Assist in creating a DIY Guide to Installing Grid Tied Solar on your Home.

[DougSpindler]

I think it makes little sense to have any east facing panels.  Power company would only pay $0.12 or $0.24 kWhr.  West facing would pay $0.24 or $0.45 when the sun is at the same angle. 

This whole thing of over producing to earn energy credits in $$$ and then using those credits to buy the electricity back makes this complicated.

You also need to factor in some change risk. You’re installing panels for 25+ years. The sun will keep following the same path in the sky that whole time. The billing and credit arrangements with your local power company are not nearly as stable.

Yes, but PG&E has too many solar customers producing electricty during mid day when solar production is at it’s greatest.  They are paying at those times because they don’t need it.  Same is true with late morning.  Then don’t need the solar generated electricity so they pay even less.

What PG&E is doing is raising the rates they are paying for solar electricity when they need it.  Early afternoon into early evening.). One rate plan has PG&E paying $0.85 kWhr for solar generated electricty exported to them.

If anything PG&E will continue to increase the amount of money they charge or will credit for kWhrs sold to them mid-afternoon or when the sun is to the west.

There is no reason the increase off peak rates.  At those times PG&E has more electricty than is in demand by customers.

PG&E is telling customers install panels on a west facing roof before installing on south facing roof.



 

[ez24]

The billing and credit arrangements with your local power company are not nearly as stable.

I have a friend who went through all the shit you are going through.  Tiers and buy-backs calculations up the ying-yang.  He would brag about the money all the time.  Then utility company (in So Calif) changed the rules and now he will not even talk about it  (ie the buy-back is now worth less than $2 a year and he has a lot of panels ).

He also went with the local controller that is on each panel.  After the warranty expired, one panel went out and he was able to tell which one (he checks the software daily) and went up on the roof and replaced it.  I helped him lift the new panel on the roof.  I just cannot understand why - his income is over $1000 a day and at 70 he was on his roof replacing panels?  Don't get so crazy.

[fourtytwo42]

May be you have to decide if you are doing this as a money making excercise or not. In the UK you only get subsidy if the whole installation is done by a "professional installer" and of course that get's you involved in all sorts of crazy calculations as well as crystal ball gazing.

Personally I installed my subsidy free DIY system in part to help the enviroment, in part to further reduce my "grid" dependancy and in my case to reduce both my oil and electricity bills. I don't have to fret whatever about subsidy rates and I already know my payback times worst case

I would be very wary of spending a lot of money and expecting to get it back again in a hurry!

[DougSpindler]

I think you are misunderstanding what’s going on with  PG&E.  All  customers by the end of this year are required to be on a TOU rate plan.  One can not make money selling electricty to PG&E.  But what we all have to do is “sell” the excess we produce at market rate to PG&E to receive energy credits which are measured in dollars.  At the end of 12 month any energy credits dollars are given to PG&E for free.  There are no roll over energy dollar credits after a year.

In the past solar customers who prodced excess kWhrs would receive credits based on kWhrs, not the value of the kWhr.  Customers were trading kHrs not the value of the kWhr at the time it was produced or purchased back.  Those days are over for us.

The challenge solar companies and potential customers have right now is figuring out the correct size system to purchase.  Based on my actual usage of 10,000 kWhrs per year if I were to purchase a solar system which produced 10,000 kWhrs per year in 25 years I will have given over $130,000 of free electricty to the power company (PG&E) for free,  I also would have paid two to three times as much for a solar system.  Makes no sense to me to spend $20,000 to $30,000 for a solar system when a system costing me $10,000 would provide all the electricty can use.

I have a feeling PG&E has figured this out and once existing solar customers are switched onto the new rate plans next year many will be grossly over producing electricty and having to give that electricity away for free to the power company.

Many existing PG&E customers who have solar panels which were designed to off set 100% of the kWhr usage will be screwed.  If the solar panels are printed towars the east which is when PG&E pays the least they will not have produced enough energy credits dollars to cover the cost of the electricty they will have to buy back later in the day when the prices ar 3.75 times higher.

[NiHaoMike]

May be you have to decide if you are doing this as a money making excercise or not. In the UK you only get subsidy if the whole installation is done by a "professional installer" and of course that get's you involved in all sorts of crazy calculations as well as crystal ball gazing.

