figuring payback

Re: figuring payback

Nigtomdaw,

Not a problem... Since we still have the second amendment here (even in Kalifornia)--I can still protect myself.

Normally the reason I answer Grid Tie vs Off-Grid is because the first thing 99% of the folks ask is how much will I spend/cost/return on investment/tight money/save/etc... If you are asking in terms of money--sorry, Grid Power is cheaper than solar if you already have it wired up to the edge of your home.

The other reason is that 90% of the people out there are looking to reduce their 2,000 kWhr per month ($200-$500 per month) power bill with solar... If they are willing to put up ~$150,000 for a grid tie system or ~$500,000 for an off-grid system--then no problem offsetting their monthly power bill.

If you want to do it to save the environment--those few tonnes of batteries and sulfuric acid every 10 years is hard on the environment too...

And regarding power, the last time there was an outage that lasted more than a couple of hours--was 50+ years ago (lasted around one week because the trees in the neighborhood took out the power distribution system after a storm).

With conservation, 20 gallons of gasoline (plus more in the car+truck), I can easily last 2 weeks with my Honda eu2000i generator--or have extra fuel to bugout.

I did look into an off grid system--and if the XW system was available then--I probably would have done it...

Regarding Grid Tie--that makes sense here because I pay less than $6.00 per month for a storage battery that can shift my winter deficit into my summer surplus. Can't do that with any battery system.

But, again, I can do 1 year net metering because my Utility was dragged kicking and screaming into doing this--and the original promise was that only 0.5% of their customer base would be allowed to sign up for this plan (now changed to 1.0% under new law).

Re: figuring payback

Niel,

At work (San Jose, CA), we had one rolling black out that lasted about one hour. At home, no blackout.

At the time, California had entered into deregulation required our major utilities to sell off all of their generators and buy electricity with a 24 hour ahead contract (spot market)--and that worked well when there was an excess of generating capacity.

But since California had not allowed any new power plants to be built and since generator owners could not write contracts for power 5-20 years in the future (like anyone else, who would finance 100% of a power plant with a 20+ year life and no idea who will buy the power and at what price), nobody would build any new plants in California.

When the companies that owned the generators figured out how to game the system, and the state told the power companies that they had to pay virtually any price for electricity on the spot market (many times the retail price they sold the power for) and the utilities where not allowed to charge customers for the higher costs, and they where not allowed to write long term contracts--the state PUC drove both utilities to virtual bankrupsy and forced on the state taxpayers a $25,000,000,000 (yes billion) 40 year bonds to just to pay for all of this summer power fiasco over a year or two (remember, Enron was a major player in this market--but so was Los Angeles Power and Light--the city power company made huge amounts of money during this time too).

Since then, the have change the regulations on how the companies contract for power, there have been multiple "peaker" natural gas fired power plants built in the SF Bay area, and there has been quite a bit of expansion to the regional power grid. And it was one of the major reasons that we recalled our freshly re-elected governor and replaced him with the "Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So--short answer, other than one, hour long, blackout at work--nope, did not affect me at all.

-Bill

Re: figuring payback

Brock wrote: »

When I get asked when my system pays for itself, I ask when does a genset pay for itself?

In my case, the first time my $900 generator paid itself off--I did not have to buy $x,xxx worth of batteries for grid tied solar. In other cases, it may be when the person does not need to purchase their replacement batteries ~7-10 years down the road.

I just change the stored gasoline once per year (dump in car--so all I lose was the interest on $xx worth of gasoline--although, the last time it turned out to be an "investment" as the price has shot way up this year).

But--that is for my location. If I was in an area that got ice storms and/or hurricane power outages that lasted days or even weeks--An off grid capable system would make lots of sense to me. And if California ever gets back into real daily power outages--it would probably be worth converting to off-grid capable solar.

And, lastly, my "big one" will be an earth quake--I don't know that my 2nd story roof mounted solar array will still be functional after an earthquake. A small generator + 20 gallons of gas are probably worth more to me than 20 solar panels and x tons of batteries if I have to bug-out.

-Bill