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88.000 $ for just 16 kWp and 20 kWh ? I build that on my own using 540 Wp panels and got 30 kWp with 22 kWh of batteries with eve LF280 K cells. Paid less than 18000€ or 19000 $ I guess prices must be way off than what we pay here in the EU. 2 panels each 540 Wp cost about 136€ and they are VAT free like inverter and batteries too. For 100 k you could get a picea system which is storing the surplus energy in Hydrogen bottles for usage in the winter. Their fuel cell is uising 1/3 of the hydrogen power to heat during winter and 2/3 for electricity production. Made in Berlin, Germany and quite expensive, but those who got it, they were convinced.
There is of course interest expense for a higher mortgage by doing all this upfront. My goal is to follow your example when I buy a house. I'm happy to pay whatever it costs to leave the grid. I'm in southern California so this is achievable. An absolutely critical factor is that any series of systems like this must be reliable, robust and as simple as possible. There's nothing worse than some amazing but complicated system that when it has a problem five or ten years down the line can't be fixed because there is no tech support or parts. (As a sailboat owner this is far more common than you'd ever possibly imagine.) Or after a year you don't remember all the complex steps needed to operate it. (I remember the days of the first VCR video recorders. I used to rant about all the pokey pokey button nonsense. People seemed to love telling me that they can do it so I must be stupid. And then they'd call, "Did you record that HBO show?" If I had it it was only because I was there at the time and pressed Record. I wouldn't want a mid winter water heater shut down because of a glitch and there was no way to just press a button to do a manual override.)
I live in the SF Bay area and we've had solar for nearly two years now. I started with a 6,400 watt system plus a 10 kwh backup battery that we had installed in Feb 2023. Over the next year our panels generated 8.9 mwh of power and our total energy costs were reduced by more than 50% over the year (electricity + NG cost us $3,967 in 2022 and only $1,795 in 2023). This year, we went all in and added 14 more panels (which appear to be more efficient than the ones installed last year) got a heat pump water heater, two Mini Split heat pump AC/Heater units, an electric dryer, an EV with a home level 2 charger and an induction stove. We have yet to turn our gas furnace on, and probably won't this winter (or ever again). After rebates, we probably spent about $50,000 for all of the home upgrades (including solar) and another $50 k for the EV (a Hyundai Ionic 5). Our new system (which was upgraded in May) is projected to generate nearly 19 MWH per year and our total energy costs should be less than $500. In addition, we almost never buy gasoline since we rarely drive our second car (a 2010 Honda Fit). Since energy costs continue to rise here in Northern California, it's hard to project exactly how much we'll save over the next 10 years, but it's nice to know that, no matter what happens, we'll pay almost nothing for energy for the next several decades.
@@davidbelk46Thanks David, this is like this video but for Californians. A few years ago I contacted Southern Cal Edison to let them know the weed tree in my neighbor's yard was arcing against their power line. We're hillside which makes it even more dangerous. Two weeks later I got a text message saying, "Just have your gardener trim the tree." I'd mentioned in my first message that my gardener told me no one he knows would touch it. Also the SCE yard it took that guy two weeks to take a look? It's a mile away. I called the state regulatory dept and was told: We can't make the utilities do anything. They got laws passed.... Then PGE and murdered 71 people. I finally put on heavy neoprene gloves and cut down the tree. After the PG&E murders the utilities got a huge spike in rates and extra fees to pay for tree trimming -- something that had always been part of their responsibilities. When I got a bill for almost $0.50/kWh is when I set the goal of disconnecting as soon as I could.
Western NY state, 70's era ranch house aligned on east/west axis with clear south exposure. We had 20 265-W panels (5.3kW total) installed in late 2015, after living in the house for about a year. Net cost after NYS and Federal credits was just over $6300. We're still grid-connected and pay $22-$23 per month to use the utility as our battery. Utility offsets our back-fed kW's against our usage and banks the excess, with an annual reconciliation where they reset the account to 0 and pay us wholesale prices for the excess generation. It's hard to figure out current $/kWh on the supply side, so I don't know where we are bottom-line, but I think we're doing ok. Annual generation has exceeded annual usage since Feb. 2016, so we haven't bought any electricity since then. Total generation of about 50 MWh, or about 7MWh annually. Two years ago we upgraded the AC system and gained better summer comfort and more efficient energy use. About a year ago we switched the gas water heater to heat-pump electric hybrid, figuring that the improvement in efficiency made it workable with the average excess generation, and so far we're still running a surplus. Have considered batteries for backup, but the payback just doesn't seem to be there.