Personally I installed my subsidy free DIY system in part to help the enviroment, in part to further reduce my "grid" dependancy and in my case to reduce both my oil and electricity bills. I don't have to fret whatever about subsidy rates and I already know my payback times worst case

I would be very wary of spending a lot of money and expecting to get it back again in a hurry!

The panels themselves aren't even that expensive nowadays. Hence why DIY easily ends up cheaper even if that means giving up any subsidies. Also far more educational and fun! I will always remember the experience of putting together my first solar power system, from designing the system, assembling the electronics, sharing with friends what I did with it, and as an Eta Kappa Nu member, living up to the IEEE slogan "advancing technology for humanity".

[f4eru]

One can not make money selling electricty to PG&E.  But what we all have to do is “sell” the excess we produce at market rate to PG&E to receive energy credits which are measured in dollars. 

That's quite fair, as you receive a rate close or equal to the retail electricity rate.
When battery systems become commonplace in a few years, the prices will even out somewhat over the course of a day, the variation will be at a higher scale, bad weather weeks etc...

At the end of 12 month any energy credits dollars are given to PG&E for free. 

That's abuse

[DougSpindler]

May be you have to decide if you are doing this as a money making excercise or not. In the UK you only get subsidy if the whole installation is done by a "professional installer" and of course that get's you involved in all sorts of crazy calculations as well as crystal ball gazing.

Personally I installed my subsidy free DIY system in part to help the enviroment, in part to further reduce my "grid" dependancy and in my case to reduce both my oil and electricity bills. I don't have to fret whatever about subsidy rates and I already know my payback times worst case

I would be very wary of spending a lot of money and expecting to get it back again in a hurry!

The panels themselves aren't even that expensive nowadays. Hence why DIY easily ends up cheaper even if that means giving up any subsidies. Also far more educational and fun! I will always remember the experience of putting together my first solar power system, from designing the system, assembling the electronics, sharing with friends what I did with it, and as an Eta Kappa Nu member, living up to the IEEE slogan "advancing technology for humanity".

Yes the pannels might be cheap but if you buy, and install 20 or 30 panels (which the solar companies tell me is what I need to provide 100% of my electricity when maybe I really only need 10 would do the same thing why should I pay two to three times what I really need to pay?

[NiHaoMike]

Nice part of DIY is that you can start very small and expand as you see fit.

If homeowners ending up with a surplus of electricity they can't sell becomes commonplace, I would expect a great increase in the popularity of solar powered crypto mining. And marijuana growing, in areas where it's legal.

[mtdoc]

A few points:

1) It is unlikely that 10  300 +/- watt panels would provide for 100% of your electricity on anything but sunny days.  I know the SF Bay area gets lots of sun (I lived their for 7 years) but it is not sunny every day.  On a yearly basis 3000 watts nominal of installed PV will be unlikely to cover all the electricity use of a typical small household (especially if any heating or cooling is done with electricity).   If you live alone and are frugal with your power usage - then yes, it could.

2) Solar installation companies mark up panels quite a bit to pad their profits - so they have an incentive to "upsell"  -  which should not be surprising.

3) DIY does allow you to customize and upgrade your system in stages.  I'm in the planning process for doing my 3rd expansion of my system

4) What is wrong with producing excess power?  Panels are very cheap and IME it's better to "over panel" than under panel.  The BOS component cost will generally not go up much at all with increased installed wattage.

[mmagin]

I recall that something went into the NEC recently which no longer allows non-licensed electricians to do PV installs.  That would make it one of the only residential things you can't do according to NEC -- most of the other things are industrial.  Dunno if that filtered down to the California electric code yet...

I also live in the SF bay area.  We had neither the time nor inclination to do the install ourselves (I've done some electrical work, but I don't like heights.)  So we had 22 panels installed a couple years ago.  This is on a south facing roof with 2/12 pitch, flat.  I'm not sure if the cost of more sophisticated mounting would be particularly worth the cost.  Part of what motivated us to get it done 2 years ago was that the old time-of-use plan was closing (and even for us is being slowly phased out).

This produced about 10.76 MW-hour last year - about 1.3MW-hr in the sunniest months, 0.46 MW-hr in the least sunny months.

I forget the spec on the panels, we're using a solaredge inverter and 'optimizers'.  I shied away from the enphase microinverters due to seemingly more complaints about RFI from the ham radio folks, though the amount of information available was sparse.  (And to be honest, I haven't done a lot to see how bad our install is since.)  Also I liked how the Solaredge optimizers -- this separates out the MPPT tracking from the central inverter -- were using solid capacitors, which I figured might survive that environment better.

