Standing my ground....

This is what happens when you live in a state with the highest kilowatt rate in the continental US ($0.19/kwh).

Its gone up 60% in the last 3 years alone with no end in sight. Because I'm too stubborn to move, my chickens now reside in a "Category I Power Generating Facility".

This month I crowded on 36x 210 watt panels (7560 total watts) with this grid-tied solar system and for fun now go outside with a beer and lawn chair to watch my meter spin backwards.

Sometimes I'll even go fire up my little Case and throw a little CO2 back into space just for laughs. Al Gore....eat your heart out !

If anyone is interested in costs, tech, info. for this project, drop me a line.

Nice idea though, and I too would love to do it. Could put those up out in the fields and plow around them.

As a side note, I remember reading where somewhere in southern or mid Indiana banned them. The municipality, county, or...? I nearly blew my stack when read that. Some politicians saying, "You must do the right thing for the environment, but we just won't let you, so we'll have to tax you more".

I looked into this a while back but our state offers very little help.
La only gives you a tax credit on 50% of the money you spend. The property value increase is exempt but since my property tax bill is $0.00 right now I do not see any help there. Also the net metering rules say you only collect after you cancel your electric service.

Since our rate is 0.089 per KWH it would take 26 years to break even. 19 years if you figure the increase in property value.

Also, did you get them property-tax-exempt? I did, but I had to fight it.

Where I live in NY, the supposed rate is 13 cents per KWh - but once you figure the true cost it's much more. The last bill I got before going to solar was $81.34 total for 450 KWh. So, even though that bill shows 13 cents, it actually comes to 18 cents per KWh.

I've got a 5400 watt solar-array with Kyocera 190GTs, grid-tied but also with full battery backup via a 48 volt Rolls-Surette battery bank. Twin Outback inverters,hub, etc. Iota 48 VDC charger to keep batteries up via a diesel genset if ever needed (never happened yet). Had to build a barn for it away from the house in order to catch what little sun we get. We make about 20% more electricity each year than we use.
If we lived out in the southwest, we'd be making twice as much.

About saving money though? I don't know about that. Peace of mind and independence, yes. My system has a price sticker of $50,000. I paid $18,000 out-of-pocket, and the rest I got back in Federal and State incentives. Even so - if my normal bill was $1000 per year, this thing has to last 18 years with no problems to even break even (at current grid rates).

I'm still glad we did it though, and I regard it as a lifetime investment. If we move, so will the panels.

Now if the town tries to get cute and raise my property taxes for this improvement, I expect all yuz YT guys to come bail me out of jail.'cause I ain't paying. Period!!!

Seriously, I have yet to see where the town is on this, but will fight 'em.

I agree with your ROI philosophy. I feel dern good right now. I even waived to a passing CT Light & Power truck today.

I checked into it very carefully before installing. New York has one of the largest incentive programs in the country right now (and we're all taxed for it). If it hadn't been for the huge incentives, I would of installed off-grid with a much cheaper system. I can buy non-UL rated solar panels with full 25 year warranty at 1/2 the price of what I have now. Also, some mod-wave 5000 watt inverters would of been much cheaper than the full-wave Outbacks. But, to qualify for incentives - the panels must be UL listed and to have grid-tie, inverters must be full-wave and meet many strict requirements. I was also very leary of the grid-tie arrangement. I was wondering for a long time - after "selling" power to the grid, if they would charge me a delivery charge to get it back when I needed it. I never got a straight answer - but we just found out. This is the darkest month I've seen in years and this is the first month we needed some power back from the grid. We got it, and no delivery charges. At the moment, the power company owes us over 4000 KWhs - so we've got plenty in reserve. It's kind of like lending them money and not getting any interest on it. But, it beats making the excess power and wasting it.

• Roseville Sollar electric.