Your comment about choosing the design of your home without stairs so that you can age in place is so crucial! As a realtor, I handle many clients who find themselves in a position where they have to leave their home because life has dealt them circumstances where they cannot navigate stairways at all. It’s so sad to be backed into a corner where you have to leave the home you love. Highly recommend people to plan ahead and move because they want to rather than waiting until they have to. Love your channel. Thanks so much!
I'm building now... Stairs only to a storage loft, wide hallway, extra wide doors. Curbless shower. Blocking installed in case of installing handrails throughout. (and blocking at the 5 to 6.5 ft height typical for hanging pictures, TVs, shelves) The storage loft is designed with a balcony access (good place for holiday decorations) having a section of removable handrail to use a power lift to get anything heavy up. Very cheap to put the blocking in while building. Nightmarishly expensive to put it in by remodeling.
That's a dream system you have. Here in Zambia we've been getting 3-4hrs of utility supply due to drought drying up our hydro power supply. Solar is not an option but a necessity. I installed a 5kw system with 8x 550w panels and 2x 5kwh batteries for just over $3,000. It powers everything apart from the water heaters. With your solar budget I could build a whole new house off grid over here
The main challenge with your case lies in the significantly high investment cost: $88,000 for a system comprising 17 kWp PV and a 24 kWh battery ($55,000 for PV + $33,400 for storage). In comparison, similar systems in Vietnam cost less than $10,000, with a break-even period of up to five years in a conservative scenario. For example, I personally installed a 31 kWp PV system (54 REC x 575W panels) and 50 kWh of storage for approximately $17,000, showcasing a far more competitive cost structure.
This is interesting. I’m looking to retire in the Philippines, our house is mostly built at this point and we will eventually retrofit with solar. We didn’t do it up front as the priorities are a little different. Based on our location off grid, or at least a hybrid solution is required given that brownouts happen frequently. My biggest concern, if you want to call it that, is longevity of the batteries in the heat. With ambient temperatures basically never below 25C finding a suitable cubbyhole somewhere that doesn’t heat up thanks to 20kWh of storage isn’t going to be trivial. I wonder what this sort of thing looks like in Vietnam.
I live in Brazil and have installed 12 solar panels (each 550W) with 3 microinverters. The total cost, including installation, was approximately $3,000 USD. It is an on-grid system that generated 41 kWh just today. That is a lot for a single day. My house is entirely electric, and I use induction oven for cooking and AC for cooling and heating. Also the water is heated by electricity.
The cost of a kWh is around R$0,95 (real) that converts to $0,16 USD. The return on investment for solar in my case is around 2 years. Also, no government incentive.
yah, 55k for panels? My entire system is as big as his, and my cost before incentives was lower than his panel cost alone. I did not install any of it myself. Someone ripped him off.
@ fun fact: 94% of the energy produced in Brazil comes from renewable sources. Solar is growing rapidly here. I’ve noticed a sharp decline in solar panel prices in the last few years.
@@BrunoMoreira43 2 anos de payback tá excelente. No Brasil vc consegue vender o excedente p rede elétrica? Acha q adicionar uns 10kw de bateria pra rodar ac a noite valeria a pena?
Holy hell! $55K for 43 400w panels?? Here in Spain we pay ~€70 for a 455w panel. Your 43 panels would have cost ~€3000 including taxes! And LiFePO batteries are about €300 per kWh. You entire system would have cost no more than €15,000 fitted! (I know because we have a 6kwp and 21kwh battery system that cost €9000 3 years ago)
My local installer said $3/W. If I do it myself I think I can get that closer to $1/W for the full system cost. I think with more local competition, that would drop to $2/W.
@@wfm125m He only had to take advice from Will Prowse to spend about 40% of what he did on capital costs and perhaps have an installer to it all as well, so the cost would have been perhaps 50% of what he paid? I'm in shock about the huge total bill.
