Residential Solar?
What are your opinions on having a solar system installed on your home? Has anyone on the forum done it? What was your experience?
We have 4 panels on the roof hooked up to the hot water. Saves us a lot on the electricity bill.
Solar Water Heating?
Its popular here in Aus to have your hot water system run from solar power.
I was referring to Solar for electricity and powering your home.
i spent one year living in a house powered completely by solar, with a gasoline , backup generator. so i have some experience..
solar is best used as a supplement power source, unless you can really live minimalist style. Going on the fact you hang out at DJTT im guessing your electrical draw is on the high side. trying to power everything might be a little challenging for a beginner, but anything is possible. i know a guy that creates so much electricity that he actually powers his whole house and pumps power back INTO the grid, and gets paid for it, although his set-up is exceptional and wouldn’t be easy or cheap to set up or maintain.
-there are also a lot of issues arising from the inverter that can make for static, ground hum, etc, that can make it difficult with musical stuff…this drove me crazy
-depending on how many cloudy days you get, the gas for the generator can cost as much as an electric bill…
one last thing to consider is that creating solar cells is very demanding on the environment despite being considered a “green” energy. unfortunately in a lot of cases , the panels themselves require more energy to produce , then they can ever put out in their lifespan.
im not trying to seem anti-solar at all, because im not, but its important for people to understand that its not without its downsides, and to research and proceed wisely.
on a side note ive also had a house with a solar hot water heater, and it was amazing.
Nice. I work for SolarCity, so I was trying to get a feel for random expectations. We offer both solar lease and solar financing to homeowners. OUr customers have the choice to use either the grid or battery backups for storage. The average home only uses around 700-900 kWh, so it is very easy to get all of your power from a solar array.
we used batteries for backup as well, but with literally everything from the plumbing to the refrigerator being powered by the sun, in upstate new york… we ended up using the generator a bit, especially in the winter.
What part of upstate are you in>?
Interesting… never heard about the static/hum problems before!
It depends on your inverter. If you are using low quality inverter(s), than you can receive a feedback hum through your main panel. This is especially prevelant if the system was wired incorrectly. This mostly happens from companies that try to side step net metering guidelines