On Apr 26, 2:48*am, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:49:17 -0700, mike wrote:
I have a proposal on my fridge for 2.3KW of solar for $17,250.
They are only really willing to say I will average about 13.8 KWH a
day over a year (5037 KWH a year). I pay 13 cents a KWH so that is
$654.81 a year. That pays back in 26.34 years if it doesn't break or
get blown away by a hurricane.
The federal government will kick back 30% and that drops it to a bit
over 18 years.
The state promised to kick back another 53% but that program ran out
of money and the people who planned on that money are swinging in the
wind right now. With all of the tax payer kickbacks it really made
sense but like all things too good to be true, the deal evaporated.
I was also not really that excited about the grid tie because if the
power is out, all of that generating power on your roof is out too.
The grid tie inverters only work when the grid is present.
That'a a real kick in the ass too, ain't it? * I was quite surprised
about
that when I first learned it. *I bet most people don't even realize it
works that way. *I wonder what the core issue is here and why
they haven't figured out a way around it?- Hide quoted text -

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The core isssue is safety. *If someone isolates and electrical circuit
they need to know it's dead, not being back fed from a PV system..

The core issue is energy storage.
Grid tie uses the utility as "storage".
If you wanna operate off-grid, you need some form of local energy
storage.
Unbuffered solar is very unreliable, even when the sun is shining.

I have a golf cart. That is about 1200-1500 A/H of storage, right in
my garage.- Hide quoted text -

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Next to nothing in real terms. And expensive.