The best description I have ever heard from someone who lived off grid is that you pay for your energy in advance with solar. This is due to panel lifespan and efficiency. While you see benefits up front, later it dwindles and eventually you replace the panels and spend again. I think the biggest thing people miss is the source. Everyone wants to save $10 million dollars, but in reality we are using energy from a renewable source. THAT is the important thing. Finding more ways to sustainably live renewable needs to be the focus.
For a Finnish person who also installs these systems, all prices seem super inflated! e.g. 430W panels cost approx. €100 each, mounting rails and fasteners for 43 panels cost approx. 2000€ and a good 20kW inverter costs €4000. The installation time for a system like Matt's is approx. 50 hours. A 20kWh battery with installation accessories costs approx. €14,000 and its installation time is approx. 16 hours. An all-inclusive geothermal heat pump (no separate water heater) without a heat distribution system, as a turnkey package costs approx. €25,000. I know that since these systems are very common and everyday here, it lowers the prices, but still the American 4x price level seems absurd.
I‘ve never seen 400w panels for 1200$. Even with all installation brackets and everything. I just helped install 74 panels with controllers for every panel that cost less than 10k$. Someone profited through the nose off of you….
I'm off-grid with ~11kW of ground mount panels and 43kWh of battery. 12kW of inverters, electric hot water (8kw, 2 gpm), and a mini-split. About $30k all-in, $22k after rebates. His cost is astronomical. Possibly offset by sponsorship.
You're making the mistake of comparing the price things cost, with how much it costs OTHERS to put those in for you. Lab costs easily double or often triple the cost of the equipment which is why the DIY options save you considerable money. For instance, the exact same batteries he uses would cost about $14000 for the batteries, but the installation of those added nearly $20000 to the price. The panels, well these specific ones show about $300 each with a quick Google search, but if you went with another brand you can get 400W for about $125 or so.
The quote I got was $40k. I pointed out to the sales guy that I only spent $1800/yr on electricity and the payback was longer than I would likely live. I think he found that offensive. LOL.
I am in Queensland, Australia and have just tried to do what you have done. What I found is that we are so backward that I had to show videos to the tradies on how to do things like insulation and they don't know what a Net Zero target is or proper insulation. That said got a 19Kw Solar and 10Kw battery costing just over $30k. You are correct that everyone's situation is different as during winter I was still pulling over 8Kw+ a day and in the down pour of ran 6 to 7Kw and when the sun is out 15K+. I can't believe the cost of Solar & Batteries in America and stunned that people still pay for it. Thank you for sharing your experience as it highlighted things for me to do in the future and for my next home (if my wife lets me :))
@@gavinrobinson7965 interesting to hear that from Australia. In the desert here in the US, I went with a Tesla solar system. 12kw system for around $17k after rebate. Being in the desert, I get 35kWh generated in a day in winter and beyond 60 in summer. The prices he paid I find absolutely crazy, especially knowing Tesla was available for him. I suppose he really didn't want them to take the 20% cut from the pay-back grid support program.
I appreciate how, through all of these videos, he has pointed out that it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows and that this is his experience, not a blueprint.
A factor here is the 30-year plan. The plan works when looking at 30 years. Most people don't live in a home for 30 years. Most don't live in a home for five. In my opinion, to do this on a not-forever-home isn't very feasible. Even if you were to recoup the costs of installing the infrastructure when selling the home, you've just passed it on to someone else. They aren't likely to live there for 30 years either. Good job for doing the right thing for you and for being transparent about it. I had no doubt of your outcome because you analyzed it to death before you started. What would be appreciated is the scenario that doesn't work - i.e. recovering in 10 years.
And that doesn't even take into account technical innovations and the commoditization of energy well before 30yrs is up. 30 years is literally stupid because that assumes that the economic paradigm won't evolve in the next 30years.
does it. his design adds 1000 amonth in princible and interest for 30 years, on systems likely to last only 10 to 25 years. so at the end when you think you got ahead. you will need to start it all again.
@@diegojines-us9pc My guess is that Matt is banking on the solar panels and batteries lasting well beyond their warranty periods. If it's just a matter of capacity degradation, he can compensate for that by buying a few additional solar panels and batteries alongside of it, rather than replacing the entire thing.
