My Solar PV journey is officially ending

[1201]

or at least going on a very long Hiatus.

So I built a passive solar house- the roof is 35° slope facing 4° west. no penetrations, no shading. I built it to be perfect for solar panels.

https://imgur.com/a/hFKDZKx

BUT, net metering ended two months ago before I could get in and I have spent the last two months trying to make solar with batteries make sense, and I have finally come to the conclusion that, right now, I cant.

energy averages $.11/kwh, down from $.14/kwh last year.

In the winter my house will use very little energy for HVAC, which is the main load for houses here my part of Texas. with no hvac system, on sunny days the house sits about 75 degrees due to all the radiant heat coming in through the south facing windows.

If I get 10 years out of an inverter and 6000 cycles out of the battery, I basically break even.

you guys are a fun but crazy bunch who persist through headaches of solar, and from reading on here, they are many. I don't have the patience to deal with all that comes with Solar PV and batteries

I have decided to do three things.
1. Wait for energy prices to go up and for battery
and inverter prices to come down
2. use a clothes line to dry clothes and save money there
3. Use a cheap diy Solar THERMAL hot water system to heat my water.

however, I still have a decision to make about backup for my well pump. we hardly ever lose power and I have 25 gallons of reserve in the pressure tank but if we have a freeze we could lose power for over a day. I'm going between an inverter/ battery , or a generator, and frankly the generator is winning right now :D

 

[Mattb4]

Understandable. Solar, depending on grid availability and cost, can be uneconomical to put in. It has no real pay back where I live with low fixed electrical rates. In my case I dabble in it for reasons that are not to save money. I could spend my money on wine, women and song but at my age I gave up drinking, women are hard to acquire and expensive to maintain and I never could carry a tune. So I am left to find other things to occupy my time.

Always been fascinated with making things work. It is a great deal of satisfaction to power the lights, cook my dinner, watch my TV from power generated from my own setup solar power supply. Even if it cost more than simply buying it from the Co-Op.

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Depends on the well pump requirements. Some pumps have a pretty huge surge that makes powering them off-grid difficult. Generator is likely cheaper, but it depends on your actual needs.

 

[EastTexCowboy]

or at least going on a very long Hiatus.

So I built a passive solar house- the roof is 35° slope facing 4° west. no penetrations, no shading. I built it to be perfect for solar panels.

https://imgur.com/a/hFKDZKx

BUT, net metering ended two months ago before I could get in and I have spent the last two months trying to make solar with batteries make sense, and I have finally come to the conclusion that, right now, I cant.

energy averages $.11/kwh, down from $.14/kwh last year.

In the winter my house will use very little energy for HVAC, which is the main load for houses here my part of Texas. with no hvac system, on sunny days the house sits about 75 degrees due to all the radiant heat coming in through the south facing windows.

If I get 10 years out of an inverter and 6000 cycles out of the battery, I basically break even.

you guys are a fun but crazy bunch who persist through headaches of solar, and from reading on here, they are many. I don't have the patience to deal with all that comes with Solar PV and batteries

I have decided to do three things.
1. Wait for energy prices to go up and for battery
and inverter prices to come down
2. use a clothes line to dry clothes and save money there
3. Use a cheap diy Solar THERMAL hot water system to heat my water.

however, I still have a decision to make about backup for my well pump. we hardly ever lose power and I have 25 gallons of reserve in the pressure tank but if we have a freeze we could lose power for over a day. I'm going between an inverter/ battery , or a generator, and frankly the generator is winning right now :D

I give you a lot of credit for the effort you have put in and for making a practical decision based on your needs. As a fellow Texan, I'm glad we're not paying the crazy rates like some other areas in the country. Ours went up to 13 cents and has stayed there, but that's still very reasonable. Like many here I never expected my off grid system to pay for itself. It sounds like you're on exactly the right track for achieving your goals, so congratulations, good luck, and maybe we'll see you again down the road!

 

[Delmar]

Texas has affordable electricity which makes it difficult to justify solar as primary power. The biggest expense would be bringing power to a remote location. I live a nearby a major power plant so rarely lose power for extended periods. Instead will have 8-12 hour rolling blackouts when the power plant is load sharing for other plants that went down.