[metrologist]

The power company will only pay about $0.03 for excess power, and I believe there is a cap on what they credit you. This is determined at the end of year. Also, what they allow you to connect depends on your specific branch, because they have to allow everyone to connect and ensure they can handle the production.

A few points:

1) It is unlikely that 10  300 +/- watt panels would provide for 100% of your electricity on anything but sunny days.  I know the SF Bay area gets lots of sun (I lived their for 7 years) but it is not sunny every day.  On a yearly basis 3000 watts nominal of installed PV will be unlikely to cover all the electricity use of a typical small household (especially if any heating or cooling is done with electricity).   If you live alone and are frugal with your power usage - then yes, it could.

2) Solar installation companies mark up panels quite a bit to pad their profits - so they have an incentive to "upsell"  -  which should not be surprising.

3) DIY does allow you to customize and upgrade your system in stages.  I'm in the planning process for doing my 3rd expansion of my system

4) What is wrong with producing excess power?  Panels are very cheap and IME it's better to "over panel" than under panel.  The BOS component cost will generally not go up much at all with increased installed wattage.

I would expect 3kW of panels to produce ~5 MWHr in a year. That will not nearly cover this use case due to TOU, TOP, and PG&E's rate plans. I suspect that if TOU aligned with TOP, then you would/should be very close.

[mtdoc]

I recall that something went into the NEC recently which no longer allows non-licensed electricians to do PV installs.  That would make it one of the only residential things you can't do according to NEC -- most of the other things are industrial.  Dunno if that filtered down to the California electric code yet...

I don't believe the NEC is in the business of determining who can do an electrical installation. That is up to the local AHJ.  As far as I know, there is no restrictions on what type of residential electrical installation can be done by a homeowner in Washington state where I live.

BTW, for anyone wanting to do their own solar installation, there are a few active online forums which have many with years of experience, including some professional installers, willing to help with detailed advice.

The NAWS forum is not as good as it used to be but is still one of the best. 
For those using Midnite Solar equipment the Midnite Solar forum is very good.

There are others including some UK specific ones - but I haven't visited them in a while and can't recall their names right now...

[DougSpindler]

Nice part of DIY is that you can start very small and expand as you see fit.

If homeowners ending up with a surplus of electricity they can't sell becomes commonplace, I would expect a great increase in the popularity of solar powered crypto mining. And marijuana growing, in areas where it's legal.

Solar coasts a lot of money to set up.  Crypto miners are smart.  They are mining is a city in New York where the electricity is very inexpensive.  Solar would cost them much more.

As for pot growers they are making too much money to install mess around with solar.  Many just by-pass the electric meter.  Far less expensive than solar.

[NiHaoMike]

Dorms and apartments with electricity included in rent used to be prime spots to mine some Bitcoins. That is, until Bitcoin miners became too noisy to be used in that sort of environment. Now college students mine GPU coins, but the main factor is because GPUs have other uses, especially for gamers and those studying a major that can make good use of a good GPU.

I used to think that solar and crypto don't go well together because crypto is short term while solar is long term, but then I did combine the two and impressed a lot of my friends...

[ez24]

FYI

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Solar/Fall2013/about

[DougSpindler]

FYI

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Solar/Fall2013/about

Class ended on Dec 24, 2013. - This is an archived course.

While I'm sure all of the principals have remained the same, is there anything new?

[ez24]

While I'm sure all of the principals have remained the same, is there anything new?

Take a look at Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=solar&src=ukw

[DougSpindler]

While I'm sure all of the principals have remained the same, is there anything new?

Take a look at Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=solar&src=ukw

Thanks I will check it out.

[TerraHertz]

This thread is a good illustration of why some people (me included) want to simply stop having anything to do with the State-ruined grid. Life's too short to waste time on such a ridiculous maze of requirements and rates. Not to mention the grids becoming ever more unreliable as intermittent 'green' energy sources replace dependable and cheap massive spinning turbines.

It's not just homeowners wanting to get off the 'green grid' bullshit train. Here's an industry buying their own coal-fired plant:
  http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/gamechanger-chinese-crypto-miners-can-get-8c-cheap-electricity-in-australia-using-old-coal/

Btw OP, are you consuming single phase or three phase power?

[metrologist]

it's not any worse than taxes...