@@ab-tf5fl i was banking on my 10 year car to last longer. but the cost of repairs were higher than new payments. but i wasn't counting on spending on either one. what do i do now?
I have been a general contractor in California for over 33 years. All new houses require solar and our electric cost is similar to yours. Your cost for panels, micro inverters and batteries is double what I pay 💰. You obviously made a significant contribution to some contractor's college fund for their children.
And this is energy regulation 101 that shows better energy standards stimulates economies of scale to reduce the cost of the equipment used. Not to mention competition in the implementation of systems like this.
Yeah, the panel price isn't criminal at low'ish $3 per watt but the battery per kWh is lol for a 20kWh system. Even with the good panels you'd expect per watt to go down with the size of this system.
He already did a video on this. You can't compare your local prices with his. There are just too many location and situation-specific factors that will drastically affect the pricing.
I appreciate that you see value in being tied to the grid, and that you're doing what you can to help keep the grid stable. This is really nice for renters or those of us who can't afford solar yet.
As a nearly 66 year old man who lives alone, my energy costs aren’t much. I can’t project out 30 years to calculate return on the expense of installing a net zero solar system. I built a solar system to mostly act as an emergency backup but currently expanding it to take over some, if not all, my electric energy needs. My efforts are more focused on using less energy than paying for energy I don’t really have to consume.
I'm on "partial solar" too. I use more energy without paying for it! I have a hot water urn on the whole time I'm awake at home, no more waiting for a kettle when I fancy tea. Also a countertop dishwasher I run twice a day. I doubt I'd do that otherwise. I need to shift my floppy CIGS panels out of the shadow of another building and I may be able to run a 300w "hot carpet" for free for several hours too, depends on cloud.
Around $33k in cost was the battery pack. What is the lifetime of that? Not mentioned warranty or replacement cost in 25 or 30 year projection from what I could see. This is one of the major concerns for existing battery technology available. Battery packs degrade and costly to replace. You break even on year 10 or 11, then get hit with $33k battery replacement cost? Major concern or not? Would love to see community comments.
you said 25 to 30 years. like a car what is the average yearly cost of maintance. and with all the peyments. could you afford to replace in case of total failure?
Don't worry, get a 20 year old EV battery for dirt cheap and use it for 20 more years easily because the load on the battery is way less in a storage situation vs. vehicle use. Or use LTO batteries which have 4x the lifecycle span than LFP. Well unless there is a catastrophic event like a meteorite, best be vigilant!
@ I don’t think that’s how “old car batteries “ work, you can legally only use battery system compatible for solar by voltage etc and permitted by city inspectors
Depends on your needs, my utility bill is $45 a month and thats natural gas included, it's 8.4cents KwH, my home soaks up the sun through out the day and radiates it back into my home through out the night during the winter and during the summer I open the windows and I have a natural AC in the last 3 years I think my AC kicked in twice right around August when it's 95f (35c), and my gas heater doesn't really get used much. No geothermal in place, it's just a hole that was built right before AC was a thing and has proper insulation. My utility company also will not to a buy back program so it's not like I can get a little extra income once I surpass net zero.
At 72 yrs old this makes no sense for older folks. $50K-$80K to install the panels and batteries just doesn’t make sense for me and frankly for most Americans. The per month cost for these is more than my present electric bill and that is for the next 20 yrs. Also the power companies are changing the terms of what they will accept and how they pay or credit you on what you produce.
I had 19 Q-Cell 405W panels installed in December of last year, and became active in early January. I thought I wasn't going to produce enough juice to cover my electric bill 100%, so I added 4 more Q-Cell 405w panels over my garage in April. So far I've produced a little over 7MW and projecting forward through the end of December be closer to 7.3-7.5MW, or about 1MW more than I will use. I currently have a $450 credit with National Grid (I'm in northeastern MA). I installed a 1.5 ton mini split in my kitchen which should more efficiently cool my downstairs than my previous cooling system, and also produce heat in the shoulder months, cutting into my heating bill. My system cost $28k. but I got back $10k in federal and state tax credits. It should pay for itself in 6 or so years (I currently have a $9k loan on it for the next 4 years). Then it should result in no electric bill, and my heating bill cut by about 1/4 to about $1500/yr. I say it was well worth it for me.
