Any solar experts here? Off grid and otherwise.

We are looking at solar, and potentially going off-grid, rather than using an existing company tied to the grid.

Upon discussion with one of the providers, we are using very little power compared to most households. Current average power consumption is 347 KwH per year. Going solar and having a battery system with it (lots of outtages here d/t wildfire) doesn't really save use THAT much money.

This got us thinking, could we cut ties with the power company, and just use the power we make?

We are located in the SF East Bay, so quite a bit of sun on a south-facing roof.

Does anyone have experience going solar, and specifically going off-grid solar?

How many panels do you have, what batter system do you use, what was the cost?

Obviously up-front cost is MUCH higher, but it may be worth it if we don't have to pay a power bill ever again, and there is the fed rebate. Thanks for any information you can provide.

Been looking into it for a while now, even posted half of a DIY solar generator here.  But I stumbled across this forum that I have learned a lot from https://diysolarforum.com/

What's going to be the biggest expense, by far, will be the batteries.  But if you can DIY them, maybe you can find some refurbushed car batteries that will work- like you can find on this site- https://batteryhookup.com/?rfsn=3333666.ca06e9

Having noted my rant yesterday, where I drilled into a side of a battery and ruined the entire pack system all at once- well, any fabrication should be very simple.

That being said, I've noticed that some companies systems seem to have come down pretty drastically in price recently.  May be smarter to just get the entire system from one company- panels, batteries, switches, all of it.  They include a tie into the grid that helps with reliability and cost via the feed back.

Solar is not really something you do to save money, unless you are in an area where getting power to you is hugely expensive.

I've lived off grid for 25 years with a very small system. It's a lot more doable than you think

Thanks for the links Alfadriver.

Antihero, what system do you have, and how much did it cost?

Grid-tied solar (without battery) definitely makes financial sense in my area... we could cut our monthly cost almost in half. We would like to have the addition of the battery for outages, which are more and more common. So we thought, maybe we should just go off-grid if we can make the upfront costs work out. 

I'm learning a lot in that forum already, thanks again!

A couple of thoughts up front on this -

• The cheapest watt is a watt you don't use.  If you haven't already done it, do everything you can to reduce your consumption.  If you're going off grid you'll need to tailor your use to your production AND eliminate every watt-hour you can. Run the high consumption electrical stuff when the panels are generating.  Use the timers on your dishwasher, washing machine, etc..
• Going off grid is generally a dumb idea if you have wires running past your house.  A lot depends on the deal you can get locally, but if you can get net metering (and I would bet California does) it's usually a whole lot cheaper and more practical to use the power company as a battery than to buy your own.
• At this point if you're in a place with decent sun and plan on staying for a while, solar is usually a no-brainer.  The payback has gotten really good with the fall in panel prices.
• What somebody who lives somewhere else did a year or two ago is not relevant.  It's not tough to figure out what you can put up on the roof, what it will cost, what the power output will be, cost savings, etc..  You can estimate your install to within a few percent of what the actual costs without too much difficulty.

What else do you want to know?  I worked in Wisconsin as a solar assessor until it was obvious that the incoming political regime was going to kill independent generation and have a pretty good idea of how all this works.

I've looked into it here in Florida and came to the conclusion that if I went solar I would get a system that would generate what I need and  little extra for the year. Use the grid as your battery basically. A system that produces more than you need when conditions are perfect balances out for the times it isn't. At the end of the year the power company would pay us the cost of generation for any surplus, something like 4cents a Kwh.

For outages I was torn between a battery bank or a generator or both. When we get outages it can be for days because of hurricanes.  I never got to running numbers on battery amp hours and generator size to recharge it and run some of the house because I'm going to be moving soon.  The next house will get all the cool stuff during construction.

I even have most of the stuff to build an Imbert style gasifier to run a  2JZ spinning a 25hp 3ph motor as a gen set. It would give me about 17Kw gen that ran on wood chunks.

jgrewe said:

For outages I was torn between a battery bank or a generator or both. When we get outages it can be for days because of hurricanes.  I never got to running numbers on battery amp hours and generator size to recharge it and run some of the house because I'm going to be moving soon.  The next house will get all the cool stuff during construction.

 

My solar generator build was also for hurricane season...  And I had a long debate with  myself between the cost and benefit of the system.  The only think that really got me was the need to daily feed a generator.  For many (if not most) people around the hurricane zones, this isn't a big deal to do- when you head out in the morning, fill the tank and check the generator that it's working.  But I had a +90 year old MIL who had some help to stop by once a day- and while they *could* fill the tanks, I felt it was better that they don't have to.

If NG or real propane storage was an option- maybe.  But that could not happen.  So I went solar.

And my consideration even included automotive style engines running super efficienty as opposed to a normal generator...

One has to weigh all of THEIR specific considerations.