My golf cart backup system works perfectly for the rolling blackouts. I personally hate the drone of an ICE generator. Plus having to source gas, hope the gas doesn't go stale, oil changes, etc. The golf cart makes a handy self-propelled power station and wheelbarrow when working on my property. I have a repurposed APC 48V 2700W UPSverter that has no problem starting my 1/2hp garage door opener or garbage disposal. What HP is the well pump?

 

[1201]

Understandable. Solar, depending on grid availability and cost, can be uneconomical to put in. It has no real pay back where I live with low fixed electrical rates. In my case I dabble in it for reasons that are not to save money. I could spend my money on wine, women and song but at my age I gave up drinking, women are hard to acquire and expensive to maintain and I never could carry a tune. So I am left to find other things to occupy my time.

Always been fascinated with making things work. It is a great deal of satisfaction to power the lights, cook my dinner, watch my TV from power generated from my own setup solar power supply. Even if it cost more than simply buying it from the Co-Op

I love the idea too. I love data and I love anything to do with solar- passive heat, solar thermal , even pv but I noticed that many on here have solar as their hobby and in that regard it makes a lot of sense.

 

[Shimmy]

Always comes down to your personal situation. For me, the only incremental improvement with payback is a small supplemental system to cover daytime base loads with a 1kWh battery and ~800-1,200W of PV.

You have done a good job designing high impact solutions first.

 

[ADDvanced]

I was told Texas has a shit power grid that goes out all the time. But yeah, if you already have hookups on your property for grid power, it's a lot harder to justify. My local utility company wanted almost $500 to show up and tell me it will be $8-10k to get the power onto my land, then thousands more in cable/trenching. Easy choice to go solar.

 

[1201]

Depends on the well pump requirements. Some pumps have a pretty huge surge that makes powering them off-grid difficult. Generator is likely cheaper, but it depends on your actual needs.

Mine is fairly easy. 25 amp surge, 9 amp run

 

[1201]

I give you a lot of credit for the effort you have put in and for making a practical decision based on your needs. As a fellow Texan, I'm glad we're not paying the crazy rates like some other areas in the country. Ours went up to 13 cents and has stayed there, but that's still very reasonable. Like many here I never expected my off grid system to pay for itself. It sounds like you're on exactly the right track for achieving your goals, so congratulations, good luck, and maybe we'll see you again down the road!

Thanks man. Solar pv is inevitable, as prices come down and the technology gets better. I'm all for the "utility death spiral"

 

[Delmar]

I was told Texas has a shit power grid that goes out all the time.

You can’t believe everything you hear. Texas is a big state, and I’m sure some areas have power problems no different than any other state. Everything is bigger in Texas, including our power outages.

Most of the power problems are from hurricanes. The Texas plants away from the gulf will load share for plants on the coast, including Louisiana plants. The 2021 Houston freeze was an 8-day event where the temps plummeted to the low teens. Solar panels were covered in snow and wind generators iced. Power plants were not designed to operate in those conditions, and have since been retrofitted for freeze protection.

 

[1201]

Texas has affordable electricity which makes it difficult to justify solar as primary power. The biggest expense would be bringing power to a remote location. I live a nearby a major power plant so rarely lose power for extended periods. Instead will have 8-12 hour rolling blackouts when the power plant is load sharing for other plants that went down.

My golf cart backup system works perfectly for the rolling blackouts. I personally hate the drone of an ICE generator. Plus having to source gas, hope the gas doesn't go stale, oil changes, etc. The golf cart makes a handy self-propelled power station and wheelbarrow when working on my property. I have a repurposed APC 48V 2700W UPSverter that has no problem starting my 1/2hp garage door opener or garbage disposal. What HP is the well pump?

that's a cool setup! good thinking.
the well pump is 1 hp but its about 140ft down so not a very hard load. I like your thoughts about IC engines and noise and gas going bad

 

[1201]

Always comes down to your personal situation. For me, the only incremental improvement with payback is a small supplemental system to cover daytime base loads with a 1kWh battery and ~800-1,200W of PV.

You have done a good job designing high impact solutions first.

I agree! I looked into a small system, but needing to power my well pump I would need a strong inverter. they consume .15 to .2 kw/h. up to 5kwh a day just to have the inverter in operation.

I could look at grid tied without battery, but I have to pay $15 a month for that benefit, which would take 3kw of panels just to cover. That's not too bad, about $1000 worth of panels after tax credit, but the well pump would still be down in an outage so I would still need a solution for that.

