Why shouldn't I set up solar with a DIY battery arrangement If I live in a Sunny city Are there literally any downsides now that panels are so cheap and so efficient I feel like it's better than investing into some natural gas generator bypass
>>3006308It's the only economical way to do it. It's even better if you have room to set up the panels not on the roof.
>>3006311I also forgot to add that the natural gas option for your generator is becoming a poor choice. When I lived on the Gulf Coast, every started doing that to the point that it was putting a huge strain on the natural gas supply after hurricanes/major power outages.
>>3006311Not OP but why wouldn't you want them on the roof
>>3006314It makes installing the panels much more difficult, limits how you install them for the best angle, pisses off your insurance company, and adds another point of failure for a leak in the roof.
I can't think of any downside. Just do it right so you don't kill yourself or burn your house down. I know the initial investment for the equipment is a bit steep, but even if it takes a few years to offset the cost; I believe not having a reliance on the grid would be the biggest reward. If I owned a house with land, a solar array would be my first priorities. A well for free water would be a close second to that.It's a meme, but "you'll own nothing and be happy" is not tinfoil hat shit. In many places the government already tells people that they can't collect rainwater on their own property. They pollute and consume at unfathomable scales, yet WE'RE told to not collect water because of the aquifers they've drained and fucked? How long until some megacorp PAC lobbies for restrictions on people generating their own electricity, under the guise of safety, or conservation?Build the array. Loosen your shackles.
>>3006317>adds another point of failure for a leak in the roof.Depends on the roofing type. Standing seam metal roofing can have panels attached without making a bunch of holes. There are also systems that work nicely with tile and slate style roofing.>>3006318>A well for free water would be a close second to that.Having lived in places on wells, it often isn't as nice as you think. One house had a well we couldn't use because some dogshit company used to spread their used trichloroethylene solvents on the dirt parking lot to 'keep the dust down'. There is now an underground 'plume' of this shit in the groundwater that is over a mile long. Another place I live had just plain naturally nasty water. It was hard as fuck, smelled smelled like sulfur, and tasted bad. Another place I lived had great water... until a vineyard setup shop in the area and drilled their fucking wells halfway to China. They pulled so much water the cone of depression dried up all the wells in the area. A friend pulled a squirrel out of their pump once. Poor fucker fell in, drowned, probably floated for a few weeks getting nice and ripe, then sank after enough bits fell off. One day all their faucet strainers plugged up with hair. "Time to clean the well".Drilling wells ain't cheap. In some places it is literally tens of thousands of dollars for dogwater. Filtration systems are a major investment too if the water is crap.
>>3006308I have 13kw of solar panels and a 23kw powerwall. it will run about 12 hours during the night with 2 AC units running (in the summer) not sure how long it runs in the winter, and I live in a desert..
>>3006421That doesn't seem worth it at all
>>3006458He's running 2 AC units through the night with his batteries. Seems worth it to me. He has essentially no constraints and has all the power he needs.
>>3006459Yeah worth it if it was free But even blasting my AC twenty four seven during the summer only results in a couple Hundred bucks worth of power and that versus Thousands of dollars and the time taken to get it set up it just doesn't really seem Worth the money in any way
>>3006308Having all that stuff inside my house scares me. I'm trying to setup some kind of outdoor wiring cabinet.
>>3006460>Couple hundred bucks of powerSo $3600/year? Again, seems worth it to build your own solar.
>>3006460>>3006458different anon here.we have solar. in my opinion it's worth it. there are caveats. Primary: it must be DIY installed. this is key to ROI and cost efficiency. install labor can double the cost of your system. Second: research, buy your own shit and design your own layout. teaches you to understand, install, maintain and repair it. self-purchase also saves you 30%-50% markup on equipment and installation supplies. Finally: buy batteries. store your own daily excess for overnight use. dont bother exporting (selling) back to the grid.my all-in cost after rebates was around $11,500. all wiring, racks, inverter, panels, batteries and the 17'×9' solar equipment shed it is installed in. paid about $17k upfront, recieved about $5500 in rebates. bringing our out-of-pocket actual to around $11,500. our yearly offset runs around $1600/yr. that's ~$135/mo; a better return than i get on VIG (dividend) portion of my portfolio. we will have total ROI around 7 to 7.5 years. during that time we are already dodging power outages. others swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter while we have HVAC. we can flush toilets, take showers, cook, watch tv and live normally while they bang rocks like cavemen. after year 7, we essentially have "free power" until we need to replace equipment. inverter is warranteed 15 years, batteries for 12, panels for 15. most of that shit will last 20-25 years outliving its warranty. some of it i can repair if needed. as equipment ages i can retire it to secondary use installations and get the new hotness for less relative dollars as technology improves and relative cost declines. meanwhile, the cost of grid electricity forever rises, the grid ages, strain increases and power outages happen.solar is not our only utility & resource redundancy, but it may be our most important. we have grid power as well, but are not reliant on it. we are on a private well, have a 250gal propane tank and several wood stoves.