We need to have our roof replaced soon. We're looking at a Tesla Roof. Anyone have any experience with one?

I'm by no means an expert.  A few years ago, I got interested in Solar so I read a book about it.  That's all I got.

If I believe the timbre of the research I did, on-grid is nearly always a benefit unless you're also the kind of person who recycles their own pee and fashions spoons from the bones of the animals you slaughter on your hemp farm.  (I'm totally kidding) but the ability to nail your energy usage and therefore nail the right size system is difficult to do.

They purport that an on-grid system is always a benefit unless your environmental beliefs supersede your need for electricity.  A) you'll always have backup power from the grid if needed, and B) surplus electricity always has a place to go - backfed into the grid, for which you get paid.  You'll still need a phantom load on your system incase your cells are producing a surplus AND the grid is down because at that point your system will disconnect you from the grid to prevent backfeeding the neighborhood and killing the lineperson fixing the problem.

Staying on-grid also means you can add solar as you can afford it.  Buying a complete off-grid solar setup can be pretty expensive, even with municipal incentives so many choose to add a little at a time.  Staying on-grid means you simply reduce your dependence in steps as you can afford it.

Check with your local laws as well.  Some municipalities' code/zoning require electricity utility for improved properties.  Part of it is over-reaching legislation about safety for their population, in other ways it is to prevent Joe-Bob from moving in with a noisy, dirty generator.  Of course, part of it is money.

There was one case study in the book I read (which is long gone, or I would remember the title to suggest it) where the homeowner did a self-sufficient solar system on his property but the county required that he have an electric utility.  His solution was to simply pay the base fees (something like $14) to have service to his property, but after the installation/inspection, he just turned off the main service breaker which defaulted the computer to solar all the time.  That way he couldn't consume the dirty power and was technically off-grid.  His next step was to hopefully find a controller that he could hack that would only connect to the grid when he had a surplus in the hopes that he could supply the grid with enough to counter his $14/mo service charge.

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

We need to have our roof replaced soon. We're looking at a Tesla Roof. Anyone have any experience with one?

Very relevant to my interests

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

jgrewe said:

For outages I was torn between a battery bank or a generator or both. When we get outages it can be for days because of hurricanes.  I never got to running numbers on battery amp hours and generator size to recharge it and run some of the house because I'm going to be moving soon.  The next house will get all the cool stuff during construction.

 

My solar generator build was also for hurricane season...  And I had a long debate with  myself between the cost and benefit of the system.  The only think that really got me was the need to daily feed a generator.  For many (if not most) people around the hurricane zones, this isn't a big deal to do- when you head out in the morning, fill the tank and check the generator that it's working.  But I had a +90 year old MIL who had some help to stop by once a day- and while they *could* fill the tanks, I felt it was better that they don't have to.

If NG or real propane storage was an option- maybe.  But that could not happen.  So I went solar.

And my consideration even included automotive style engines running super efficienty as opposed to a normal generator...

One has to weigh all of THEIR specific considerations.

I'm not in a zone where natural disasters typically occur, other than a crazy ice storm or blizzard every few winters.  I actually have a small NG generator and NG service in the house and I gave thought to hooking it up at home.  Then in the longer term hook up some panels on the roof with a bank of batteries.

My biggest problem is my NG supply is pretty wimpy.  I'm not sure it would supply enough for the generator and the furnace, let alone the gas water heater and range I want to add.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

B) surplus electricity always has a place to go - backfed into the grid, for which you get paid. 

Absolutely check your local laws and regulations, for example, this is not the case in Oklahoma (yay fossil fuels ruling everything in this state). You will not get paid for any electricity being back fed into the grid. 

This stopped me from going any further with a solar installation last year. I have a ton of south facing, nicely angled roof for solar panels as well. 

CyberEric said:

Thanks for the links Alfadriver.

Antihero, what system do you have, and how much did it cost?

Grid-tied solar (without battery) definitely makes financial sense in my area... we could cut our monthly cost almost in half. We would like to have the addition of the battery for outages, which are more and more common. So we thought, maybe we should just go off-grid if we can make the upfront costs work out. 

I'm learning a lot in that forum already, thanks again!

It's just an inverter, 4 trojan t105s, 500w of panels and a generator. Say....$3k?

I keep saying I'll upgrade but it works fine for me. The generator is used to pump up the holding tanks for water once a day and I plug in the house at the same time. Between that and the solar it meets my needs just fine. I have propane appliances so no power draw there, it's pretty much just lights, TV, and musical instruments.

I will keep adding solar panels but where I live in deep woods solar isn't exactly great anyway.

The biggest problem with solar is bluntly how much people say you need to run a system. 25k is considered by a lot to be the barest minimum

z31maniac said:

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

B) surplus electricity always has a place to go - backfed into the grid, for which you get paid. 

