In Australia, after a $2500 .gov subsidy, mine will pay for themselves in 4.5 years. LG Panels with 25 Year output guarantee. 6.6kw System. Financially speaking it's a complete no brainer.
One thing I did notice when I was living in the USA though, was how expensive it was over there compared to Australia. Installation costs are 3x the price, I have no idea why. My system before the subsidy was $11k, and that was for top of the line panels and inverter. Cheap panels would have been around $7k
Most of the difference is in business practices, in customer acquisition. Basically all the advertising and salespeople to push solar. Lack of uniform building codes, and highly disparate permitting processes also raise costs in the US. Utilities are also hugely inconsistent throughout the US, not varying city-to-city like permitting processes, but there are thousands of different utilities in the US each with different policies. And perhaps the biggest problem is utility policies that either eliminate or make feasible solar for homes. After a utility makes solar possible by allowing favorable interconnection policies, companies rush in attempting to take advantage of the new market. But when utility executives get enough lobbying power to make solar economically infeasible through unreasonable fees, it kills existing solar installers. So the only solar companies that survive are those with large reach across lots of geographies that also have massive marketing arms that can do big customer acquisition when there's a sudden window of favorable solar interconnection policy.
I paid €3900 for 22 panels, 7.2kw system here in the Netherlands. I did install it myself (but the whole package was delivered and the electric connections done by the supplier), and the panels and inverter are cheap Chinese brands. As I didn't situate them ideally and they lose efficiency as the heat up quite drastically I expect to generate between 4500 and 5000kwh. That should save me about €800 a year so this is a pretty solid business case.
In the U.S. it varies by region, but mid-quality panels are usually quoted at $2.50 to $3.00 per watt installed (before subsidies). Tesla Solar is advertising $2.00/watt nationwide but there are some questions about their responsiveness in actually getting anything installed in a timely manner. Outside of CA most people are only paying $0.10-$0.13/KWh making payback rough unless you have a large state or local subsidy on top of the federal 26% tax credit.
Hugely. A few of the main factors that will determine your payoff time:
- Subsidies.
- Cost of labour. How much do you need to pay to install the panels?
- Your energy usage patterns. If you use a lot of energy when the sun is shining, your panels will pay themselves off faster.
- Cost of transmission of energy. How much does it cost to get the energy from the generator to you.
- Cost of energy. How much it costs to generate energy where you are.
- Location. Proximity to the equator, annual sunshine hours, shading, panel angle.
My area has a payoff roughly in line with the lifetime of the panels themselves, or half that if you believe the local companies absurd projections of future energy prices.
"The price of a typical solar panel system is about £4,800. It can take anywhere between 15 and 26 years to recoup this costs, for a typical home – depending on where you live"
The key is do you use lots of electricity during summer days when the panel are producing? If so a 5-10% return even with loss of capital is possible. If you don't consume the electricity yourself then it's not really economic. Obviously closer to the equator and higher your electricity prices the better it gets.
To install on your roof - 7-8 years in lithuania. There is a ~20% subsidy for up to 10kW systems.
Alternatively, pending a change in the law, there are solar fields where you can purchase panels (also eligible for subsidy) and pay an annual maintenance fee. In this case it is around 6-7 yrs.
We were planning to get 18kW system installed on roof, but to get sign off from power grid we would need to upgrade our power lines at great expense (we are end of line rural), so I am wondering about using solar farm for additional capacity (when it’s available).
18-25 €/kw = €200 per year times 25 years = 5k€ of 8k€ install is
62.5% of your system cost... This actually buys you some off the shelve batteries (5kwh so far IIRC) which might alleviate your line capacity issue (not sure tho).
Plus they reserve right to set it whatever they want it and you have no practical way to sell your investment...
Yeah, batteries won’t cut it really - need to store thousands of kWh for winter. I’ll have to look into the terms some more - afaik nothing is finalised yet, awaiting change in law. Thanks for input!
Batteries are to get you thru the night, forget winter.
2.3k euro for 5kwh [0] which sounds more than Tesla Powerwall. You probably want more, but you do your math. Probably you'll want to return more to network in summer and use that in winter. Store peak winter excess
I'm getting 8kw installed on my roof next month and the pay off is somewhere between 10-12 years. That's with NC's electricity costs being cheap at ~11c per kWh - in other areas this will drastically change.
