on this metric as the solar cost is “locked in” at time of purchase and historically utility kWh prices just rise with time.

Hard to say this as a solar owner and big proponent, but still have to point out the financial downside to solar: cost opportunity losses. That is perhaps the biggest problem with solar and other eco-tech break-even calculations.

Had we not gone solar and kept paying our utility the usual way, invested the money we put into our solar panels instead into our general strategy of S&P index or other broad mutual funds, we may have never broken even with solar (yes, here in sunny CA and with our pricy utility PG&E). If instead we were rather conservative investors and kept our earnings in CDs, certainly solar would be the financial victor.

At the end of the day sometimes it is about finding the lowest hanging green tech fruit for the buck. Solar would then still make a lot of sense in numerous scenarios.

 

agreed, and i'm not arguing that at all. if i had the application, i would gladly pay more.