Pointedstick wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:15 pm
I'm still around and still chuckling quietly when people tell me it's a scam, it won't work, it isn't possible.
My house's utility bills have been zero (well, the $5 monthly electric company base charge) for the past 6 years, and I've been driving for free with a solar-charged EV for 5. The net $17,500 my solar array cost would have produced about $58/mo if I had put it in my portfolio, while instead the array has allowed me to avoid over $250/mo in energy costs. Not only have I already "broken even" on my costs, but the array is roughly four times economically punchier than standard conservative investment portfolio assumptions (average monthly income production of principal/300), and still over double the punchiness of the quite-punchy 100% equities portfolio I've been in for 9 years since exiting the PP. I've posted about the economics of it before, and I think it suffices to say that people either get it or they don't. That's fine.
I hope you went through with it, yankees60!
I had planned to when I wrote the above but some things brought me to a standstill.
1) Is there going to be an EV in my future? I currently own a 2004 Honda Accord with not even 171,000 miles on it. I only go 4,000 to 5,000 miles a year. It's completely adequate for my needs. I'm someone who will keep using something until it dies or is uneconomical to keep repairing. I bought it to my mechanic last week for an oil change but asked him to also go over the car as if I was bringing it to him as a potential purchase, to find anything that needed repairing.
While the car was on the lift he pointed out to me severe rust in one location. He recommended a welding place to have it repaired. Went there and I have an appointment next month with a bill of $1,000 to repair it. Other than that the car is almost always garaged (protected from Northeast elements) and seems that it can go for another two to five years.
Therefore, if I DID plan to buy an EV when this car finally was out of the picture I'd have to size my system to provide electricity for it. That'd mean for 2 to 5 years I'd be building up excess electricity credits that I'd never be using. The only way to use them up would be to gift them to someone else. Not totally opposed to that but it'd be a cost and not a savings to me.
I'm also thinking that I'd be more suited for a hybrid rather than an EV.
2) But the main thing that put a halt was that I'm dead set against doing a roof installation because it'd require a premature roof replacement, throwing away a good existing roof. That'd be an additional cost for going solar. Also, the roof would be facing east.
Therefore, I decided I'd go with a ground mount. It keeps the roof / solar decision completely independent, and the ground mount would be facing south.
The ground mount quotes were about $5,000 more than the roof mounts for equivalent electricity output.
The issue that arose with the ground mount was that the pipes to support it would obviously have to go into the ground.
In 1984 I had to change from my own septic system to tying into the town sewer.
The piping to go from my house is in the ground in the area where the ground mount would be going. But where?
Definitely did not want those ground mount piping to hit the sewer piping. Plus, where is the septic system located? Heavy equipment needs to come in to put in the pipes for the ground mount support, did not want them to sink into the ground due to the septic system being located in that area.
Went to all town sources and no one had on record where that piping was located. Nor where my septic system was located.
We had some warm days in November so I spent a lot of time over about four days digging holes in the ground in attempt to find the piping to the town sewer in front of my house on the street and to figure out my septic system.
I had several people come by to give me advice. Someone who'd been for decades an assessor in the town next to me. Someone who'd been my town's building inspector for decades. Someone else who been a carpenter and around houses for decades.
All said that they'd never seen anything like my septic system. Looked homemade.
I did discover the piping to the street. That piping will NOT be an issue for the ground mount location.
Never did find out where the leach field is for my septic system. But we could not find anything that would be in the area of the ground mount.
Oh, the other issue was that right now I'm using minimum electricity in many ways.
The level I dehumidify my basement.
How hot I heat my hot water.
How much I use my mini-splits to heat (for first two years did no air conditioning).
The aforementioned EV.
Part of the reason for going solar is to remove the financial factor for me for how I use electricity. Instead, of using the minimum ... I'd use as much as I wanted because I'd no longer be seeing a monthly bill for consumption.
However, it's been difficult to project in total how much all that increased use would be from what I am using today. Obviously, need to make a good estimate / projection of that so as to size a system.
Finally, the whole solar is on hold for a few additional reasons. Almost all the solar installers are not going to deal with a ground mount until late spring, until no possibilities of frozen ground.
But most importantly is that I'm doing a thorough investigation of how to change my current portfolio (unchanged since January 2003 - 22 years ago). That is taking an enormous amount of time and involved far more money and financial consequences than does the solar decision.
A company selling PCs with only 2 GB of RAM could try to justify it by promoting the idea that "unused RAM is wasted RAM" but people who understand computers can see through that kind of nonsense.