>>3006308Just make sure you don't live in a city or township that forces you to have a utility line and pay some minimum service fee because of safety or whatever excuse they use to line the pockets of the energy executives.
>>3006314Check your location and optimum sun angle, the angle changes with season. Roof might be a little too much angle in the summer and way too much in the winter. Depends when you need electric most. Also some people aren't comfortable working at height and you need to keep them clean remember.
>>3006308You need to understand electrical safety if you don't want to burn down or blow up or electrocute yourself/someone else, and then bonus need to understand grounding and earthing if you don't want to burn out your inverter. The system in your image is already insta fail even if it's not the worst thing ever. Also avoid Victron, terribly overpriced.Obligatory shill https://rentry.co/solarshit
I got one of these all in one inverter chargers. Did some testing but I don't think I wanted it mounted permanently. I am going to mount it and the batteries on a dolly.
>>3006460>>3006462when i crunched the numbers it looked like it would take 20 years to break even assuming nothing goes wrongoutlook not so good
>>3006500You either did the numbers wrong or got a bad quote from commercial installers with no government gibs. If you get a commercial install, you must pair it with gibs, otherwise it's priced extremely poorly. A /diy/ install should be between 4 to 10 years ROI in reasonable conditions, obviously varies a lot by location and electricity price.
>>3006501oh ok i guess ill go buy one then
>>3006502Ask Grok to run the numbers based on the thing you are buying and your electricity price and consumption habits, it can make a decent educated guess.
>>3006462What in the fuck, Do you live in the Australian outback or something
>>3006505ask grock how to kill yourself
>>3006515If you run your AC/electric heater constantly, your bill will easily be $300/month. It's only getting worse with data centers fucking up the cost of electricity.
>>3006308I want to install a handful of solar panels at the property I'm buying here soon, but its got a tiny yard.Kinda want to do a bifacial solar panel fence to separate the alley from the backyard, really don't want to deal with putting them on the roof (very steep on west facing side).Is it still worthwhile if it isn't maximum efficiency? I figure I'll be making monthly payments at as much as I would pay for the electricity they make by having them, and if it doesn't work out I can just take them down and roof mount later. I also hear they are generally more efficient during the winter in such a configuration.The only annoying part will be getting permits, I don't think my city has anything on the books regarding solar fences, just arrays (need to be fenced in so far from property line) and roof mounted.
>>3006529No... no dude
>>3006532Get back to me when you actually pay your own electric bill.
>>3006530>bifacial solar fenceDepending on your lat, it's not necessarily low efficiency. Off-equator, there is a fuckton of sunlight in summer and little in the winter, so winter and spring/autumn electricity is higher value, and the vertical panels tend to produce more in those conditions. Plus for panels, more is always better, so if you have a lot of space for fence and not so much roof space, fence again wins. Also in cost/Wp deployed the fence can be good if you /diy/ the mounting system. However, expect that you will need a ton of optimizers, maybe one for each panel, unless you have absolutely no shadows anywhere near the fence, and you will need to keep grass low on the south/west side. Without optimizers, the smallest shadow on one panel trashes the whole string. >permitsExpect that they will treat it as a ground mount array, because that's what it is. Maybe, at best, with agreement from neighbor they will let you "place the array close to property line".
>>3006552>you will need a ton of optimizers, maybe one for each paneleven if wired in parallel?if the panels have bypass diodes and the MPPT does a full sweep every so often series should be fine too, unless i'm mistakent.nosolar
>>3006667You can wire them in parallel but then what? You need very thick wires, which eventually cost more than the optimizers over a long run. Microinverters are an alternative, but not really a better one.>bypass diodes fix everything unless i'm mistakenYeah you are mistaken, bypass diodes don't work the way you think they do. >t. also thought they work like that until I had a string in partial shade
>>3006535I do, and my power bill is half that since I replaced my obsolete heat pump with a window unit.
Rate my off grid cabinet.
>>3008025Ain't that bad/10. Hope battery connectors are crimped properly. And add proper thick earthing if it's going to be an always-on system.
