I'm sure everybody probably knows this, and I'm a bit behind, but I just read that Clayton has a new solar power outfit on Guy Road, and another in the works soon. From what I can tell, the one on Guy Road provides power to some sort of business, rather than to homeowners, but this got me thinking. With all the clear, sunny days we've got here, does anybody know how somebody could go about building a simple, 2 car, solar carport for home use? It seems to me, that this kind of thing would be pretty easy to do, and practical, and might help offset home power expenses, especially in these summer months, when we have the AC on all the time. Any ideas?
This may help out a little with how you are thinking about using solar: https://www.duke-energy.com/generate-your-own-power/nc-main.asp
Thanks, Sungevity just told me that they don't service our area. I guess I can always look at solar panels online at Lowe's or Home Depot who carry them now, and figure out a DIY kind of thing.
Either way you will need to get a permit to hook it up to your house as you will be interfacing with the existing power grid. Hooking it up incorrectly could be dangerous, not just for you, but for line workers that think a line is dead while working on it, but then your house sends power back upstream. http://www.yessolarsolutionsnc.com/ http://www.sundollarenergy.com/
Yep, I would definitely get a permit for it, and work with an inspector to make sure that everything was done right.
Do you know if that business is for homeowners or commercial? A lot of these solar farms are generating power for businesses like Amazon and Duke Energy and not to the average homeowner. And it seems to me that the installers charge an awful lot when you can get the panels and the connection boxes at Lowes and Home Depot now. Plus, I suppose you don't have to buy the whole thing all at once, you can just buy as you go, and add on. I just got a quote today for that simple solar carport I had in mind, and the company wanted 37k just to build the carport, not including the solar panels! Good grief. So it looks like I'll be looking at carport plans next.
I see them building frames for ground mounted panels, which would indicate commercial, but they might also do residential. I don't remember their name off hand and I won't get there until Saturday but this organization took over a car dealer property.
I think there was a law passed recently requiring a certain percentage of energy be derived from solar power. I have a friend who inherited some farm land and they were considering leasing it to Duke. I could be wrong about the law but I have seen a few solar fields popping up in the eastern part of the state. We hare going to have to replace our roof in a year or two and I would love to put solar panels on when we do but don't know how to go about it. Our power bill is getting so high in the summer months--I wonder how long it would be for the panels to pay for themselves
There's been like a dozen small solar farms on JoCo's zoning agendas over the past couple months. They sell power to Duke/Progress. It's part of a state mandate to add solar power to NC. The reason for the cost is that the parts are not cheap. There is a decent amount of wiring needed, and copper is not cheap. You can get 20 x 310 watt panels here for $6700 including shipping - http://www.wholesalesolar.com/1977311/astronergy/solar-panels/chsm6612p-310-silver-poly-pallet-20 Those are high quality panels. That would give you a 6.2kW system, which should be enough to power your house. Now you need an inverter, here is a good 7kW one, $2700 plus shipping - http://www.wholesalesolar.com/3960005/sma/inverters/sunny-boy-7000us-12 Or you can buy it as a kit with everything you need for about $10,800 plus shipping (figure $2,000) - http://www.wholesalesolar.com/18909...20-panel-solaredge-astronergy-grid-tie-system So for about $13,000 you can have all the parts you need for the most part. Now you have to pay for labor. I would bet it would take 2 guys at least 2-3 days to get everything installed and cabled. At a light $50 an hour, that would be $2400 in labor. Although it would probably be higher than that. You are now over $13,400. Figure in another 10-20% for unknown costs plus permits. I would say $17,000-18,000 should be a decent price for a 6+ kW system. You would also need a surface at least 17' x 13' to mount this on where it is in sunlight most of the day. This time of year, you would probably make between 40-45 kW per day when it is sunny most of the day. My average usage last month was 45 kW per day and my bill was only $170. So for me, a system this size would probably eliminate my electric bill for 80-90% of the year. My bill averages about $2000 a year, so my ROI would be 9-10 years most likely. That's not bad if you plan to stay in the house for 20 years (the lifespan of the panels). I almost forgot, you get a 30% federal tax credit, which would be about $5000 in this case, and you get a 35% state tax credit, another $6000, and Duke will pay you $250 per kW, another $1500. Staying conservative, that would be a $12,500 credit, bringing the bill down under $8,000. ROI now is only 4-5 years. Very feasible.
They say that a lot of people put in their solar panels after they get a new roof, so you'd be right on board with that! I hear that the federal tax rebate for solar panels will run out next year, if it isn't renewed, so it's probably something to watch out for because you could save yourself a lot of money. Not sure if there's a state rebate. My goal is to be 75 % off the main grid in 3 - 5 years, so that means I'll probably put some on my roof too. There's a house in the White Oak subdivision up from Sheetz (42/White Oak) that I noticed today that had new panels on the back of their south-facing roof, so take a look if you're driving by that area. Not sure where they got them from, and who did the installation, but I'll try to find out and post it here. I'm just happy that solar power isn't so unusual anymore, because JoCo is a good place for it, and maybe it will bring some jobs to the area. Makes sense to me anyway.
The only problem is that clouds and darkness limit the amount of energy produced so a deep charge battery system would also be required to eliminate the power bill during those periods. Raleigh (Wilmington almost the same) lists an annual 111 days of full sun and 106 of partly sunny days. Thus 217 days out of 365 or ~60% of the days would be good for solar power generation. The payback after tax rebates might still be similar, but they will still be longer term.
These folks are located in Cary, but supposedly cover to Wilmington too. http://www.yessolarsolutionsnc.com/faqs-solar-energy/
These guys cover all of NC. http://www.ncsolarnow.com/ The efficiency of a solar system is measured at your location so you'll have a good idea of what you can produce.
Duke does net metering, so you produce more power than you use when there is sunlight, and when there is no sunlight, you use the grid. If you wanted to be off the grid completely, you would need more panels and a battery system. I did all my calculations based on numbers like you mentioned. The system is a 6.2kW system, and we currently have 14 hours of sunlight here, so that would actually be 86.8 kW per day at maximum efficiency. But you will never see that, so I went with 50%, or 40-45 kW per day. Going off this page - http://www.wral.com/weather/blogpost/1278875/ - We have about 2660 hours of sunlight a year, at 80% efficiency (~5 kw), that works out to about 13,000 kWh per year. In the last 12 months I used 17,000 kWh of power, so this 6.2 kW system would be a little small for me. I would have to use Duke for the remaining power or move up to a 25 panel system.
I believe the power you produce is credited at a wholesale rate while the power you use is billed at a retail rate too. Years ago NC was only marginal for solar production due to the days of sunlight, but as technology progressed the viability has also improved.
Check with these guys. They are a locally owned company right here in the 40/42 area. http://www.sepowernc.com/contact/
I wonder if this is who did the panels on a house in White Oak Landing (?) I see the house almost every week and have thought about stopping and asking about the panels. We recently replaced our water heater and learned that a lot of people in the area actually use solar to heat the pool water. Since Duke took control of our electric - we have started to look at alternatives.