Absolutely check your local laws and regulations, for example, this is not the case in Oklahoma (yay fossil fuels ruling everything in this state). You will not get paid for any electricity being back fed into the grid. 

This stopped me from going any further with a solar installation last year. I have a ton of south facing, nicely angled roof for solar panels as well. 

Unless something has changed, federal law requires that they pay you.  Of course, they're allowed to pay you $.0.0004 per kwh, but they have to pay.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

B) surplus electricity always has a place to go - backfed into the grid, for which you get paid. 

Absolutely check your local laws and regulations, for example, this is not the case in Oklahoma (yay fossil fuels ruling everything in this state). You will not get paid for any electricity being back fed into the grid. 

This stopped me from going any further with a solar installation last year. I have a ton of south facing, nicely angled roof for solar panels as well. 

Unless something has changed, federal law requires that they pay you.  Of course, they're allowed to pay you $.0.0004 per kwh, but they have to pay.

Then I'll assume the company I was speaking with was inept and it's probably a good idea I told them, "Thanks, but no thanks."

I didn't really look into it anymore after that. 

Speaking of solar power.  I want to donate to my town some solar powered fixtures to be used at the high school running track.  Currently they have very tall light poles around the track that have lights on them for the foot ball field in the center.  I think there are 4 poles on each side of teh track.  I would like to put a solar powered flood light on each poll say 20 or 30 feet up that would provide some light on to the running track so it can be used later in to the evening with some added security. IT does not need to be daylight bright more of an ambient lighting (good enough for walking/jogging/running.  I am looking for suggestions for what fixture to use. I found these at the local Home Depo.  They would need a different bracket that would mount to an existing telephone polls that the big lights are on as they are at the edge of the running track (I am thinking that they could just be screwed in with a cordless drill and no wiring necessary.)   Solar Power SMART LED Street Light for Commercial and Residential Parking Lots, Bike Paths, Walkways, Courtyard.  They look like what I would want in terms of the basic design.  Self contained and seem to have enough battery power to work as a dawn to dusk type light but I am not sure that they will provide enough light.  They are roughly equal to a 100 watt bulb.  Anyone electricians out there that have any other suggestions?  Do you think these would work?

EDIT: Google Earth Image of track

This is an article I linked to before on here.. It might be a bit outdated now that there are some commercially available battery systems on the market, but it's a really neat in-depth look at the problems of solar generation, and how bad a deal all of these installations are for a net-metering states' electricity suppliers:

https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup-does-not-work-off-grid.html

tl;dr:  Yes, it is totally possible, but in general the expense still isn't worth it unless it's a philosophical point more than a monetary one.

In reply to WonkoTheSane (Forum Supporter) :

Agreed.  It's difficult to do an off-grid system.  A power company might supply 30,000 homes, so their demand is averaged over a huge sample.  A single home might consume 100w at night, but 15,000w during a peak, like for instance, cooking dinner with the A/C and two TVs on.  With an off-grid system you need to size appropriately which usually means shooting for the middle.  That leads to wasting energy to a load when you don't need it, and sacrificing adequate capacity when you do need it.

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the info. I'm curious: how much power do you make per day with that system? Do you know how much you use? 

Right now, in summer, which isn't hot (SF Bay Area) and we don't have AC anyway, we almost always consume less than 12 kwh per day, and usually less than 10 kwh.

My wife and I think we could be even more sparing with our energy usage, for example we still use our dryer. If we could use a $3k system to go off grid, it would definitely be worth the upfront costs. I was seeing more in the line of 9-10k, but that's for people who use more power than we do.

And Curtis, I know you were kidding, but we recycle our pee (it goes on our compost pile), and we siphon our gray water from the tub and washing machine for use in the garden. 

Re net metering, yes they do it here, but it's fractions of pennies on the buy back, so it doesn't really amount to much. Around here, if you do grid-tied solar WITHOUT the battery, it's basically the same cost-wise as regular power, due to the tax breaks. We are considering going off-grid if we can make the upfront cost work. I still need to look into whether or not we can go off-grid here without penality.

I bought a system from Tesla- traditional rooftop panels and I got talked into the power wall battery as well. I like all of it and their in house electricians did a fantastic wiring job. Truly artists. We are net zero for the year living just west of Sacramento. Stayed on grid because it only costs $14/mo. The web app to monitor the energy flow is fantastic. 
 

Was interested in the solar roof but scared away by the cost. 
 

Also, you would think in liberal CA, that they would pay you market rate for the energy you put back to the grid, but they absolutely do not. 
 

Would love to have done a self install, and looking at it now it wouldn't have been too big a deal- wholesalesolar.com has awesome kits that are fairly inexpensive with all name brand parts labeled by country of origin etc. 

