What we blew our budget on this summer

(if you click on the picture to see it big you’ll see a face peering out the door trying to figure out what I was doing)

The install finished last Friday.  Today the power company came out and swapped out the meter for one that will role backwards, and we turned on the panels.  Course, its raining today, with a pretty heavy cloud cover.  But they’re pulling in some power anyway, just from the ambient light.  Currently the monitor says 30-31wh per panel.

Right now this is just a standard grid tie system.  Eventually our intention is to put in a battery back up system, but that’ll have to wait a couple years probly.

I’m going to try to make this a regular thing, to report on what we’re getting for power in (basically the sort of thing I was trying to find when doing my own research). 

In that spirit, here’s the upfront information on this:

This is 16 250w Solar World Monocrystalline panels, with 16 Enphase micro-inverters.

Full cost, including labor: $18,000

NYSERDA 2012 incentive:-$6,000

County incentive: -$2,000

Our upfront cost: $10,000

 

Federal tax rebate: -$3,000

NY state tax rebate: -$2,500

Our total cost after tax rebates: $4,500

4 thoughts on “What we blew our budget on this summer”

  1. One cost is not listed. How much more is your homeowners insurance going to charge you in premiums to cover hail damage and other damage from things possibly falling on the solar panels?

    Good luck, hope they convert enough solar energy to electricity to make it worth the bother.

    • Donno yet, thats the next phone call!

      Paying for itself would be nice, the goal though is to eventually have backup power thats not energy grid/gas powered dependant. Our first year in the house we lost power, for periods of several hours, 6 times total. And none of that was due to a major storm or other emergency. This last year was better, but not by much. which doesn’t leave me with warm fuzzies about the local power grid and the ability to maintain it should major disaster strike.

      Thankfully the same thing that makes us a good spot for solar also reduces the chances of limbs hitting the building.

  2. I’d love to be able to do some sort of solar or wind power as an assist. However, we would have to cut down the trees in the neighbors yard (don’t think that is going to happen) and maybe bulldoze part of the ridge behind us (which isn’t on our property) for solar – so htat really isn’t practical. I keep waiting for a small wind system that I don’t have to hoist up 40 feet over the trees to come along.

    Plus, the fact that we only spend about $700 per year on electricity anyway, means that payback time would be, oh, about never.

    • Remind me to post alink I found a while back for a “low wind” turbine system…..

      We are lucky in that regard. The property itself is quite clear, and although we’re surrounded by trees the house is situated so that the only tree that might eventually shade the panels is ours anyway so we can do what we want with it.

      We’re technicaly looking at an estimated 8.4yr pay off period, we’ll see, but like I said that wasn’t really the ultimate goal.

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