I'm afraid I agree, as much as I enjoy seeing all of Matt's gizmos. For reference, I went solar in a much smaller house for just $16k plus another $3k for appliances & electrical to hook them up. System pays for itself in 9 years, after which it will pay me $30k over its lifetime.
I live in Seattle. 12 years ago, I spent 10 grand for a 3kw roof mount system. Huge mistake. Constant maintenance, only 300 dollar per year return, too cloudy, cold, rainy, constant cleaning under the panels otherwise you get roof damage. Expensive replacement of microinverters. I will never get my money back. I would have been way ahead to have put the 10 grand in the S&P 500. I would have made a grand a year and still had the original 10k without hassle. However, one great win is the $3,500 I spent on installing a heat pump the same year. Highly efficient, saves 900 a year on energy costs. very little maintenance, and works 24-7, 365 regardless of sun, rain, wind, and darkness. No pristine environment is required. Contrapositively, I would not have benefited by putting that money into the S & P, I would have only made 1/3 of the annual return of my heat pump. Like my marriages, only about 1/2 of what we do works. Half of what we attempt is successful and heavenly, the other half a nightmare. Go figure.
I don’t see why you would ever need to clean the panels or under them. I would imagine it rains enough in Seattle you shouldn’t have to worry about that.
Here in Michigan rain cleans my panels. Snow in the winter, but that's worse because they don't operate the next day, until the snow melts off. Not sure what you did wrong but sounds like a lot of things. Zero problems with my Enphase microinverters, zero problems with my larger array with the SMA inverter. Zero maintenance so far but maybe I'll take a look in the spring and clean them myself, 5-6 years in.
@@maartenvanrossen6138 My neighborhood has a lot of deciduous trees. The leaves end up covering the solar panels rendering them useless. I have to climb on the roof often and hose both the top of the panels and under. Leaves create mold and moss, hurting the roof underneath. It costs 20k to replace the roof from leaving moss there. Again, the heat pump is a ground unit, is easily accessible, and never has problems from leaves.
@@whattheschmidt What kind of return are you getting? Mine is pretty dismal. Seattle and Portland are not good for solar. 3% ROI at best. The microinverter replacement and hassle of getting on the roof frequently make the project not worthwhile. But other folks have different experiences, and living in the sun belt should produce 3 to 4x my returns.
@ChrisPat-kq4fw The 2.5kw array with Enphase inverters is only a couple months from ROI. Cost $2700 to install in early 2020. Makes 3mwh a year. The one I paid for is about 4 years away, less if rates go up further. Installed in 2019, 5.4kw. I generate around 9mWh a year. Offsets my house and EV. I even installed a heated family room floor to use more electricity.
I had a passive net zero home built 6 years ago. This home takes advantage of the solar gain with passive heating and wide overhang roof to stay cool in the summer. The energy produced from the Solar Panels (PVs) is used to heat and cool our home as well hot water, electric vehicles as well for all the electrical uses for the home. With no utility bill, except for small service charge from our utility company. Bad decisions we avoided: No geothermal system both expensive and unnecessary with passive heating. No expensive battery backup or storage system because our utility company take the energy we produce in the summer months and we get it back in the winter. We needed only good thermal envelope, south facing triple pane windows and PVs, Energy recovery ventilator (ERV) and heat pumps. Simple is better!
I was hoping he would address a solution like yours in the video. Before I did what he did I would have wanted to do a cost tradeoff on increasing the passive efficiency of the house versus geothermal heat pumps.. I don't know how real it is but there are videos where people claim that a hairdryer can heat their home. I also would have been very reluctant to invest that kind of capital in devices that were experiencing large price drops over time.
@@DanielDuedu I have a small gas Honda generator. If I lose power, which hardly ever happens I can plug in my refrigerator, microwave oven, till I get power back.
Nice! Wherabouts are you located? I would have gotten something like 30-40kWh on my battery system if I could have. Local permitting would have required installing a sprinkler system in my garage if I went over the 20kWh I got though.