[DougSpindler]

This thread is a good illustration of why some people (me included) want to simply stop having anything to do with the State-ruined grid. Life's too short to waste time on such a ridiculous maze of requirements and rates. Not to mention the grids becoming ever more unreliable as intermittent 'green' energy sources replace dependable and cheap massive spinning turbines.

It's not just homeowners wanting to get off the 'green grid' bullshit train. Here's an industry buying their own coal-fired plant:
  http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/gamechanger-chinese-crypto-miners-can-get-8c-cheap-electricity-in-australia-using-old-coal/

Btw OP, are you consuming single phase or three phase power?

Single phase.

I attended a workshop given by our local power compnay, PG&E about going solar.  It was an excellent presentation and they even had Cisco there to talk about Smartmeters and Smart Grid.  They did a fantastic job in explaining the history of the power companies and the creation of the grid.

Once one understands the history of power compnaies, the creation of the grid and how the grid works, it's no wonder were are in the mess we are now.  Cisco estimates it will take well over 100 years to implement a Smartgrid.  Why, no one want's to pay for it.

I'm all for solar.....  But the residential solar industry is filled with thousands of people trying to make a quick fast buck.  They don't understand solar and are excellent liars.

I still plan to install solar on my home.  With the power compnay paying me $0.45 for every kWhr I sell to them I would be a fool not to.

[metrologist]

With the power compnay paying me $0.45 for every kWhr I sell to them I would be a fool not to.

I don't even pay PG&E half that much for my electric.

[DougSpindler]

With the power compnay paying me $0.45 for every kWhr I sell to them I would be a fool not to.

I don't even pay PG&E half that much for my electric.

PG&E has 9 different residential rate plans.  Which one are you on?  If you are on the E1 rate plan, (stright-tiered) PG&E is ending it end of this year.  You will be forced to select a different rate plan.

We were on the E1/stright-tiered rate plan and ran PG&E's rate plan optimizer tool if we were on another rate plan we could be paying less.  In switcing to stright Time of Use our bill dropped $65-75 per month with the same electricity useage.

If you haven't compared rate plans, who know you too might be able to save $50 or more? 



 

 

[TerraHertz]

Single phase.

Well, that makes things simpler for you. I gather you've no workshop to worry about powering. I do, which complicates things somewhat. One reason I was so glad to get that big 3-phase UPS recently. http://everist.org/NobLog/20180410_go_fetch.htm

I attended a workshop given by our local power compnay, PG&E about going solar.  It was an excellent presentation and they even had Cisco there to talk about Smartmeters and Smart Grid.  They did a fantastic job in explaining the history of the power companies and the creation of the grid.

Why do I have a faint suspicion they may have left out a few awkward details and dissenting opinions?
One good source for an alternative view is http://joannenova.com.au/  Of  the Australian grid's problems, but issues are similar worldwide. Her commentary on the South Australian power grid debacle was particularly informative.

Once one understands the history of power compnaies, the creation of the grid and how the grid works, it's no wonder were are in the mess we are now.  Cisco estimates it will take well over 100 years to implement a Smartgrid.  Why, no one want's to pay for it.

Or perhaps it also has something to do with folks understanding that once electricity authorities (and by extension, government) has detailed information on exactly what people are using power for, in real time, the next step will inevitably be forcing people to consume power as they ought to be (ie how the gov tells them to.) Do I need to explain how centrally planned anything, always ends up in disaster and ruin?

I'm all for solar.....  But the residential solar industry is filled with thousands of people trying to make a quick fast buck.  They don't understand solar and are excellent liars.

Yep. The general rule applies - do it yourself or don't do it at all. Every time I forget this, I'm painfully retaught it.

I still plan to install solar on my home.  With the power compnay paying me $0.45 for every kWhr I sell to them I would be a fool not to.

Assuming that rebate continues to exist. It's unlikely to for long. But go ahead anyway if you can. It's not about the money, it will become about actually having reliable electric power at all. You'll come to realize that eventually, if things don't change course.

[mtdoc]

Assuming that rebate continues to exist. It's unlikely to for long.

In addition to state and local utility rebates/incentives, there is a 30% federal tax credit in the US for all purchases related to home solar installations - for now..

But go ahead anyway if you can. It's not about the money, it will become about actually having reliable electric power at all. You'll come to realize that eventually, if things don't change course.

Yep, that’s primarily why I did it.