 

[Delmar]

Mine is fairly easy. 25 amp surge, 9 amp run

Hmmm...need to find a 1hp motor to test. The UPSverter has a 15A receptacle so should be able to start the motor. I have plenty of battery to punch the UPSverter.

Yes the UPSverter is inefficient at standby or under light load. Who cares since it will only operate during grid down. A used low-frequency APC with bad internal batteries will be a fraction of the price of the equivalent low-frequency inverter.

 

[dcg9381]

two months ago before I could get in and I have spent the last two months trying to make solar with batteries make sense, and I have finally come to the conclusion that, right now, I cant.

energy averages $.11/kwh, down from $.14/kwh last year.

In the


I have decided to do three things.
1. Wait for energy prices to go up and for battery
and inverter prices to come down
2. use a clothes line to dry clothes and save money there
3. Use a cheap diy Solar THERMAL hot water system to heat my water.

however, I still have a decision to make about backup for my well pump. we hardly ever lose power and I have 25 gallons of reserve in the pressure tank but if we have a freeze we could lose power for over a day. I'm going between an inverter/ battery , or a generator, and frankly the generator is winning right now :D

Your decisions are fine. Some of us in this state got "in" to net metering only to have the rules on those investments flipped and thrown out. Talk about burning money.

The reality is that even without net metering, we use the majority of the power we produce every day. It's just that now whatever we push back is essentially wasted (free to the power company). Is it worth adding another $5-8k worth of batteries to capture that power and meter it out? Maybe it is over 10 years (financially).

The use case that has my attention is backup power. Once you want that use case (and look, the simple low dollar solution to that is a generator) - then doing an inverter that can store and meter out power is now dual purpose. It "works around" net metering AND it provides a backup function.

Good financial decision? That I'm not sure about.

 

[dcg9381]

I was told Texas has a shit power grid that goes out all the time.

The Texas grid is it's own political entity.
Unfortunately, MOST of Texas is on electrical power for heat and our heat pumps are NOT designed cold weather efficiency, so they eventually move to resistive heat - which is massive power draw and that strains the grid.

It failed in 2021 due to failure to winterize natural gas lines that were there to spin up turbines and high heating demands.
Many local failures in 2023, the overall grid was fine but local providers failed to handle trees / power lines that became burdened with an unusual amount of ice. Most of the outages were local transmission related.

In both cases, some people lost power for 1-2 weeks. It was a S-Show.

 

[CoolWill]

I think when you do the math and factor in labor and maintenance, solar thermal hot water just doesn't work out compared to solar electric hot water.

Even if you don't use solar for power and only want to heat water with it, electric is the better route. After all the plumbing and pumps and valves and time and up keep, you could just get some PV panels and heat the water electrically.

 

[1201]

Hmmm...need to find a 1hp motor to test. The UPSverter has a 15A receptacle so should be able to start the motor. I have plenty of battery to punch the UPSverter.

Yes the UPSverter is inefficient at standby or under light load. Who cares since it will only operate during grid down. A used low-frequency APC with bad internal batteries will be a fraction of the price of the equivalent low-frequency inverter.

sorry I know zero about apc ups. so you just buy a used one for the inverter and discard the batteries and use your own batteries? interesting.

 

[1201]

The Texas grid is it's own political entity.
Unfortunately, MOST of Texas is on electrical power for heat and our heat pumps are NOT designed cold weather efficiency, so they eventually move to resistive heat - which is massive power draw and that strains the grid.

It failed in 2021 due to failure to winterize natural gas lines that were there to spin up turbines and high heating demands.
Many local failures in 2023, the overall grid was fine but local providers failed to handle trees / power lines that became burdened with an unusual amount of ice. Most of the outages were local transmission related.

In both cases, some people lost power for 1-2 weeks. It was a S-Show.

so they've fixed the problems? good to know. I didnt lose power or water but I knew people who were without BOTH for up to a week. It was terrible

 

[JLBinTN]

In the winter my house will use very little energy for HVAC, which is the main load for houses here my part of Texas. with no hvac system, on sunny days the house sits about 75 degrees due to all the radiant heat coming in through the south facing windows.

If it "sits about 75 degrees" on sunny days in the winter, what does it sit in the summer?