@UndecidedMF I'm in Australia, so we have more sunshine. It's unfortunate having to install a sprinkler system for 40kwh of battery. We don't have that problem here, but def worth having more storage if feasible.
off grid is much less green than grid-tied. Sometimes even negatively green. Presumably you live far from the grid, because otherwise it is a big error to be off-grid. Any off-grid system will have batteries that get nearly full and then all your extra solar is discarded, instead of going to reduce fossil on the grid.
Provided their inverter can support that (clipping). I have 7.2kW inverter for my 8.8kw panel system (originally 9.6kw system, but they ran out of room on the south facing).
We have a typical mid- 2000's semi custom totally electric suburban home that is roughly 4000 sq. ft.. I've added insulation in the walls and ceiling above and beyond what the builder installed, replaced all windows and doors and upgraded the water heater and HVAC. Over the year, our electric bill averages just under $200/month. It would take forever for us to recover the install/cost of adding solar to our home. Great video, as always, Matt.
Everything he bought just seems so much more than what I did: $1400 Heat pump water heater, $7k cold climate air source whole house heat pump, $20k for 14.5kw of solar, 30kw battery, hybrid inverter … all that is costs installed before incentives and rebates
Yeah, his home seems way over engineered to me. I have net zero in Washington from decent insulation, 15kw solar, air sourced heat pump, and regular electric water heater. No battery, no geothermal, no heat pump water heater
@@edwarddiaz8371 Improve your insulation. Get that R value up so the cold doesn't leak out. Upgrading to triple pane windows will do a whole lot on its own, if they're installed correctly; sealing corners & holes to prevent air movement is fussier but does a lot too.
Having just retired from Trane Commercial and being a service technician for 44 of those years. I've never seen a heatpump compressor that will last 30 years or even 10 year's. So you need to be pricing in a few compressor changes in your total cost to operate. I have a 11 KWH solar system and A variable speed 96% furnace and a 18seer 2 stage Trane condensing unit. I only pay in the summer the minimum of $11.99 each month. Of course the gas goes up in December and the winter months to around $150.00 for a super insulated 6000 square foot house. It'd be interesting to see how that comes in comparison.
repairs for 30 years. what about total replacement after 15 years. when you still have 15 more years of payments on the old one. and the solar system. same quality. and the whole system has a annual derating factor if it doesn't fail. and batteries. the best out there are only rated for 10 years. with annual derating factors.
@karinoren I know but that has to be part of the equation to plan on a compressor of pump, etc. During that time. The 10 year's also depends on the operating conditions. Extreme weather conditions, having the correct charge, good electrical power. I was a technician for 44 year's so I've worked on a few During that time, mainly large commercial units.
Thanks Matt, I have been retrofitting a 25 year old home with a remodel, taking the opportunity to install as much solar (25 panels), batteries (2xPowerwall2), AirSource heat pump as possible.. In the process of remodelling I have been amazed at how insulation standards have changed over the past 25/30 years, I suspect my wife is going to very pleased with the result, and like you, I'm exporting a little more than we consume. You have to be quite privileged at this point to do *all* of that, but actually it is all worth it.
There was a good article about minimum code building standards. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Last winter we had a couple of days of - 50 degrees. De icing on airplanes doesn’t work at that temperature. There is a window company in Edmonton that makes the highway R rated windows in the world.
if you just use 10% of this money and put it into insulation. you will recover that cost in just a couple of years. then save that amount each year. forever.
@diegojines-us9pc it all depends on what insulation and how expensive more solar is. For my system, it was 10x faster payback to put more solar up than the insulation I was looking up. I'm sure the numbers could go the other way too if you had expensive solar and cheap insulation
@@MrPizzaman09 $1000 of attic insulation saves you $100 the very first month. then every month. now how fast was your payback? no other system pays back faster, as much, and as long as a simple thing as insulation. now the next step. is windows. bigger investment with life time repayment but as a slower rate. and most of America dont even come close to having either.
Our energy here in Arkansas is about 1/3 of what you pay. That makes the return take so much longer to the point where it’s a flip of a coin on if the system would even break even. I’m glad to hear you have a balanced approach saying, “it’s not for everyone.” Too many of the environmentally conscious people don’t understand that.
