Ok let’s take it a step further. Who had solar panels?!?!

I may do a YouTube on it lol

 

I have looked at those as well. About $2500 for my application. It’s a thought tho!

 

I have setup a few thermometers in various points of the basement and the median temperature is 66*. This helps my thinking tremendously. I am going to go with the HPWH for sure. Even checked out my local Lowe’s this after noon and they have 3. Probably pick it up this week. Would love to do a diy install and skip the $350 rebate. It’s going to cost more than that to get it installed. I don’t see it being any different than a standard electric tank and I do have a little wiring and plumbing experience but not much.

 

A guy I talked with who has a billboard size solar array for several years- and thereby older technology, made a very good point. If you have some cash to put somewhere it’s a good return.

Instead of thinking “when will I get my money back.” Think of it this way. What is my monthly return on my investment?”

I did this with my outdoor boiler. If someone said there is a certificate of deposit that will return X, would you buy it?
I am total electric REMC on a two story house. I bought a CD in the form of a boiler. My 10K investment gave me an interest payment the first year of several thousand dollars. I have to cut up downed trees on the farm anyway, so that is a wash.

Don’t think ROI on when do I recover the money eye I laid out, but what is my return. A person doesn’t buy real estate with a specific plan on getting the purchase money back, but what is that money doing for me there, versus sitting in the bank?

If a person has cash to invest into solar, then think of the first year savings in paying The Man, as a return versus the 1% it was earning in the bank. Yes, eventually the total investment will be recovered but when thinking of fiscal benefits it’s okay to look at the monthly return.

Trust me, it was a wiser decision than my Harley Davidson and pre-election Smith and Wesson stock purchases

 

Here is Maine, some towns are taxing solar. How how do you save if you have to pay taxes and the pay back is several years away. There are some large solar farms that have gone in. Looks good, but is it practical. I am waiting to see their numbers on how they make out. The power company is doing everything they can to discourage solar and wind. I wouldn't have either unless I lived in the woods way away from the grid. I'm over 70 so counting on a pay back from something seem very unrealistic.

 

Darker surface... like a parking lot.

 

I know everything has costs, but the supplier (homeowner) has costs too- the capital expense of the solar system, panels, battery storage, tying into the main grid so excess produced power can transfer to the power company grid, maintenance of the system and ultimately the takedown/disposal/replacement of the system at the end of the components’ useful life.
The fact remains that per region, supplying electricity power service is awarded to one company only and you have to do business with the company that has the monopoly on electricity for your area. As a producer of a product (electricity), you are forced to supply your product to them at whatever rate that company determines to be a wholesale price. Then, whenever you need it from them, you pay them whatever they determine the retail price should be. Electricity is interesting like that, unlike the gas industry that was deregulated some years back. The gas is all the same, but there are different companies that compete against each other by lowering prices and giving bill credit incentives for your natural gas business. The consumer wins in a competitive environment, but when it comes to electricity it is a heads we win, tails you lose setup.
Personally, I ran the numbers and don’t feel that putting in a full solar panel system would be cost effective for me, so I gladly pay my power bill knowing that some of what I pay covers the equipment and management costs they incur. However, when my outdoor wood boiler gets installed this spring, I will be smiling knowing that my wood hobby will pay me back in less energy consumption over the winter!

 

There are no batteries in a grid tie system
The electric company's rates are regulated here.
I can buy electricity from several suppliers, but Eversource does have a monopoly on delivery service.
There are so many incentives right now here that paybacks are often under 7 years with some closer to 4.

It would be nice if all states had the same setups, eh ?

 

get it i want a solar and wind set up, after we build ill try get some i scored some batteries and have a small scale set up

 

I would never barrow money to invest in the stock market or anything else. That would also be true for future savings from solar. That being said if I had $60k to invest I’d dollar cost average the stock market than buy solar panels. I no interest in becoming an electrical producer, I like to keep things simple.

 

Fellow in my township has done his own conversion by ordering components online. He uses golf cart batteries from Rural King. Switched over to LED lights to lower pull.

He told me that he would be off the grid if it wasn’t for his need for 220 in his wood work shop.

I had hail replacement roof a couple years ago, and just after having it replaced, I heard about the Tesla shingles. I certainly would have explored that if the timing was right.

 

My Uncle has plenty of money to spend, and has wind power, solar, and geothermal; and of all of them, only solar has any sort of return on investment that he will see in his lifetime.

 

Your costs and any other supplier costs are irrelevant. The power company is a REGULATED utility. They buy power at wholesale and deliver it to homes and businesses in their service area. Retail rates are set based on the power costs and the costs to maintain their system plus a very small margin and are determined by or approved the regulator. In most places, you do have a choice of buying your power from an alternative provider, but the regulated utility still collects a transmission charge.

If the power company pays a solar panel owner more than wholesale, they will have to raise retail rates and spread that cost across the other customers. That’s not fair to the customers or the other power generators and not economically sensible.

