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jdemaris
03-18-2006 18:51:31
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When you say "it's not worth it", I do not agree. If you hire someone to do the installation and equipment buying, it probably will NOT be worth it. If you follow all the advice without question handed out at some of the alternative-energy seminars, you'll go broke. If you handle much yourself it can be different. If a person utilizes the State and Federal incentives and tax breaks in conjuction with the incentives many power companies have to give - you can wind up paying about 30% of the total system cost. With that, in the northeast - you are looking at an approximate 20 year payback time - and that's conservative. With utility rates going up all the time, the payback is likely to be shorter. Now you mentioned the system cost for an electrician - I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm a licensed electrician and I've got several accounts at electrial supply stores - and I don't pay any less for solar panels then anybody else does. In fact, if I buy any solar equipment that way, I'll probably pay more than what anybody can buy it on-line for. The only price-break is if you buy direct from factories in large quantities - around $50,000 - $100,000 worth at a time - like Kyocera, Sharp, Mitsubishi, Sanyo, etc. You mention $19,000 for an inverter and panels - that's not enough to buy a useful sytem. A good 4000 watt inverter is $4000 at bottom dollar. The remainding $15,000 will get you 3300 watts of solar panels if you buy carefully, but if you hire an "certified installer", it will get you much less. Many are pricing panels at $6-$8 per watt instead of $4-$5. In the northeast, you need at least 5000 watts in panels to average 500 KWh per month, and the average home needs twice that. So, money is well spent making a home more energy efficient along with intalling solar. I had my usage down below 50% before I installed it. You also mentioned not having a backup with solar- not true. When building the sytem, you can buy a standard grid-tie inverter, or a battery-backup-grid-tie inverter. The latter costs an extra $1000 and then you have to buy batteries - the best buy being conventional lead-acid deep-cycle golf-cart batteries. The high-price batteries often sold for solar are a waste of money (e.g. AGMs). There are quite a few people in my area generating more electricity than they use and selling it back to the power company. The power company charges everyone an added fee every month - to be put aside - and handed back out to people that apply for solar incentives. So, many people are paying for it and don't realize it. To anyone interested, I give one warning. I'm used to doing everything myself - but - in order to qualify for these incentives - I was forced to hire a "certified" installer. I've found that many are price-gougers - and if you don't pay close attention - any incentives you are getting will evaporate. One case-in-point. I had to hire someone to come to my place when I first got started. He priced the system I needed at $65,000 and told me, that when I was all done, I'd only have to pay $28,000 (after all the incentives and tax breaks). Sounds good, right? Bullsh*t! I priced the entire system and found several places I could buy it for $42,000. That means the installer was going to make, at least, $23,000 for two weeks work at my home. I wound up putting the system in for a total of $16,000 after all the incentives and tax breaks - $12,000 cheaper that what the one installer wanted to charge. To anyone who is interested in this technology, check what your state and local power companies incentives are - but keep in mind there is a world-wide shortage on solar-electric since Europe if installing a lot of it. Prices are skyrocketing.
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