New electrical circuit - requesting assistance

[gfretwell]

That does seem to be true. They are marking this stuff up over 100% and then tacking on labor based on the last time I looked and what the street price was on the panels they were installing.

[gfretwell]

My electric bill is well over $200 a month at 11 cents a KWH so to make a dent in that we are talking a pretty big system, far more than I have acceptable roof for.

[trader_4]

Generally they try to size it so that it generates about what you use in total energy, so your bill would be close to zero. But its' not necessarily so simple. For example, here in NJ, solar customers get certificates for the amount of energy their solar array generates. It doesn't matter if you used all of that electric or put some of it into the grid. The electric companies are under a mandate to get X% of their energy each year from renewables and home solar counts toward that. So, the power companies then buy these certificates in an auction from the solar array owners. How much you then get varies. It was pretty high, with early adopters getting thousands for those certificates some years ago. More recently I think it's gone down quite a bit.

[trader_4]

I think they are pushing 300W a panel now, so for a 6KW system, you'd need about 20.

[Clare Snyder]

The wirenuts with the square wire coils are designed to "thread" themselves onto the parallel conductors, forcing them together to make a tight connection BEFORE tristing them together for mechanical strength. Properly installed the joint will NOT come loose. Twist the wires first and the connection never gets as tight. The ECS connectors are NOT square wire because they are made for aluminum where you do NOT want to cut thread-forms into the conductor!!

[Ralph Mowery]

I know the person that has this setup. He gave a talk a few years back. Seems like he has been at it about 10 years. Uses some large pannels , atleast 2 that are about 4 x 8 feet. Generates about 12 kw in full sun. They are not on his roof,but on posts out in the yard. He has a lot of land to put them on out in the country.

Over the 10 years looks like he provided about 2/3 of his power by solar.

Around here the power is about 11 cents per kwh.

[gfretwell]

I averaged 73KWH a day, to do that I need about 46 of those 300w collectors.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I average 28 a day and the peak in the summer was 39. Would not be difficult get the power but the cost is not justified. Top bill for the year was $130 with lots of AC but winter with heat is only $50. With a month to go, I anticipate $1200 for the year.

When I lived in CT, it would have been near double that.

[Scott Lurndal]

For my solar installation, I'm making about 12% per annum on that 10k. And the percentage increases with the price of electricity.

Payback period is just over 6 years; but the 12%+ ROI continues for 25.

100% in my case (~4kw system). I generated slightly over 1500 Kwh excess of my usage last year (and was renumerated for it at about USD0.03 per kwh, which covered most of the years sum of the mandatory monthly charge to be connected to the grid ($10.00/month)).

[Scott Lurndal]

My system was installed and wired in 4 hours.

[Scott Lurndal]

12 panels, about 4kw.

None that I know of.