 

With all due respect, costs to produce are completely relevant. That is why power companies are looking at and implementing time-variant pricing, such as real time pricing, critical peak pricing, critical peak rebate, and time of use pricing. These models all factor in costs to produce electricity due to increased demand, and whether the power company needs to activate a larger plant at peak times, or tap into different sources like hydroelectric or solar.
When the consumer is using power at what has been determined to be a more expensive time, the Utility Charges More- I don’t know but I would go out on a limb and say that the power company is not going to give a private solar/wind/hydro producer higher rates for taking possession of their product at critical demand times, but the end consumer will certainly be charged higher prices.
It works that way in virtually every industry- plane tickets higher at high demand times, express toll lanes on the freeway having higher rates but offering to let the driver bypass the bumper to bumper traffic at rush hour...the theory is, if you want it pay for it. The jet fuel, flight crew, ground crew and equipment costs are all constant, as is the express toll lane that’s sitting there ready to be accessed; Solar or other means of producing electricity on the private scale have high costs, and therefore I think could command a higher rate. If the power company wants it, they can pay for it and factor that into the costs of production as one of their sources.
Now, I’m really outside the scope of my knowledge on the subject, but maybe someone here knows- if power company A in NY for example has a high demand on their grid due to excessive cold/storm, etc and they reach out to power company B in PA and have (x) amount of electricity transferred onto their grid, what does power company B charge power company A? I’m sure they don’t pay wholesale cost, since there were costs involved for power company B to produce that energy. Now, why wouldn’t that play out the same way for a property owner who is producing power and has costs to produce that power? My whole point is that if I produce and they take delivery of 2 units and pay me $2, and then I use 1 of their units and they charge me $2, looks like the private producer just came out on the short end of that arrangement.
I wonder if a fair and equitable solution could be analyzing usage and settling up a couple of times a year, say the private producer sends 100 units onto the grid and uses 80. Power company owes them for 20. Private producer sends 100 to the grid but uses 120 back, and would owe for 20.
Sorry if that was a little long....

 

It seems only fair to me that if you have solar panels and are selling power back to the suppliers during peak demand you should be payed at the peak rate or at least a peak rate credit for future usage. In the past 3 years there has been a ton of residents around here that have gotten solar panels. That’s got to help during peak demand periods.

 

VOLKEVIN, Vermont does this very thing. You have the option of buying more expensive electricity that is renewable generated. Either through solar manure wind Etc. This electricity is about 30% more expensive than regular electricity. There for solar panels on people's houses which are sold back to the grid are sold at a higher price that regular electricity.. even with this increased rate it does not economically make sense for me to put solar panels on my home where I have almost perfect Southern Exposure. $35,000 to put up solar panels which have a life expectancy of a 20 years to save on electric bill of $70 a month does not have a rate of return that interest me. If my electric bill is $500 a month it might be a different situation. But there is no guarantee when you put the panels up that the electric company will continually buy your electricity. Which is a deal-breaker for me.

 

With all due respect, your understanding of economics and free markets seems limited. YOUR costs are irrelevant. Like any buyer of a commodity, the power company will pay a wholesale price which is generally determined by what others are willing to sell at. If you can produce for less than that, you make a profit, more and you lose money or don’t sell. No one but you cares what your production costs are.

As mentioned in a few posts above, some markets will separate out renewable energy and give you a second higher wholesale price, but that price will still be based on what other renewable providers are willing to sell at.

And yes power is sold across the grid at wholesale prices. The power producers and the delivery companies are often not the same company. Enron decided to get involved in this market between production and delivery as a speculator which played a big role in their downfall.

 

I appreciate your information on the transfer costs/rates for electricity as it moves across the grid, as I didn’t know and I’m always happy to learn. I also appreciate Canadian border VT sharing how in VT there are premiums given for renewable energy production costs.
This thread began with the original poster talking about his all-in costs after rebates/subsidies to install a home system and the money in particular seasons that he could potentially recoup from selling his excess power to the power company. This is a discussion on MICROECONOMICS, something concerned with single factors and individual decisions. I took his inputs and applied them to the MACROECONOMICS scale, which are large scale, general economic factors. From the microeconomics perspective as a producer, production costs are very relevant of whether to commit the substantial money to acquire and set up a solar system at the poster’s residence. Since he mentioned being able to sell it onto the larger system and potentially defray his acquisition costs (Return on Investment), that’s what started the conversation on production costs, acquisition costs, and selling factors. You are right, the power company could give 2 shi*s about your production costs. They want what you produce, and they want it as cheap as they can acquire it. They look at it on the macro scale, and the original poster looks at it from the micro scale. I applied both to the conversation, as well as business- since producing and selling on the retail or wholesale market is business.
There’s no need to be condescending. And, I majored in business with a minor in Economics, concentration in Industrial Organization (which pertains to this scenario we have been discussing).

In economics, industrial organization or industrial economy is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of (and, therefore, the boundaries between) firms and markets. Industrial organization adds real-world complications to the perfectly competitive model, complications such as transaction costs,[1] limited information, and barriers to entry of new firms that may be associated with imperfect competition. It analyzes determinants of firm and market organization and behavior as between competition[2] and monopoly,[3] including from government actions. (Wikipedia gave a good definition, better than I could rattle off so I included it.)