In reply to jwagner (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the info. I going to try responding to your bullets:

-We are working to get our usage way down. We currently can get by with about 8 kwh on most days this time of year. There are a few more things I plan to do, but I doubt we will get much lower than 8 khw. The solar company said our usage is already so low, we hardly benefit in terms of reduced costs compared to most homes.

-We get net metering here, yes. It's not worth much though. It is definitely more economical in the short term to just get grid-tied, with no battery. But in the long term, it might make more sense to pay now, and not pay again, depending on how much we would have to pay now. There are some complicated graphs out there, but if we stay in this house for 10-15 years, it makes some sense to make the upfront investment.

-Yes, one way or another, we are going solar this year before the fed reduces the tax incentive at the end of the year.

-I can easily estimate the install from a big company, like Sun Run, which is who quoted us. It was around $18k including batteries, about $9k without. And that's including tax incentives. But I am having trouble estimating how much battery/panels/other hardware from a company like AltEStore that would meet our needs if we really cut our usage down. Like, how much would it cost to have the necessary equipment (panels, batteries, etc) to get say, 6 khw per day during the winter?

I hope that makes sense.

In reply to Teh E36 M3 :

Can I ask how many panels and what the upfront cost was? And do you know how much power you generate?

If you are in Sacramento, you might get similar sun to me. I'm East of Richmond, outside the fog.

And yes, they pay nearly nothing for the energy you put back. I'm not sure who sets the price, but if it's PG & E, they have a lot of lawsuits they need to cover. 

Lots of good info in here. Just a quick note that solar panels are not like a Wind Turbine where you need to have a dump load or things go bad. The inverters will pull from the solar what it needs up to the point that they cannot deliver anymore but if there is no load then the power is not being generated and does not need anywhere to go (but if you can think of a good place to send it that is useful then that is a good idea).

For an off the grid system you really need at least two power sources and ideally a way to store it. Those two power sources are typically solar with a generator and a battery bank ofr storage. One of the nice features of a system like this is that if the batteries are depleted the generator can be started and ran at a steady power level as it charges the batteries and covers the load on the system. That way the generator isn't running all day long, it just runs long enough to recharge to a sufficient level with a very steady load where it can run more efficiently. If that generator can be run off natural gas all the better. Batteries are expensive and have a limited life span, hopefully that continues to improve though.

We actually did a a full layer farm in southern Ontario off the grid, between 4 barns it houses 120,000 layer chickens. To give you an idea of the power requirements for that it has 500 kW DC of solar on the barn roofs, 770 kWh or Lithium batteries for storage and redundant 500 kW inverters to supply the farm, there is also a 250 kW generator to help get the farm through November through February when we don't get the sun or the panels are covered in snow and ice. The system is tied to their other farm next door which is grid connected with a load displacement contract with the local utility so we pushed 112,000 kWh over there this past year which was consumed in those barns.

Lastly, there is a documentary on Amazon Prime about various people living off the grid in Canada and how that works for them. Brian, the blind guy in the Yukon outside of Whitehorse and his wife are friends with my in-laws so we visited them and there property last year while we were up there as I had an interest in their system. At that point we didn't actually know they were apart of this so it was pretty cool to see him pop up while we watched it. 

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Off-Grid-Jonathan-Taggart/dp/B071G6MC4W

CyberEric said:

In reply to Teh E36 M3 :

Can I ask how many panels and what the upfront cost was? And do you know how much power you generate?

If you are in Sacramento, you might get similar sun to me. I'm East of Richmond, outside the fog.

And yes, they pay nearly nothing for the energy you put back. I'm not sure who sets the price, but if it's PG & E, they have a lot of lawsuits they need to cover. 

Sure- I think it's 23 panels for 6.2 kw. Yesterday we made 29.7 kw. January we only made 219 for the month. I guess that's like 7kw/day. June we made 950kw, or about 31kw/day. 
 

System cost with the power wall was like $27k upfront. We got the 30% back-so it was like $18.5 net - but they count the year for tax breaks as the year you actually connect or turn the system on with pg&e- not the year you start the process and actually pay for the system. We almost missed getting the rebate for tax year 2017 because our interconnect got delayed. 

I think our break even will be about 8 years all in all. 

Thanks Adam525i. And I saw that documentary a while back. I loved it!

Thanks TehE36 M3, very good to know, thank you. Do you have any idea how many watts you get per panel?

I found a calculator on AltE that was showing me something that would lead me to believe I would make more during the winter than your calculations. I'm curious if it's due to the panels?

(Here's the link for anyone who is interested: https://www.altestore.com/store/calculators/off_grid_calculator/)

Their calculator indicates that in my area (SF Bay Area) I would need 11 300-watt panels in order to meet the need of 8 kwh per day in the winter. I'm concerned their calculation might be off based on what you are sharing.