Cheap Panels

[johnlocke]

Just bought 6KW of Longi 380W panels at $.52/W. A1Solar Store. Ground mount with micro inverters. It's more than what I actually need at the moment but will insure that I can fully charge the battery bank even in the winter. The ground mount will end costing nearly as much as the panels, Microinverters ended up being nearly as cheap as a string inverter and I don't have to deal with DC HV. With SDG&E's rates, the payback is only a few years even if I give away half of the production to SDG&E. IF SDG&E keeps raising their rates as I think they will, payback might only take 3-4 years. If I can convince my wife to give up her Subaru Outback for an EV then I'll need the extra PV anyway and the payback period will be only a couple of years.

 

[johnlocke]

Just noted that panels are down to $.21/w for some older style panels. Even newer bifacial panels can be had for $.38/w. I'm on a five acre farm with most everything converted to electric. Replaced a heat pump this summer with a newer one and removed the propane furnace used for backup. It's working fine so far. I've got 84KWH of battery storage and a total of 24KW of PV panels. SDG&E keeps toying with the rate structure so now I'm on TOU-EV5. We'll see if I can zero out my bill this year. I did lose the central inverter on the oldest set of panels after13 years. Replaced the old SMA unit with a Growatt and it works just fine.

 

[Daklein]

From a bankruptcy auction, I recently got of pallet of installer leftover new panels, 10 JA 400w, 9 LG 370w, 1 LG355 newer half-cut, and 4 older Qcells 255w. That's 8.7kw of panels for $17.40 plus van gas money to pick them up. There's room on the roof for about 6kw more panels, and the rest will go on van roof or somewhere else. The van was the original excuse

I ordered a Growatt MIN XH-TL-US series inverter, which will AC couple behind the existing main battery inverters. The Growatt MIN series can connect to a HV battery and hopefully someone figures out the communication so I can use a Leaf or Tesla pack with it.

Currently I have ~11kw panels, 30kw Leaf cell battery storage, plus the main battery inverter forklift batteries which I try not to cycle much. This addition might come out to $.32/w after FTC, almost done buying materials, for off-grid setup without battery, DIY labor. Oh shoot, may still need more copper wire, that's gonna hurt....

We removed natural gas two winters ago, this will be the third, so we still use more kwh from the grid in winter than we have outflow credits from the summer. On the time of day rate, the summer outflow credits from on-peak do cover the cost of the more (cheaper) off-peak power we use for EV charging and heat pumping. With the battery storage, and the hydronic heat pump system, and still wood stove heat, we never use any on-peak inflow. This upgrade should help with cloudy winter days getting through the on-peak 11a-7p period using less battery.