I'm curious on the decision to have the house shaped as a H instead of a rectangle. Would a large rectangle not have maximised internal volume, reduced energy loss by reducing the surface area to volume ratio, simplified construction, simplified the roof, reduced cost, increased the roof area for solar panels, reduced future maintenance costs in 20+ years, etc. As someone from the UK your house is quite a complex shape relative to what we have over here. I'm not hating just intrigued.
His house is predesigned the main part of it is a rectangle, It's H shaped because he added a garage and his office to it. You are correct that it would have been more efficient, but the design cost for him would have increased significantly and taken him longer to build. It was designed and panelized by Unity homes.
Nice pondering. To the effect, why not just a 100 square foot room. surely we can manage with out any luxuries. why have anything we enjoy that eclipses what is necessary.
The H shape increases window views, their up sides to the complex shape. Also the shape can create more privacy inside the home, isolating bedrooms from the entryway.
Not building like the 2nd of the "Three Little Piggies" would help as well. I'm looking at the builders website and I can't help but laugh, seeing how they are proud of R-35 walls and R-50 roof. I live in Poland, which has climate roughly equivalent to that of Chicago, and our walls (in new construction) are required by law to be, at the absolute minimum, about R-30, with >R-60 being a fairly normal value - that's just 10" aerated concrete brick walls and 12" of graphite-infused XPS insulation. Another R-64 for the roof (18" of mineral wool is normal).
I went off the grid eight years a go and i'm loving every minute of it. Used solar panels chevy volt lithium batteries And a great big transformer inverter and Some AC coupled in phase micro inverters.
he stated his goal. he never said "i want to maximize my returns without any other consideration" if you only ate ramen and invested all the money you invest on food could you be better off?
@@wtfdoicareno but it still needs to make sense, most people don't get a Tesla charger sponsored, a smart main panel, solar panels or water heater. We have to buy it ourselves. So if it's just a black hole you toss money down there are unlimited ways to do that. The HVAC, water heater, solar panels, battery pack, smart panels are almost the same amount of our house. If we install it, our house won't increase in value to support that investment. It doesn't inform the viewer to decide if it's a good idea for them. I walk away still undecided.....
@@wtfdoicare Exactly, and this is his Lifetime investment in housing... And what if your Invested money in stocks crashes ?.... It's a Long Term outlook when you build these. It's like my EV car I bought. $50k for the car, $7500 Fed rebate (because I can use it all, not everyone can- FYI it has changed since 2022) $2500 check from MA state (so this is $10k off in the 1st year) and 2 years Free charging that for me equaled $15k just back and forth to work..... so my $50k car turns into a $25k car.
Great video summary!! Well laid out and reasoned. As a home builder, I nerd out on this stuff too! Matt is very open, but there are a couple of points that deserve more note - the upfront costs and ROI time. People need to accept that this is a 10-30 year project. That is a major commitment that does hold some significant risk. Like Matt states he is Pre-Purchasing a lot of future costs. This only works well IF the future goes his way. I know he plans this as a forever home, but we all make "permanent" plans that life forces you to change over 10-30 years. If he never has a major disaster. I'm in North Texas subject to hail and tornadoes. One good storm can easily wipe the extra $100k in these upgrades. Technology advancements - 10 years from now we could have solar panels that are up 10x better for 10x less. Remember, the 1st iPhone was in 2007. How many cell phones have you owned over 20 years and how does your phone now compare to the 1st one you ever had. So, there is always large risks to being on the cutting edge of change. But Change ALWAYS REQUIRES PIONEERS. So major kudos and thanks to Matt for accepting that challenge (and cost because I ain't writing the check for an extra $100k on my house) for us all. And for that, I just subscribed here.
Matt did a full installation in a new home and spent a lot of money but it's not necessary to do that just to get the benefits of solar. Matt's system is amazing and will give him many years of energy savings but you can do it for a whole lot less money and still save money. I installed solar powered mini split heat pumps in our home when we needed to replace our AC unit. The kits come with solar panels and are all self-contained you simply install and plug in, no batteries to worry about, no inverters, just plug the solar panels in and plug it into an electrical backup and you're off and running. Three units cost us $7,000 total including installation. My electricity bill in the summer went from $340 down to $92. The units use solar power during the day and automatically switch over to grid power when the sun goes down. They work fantastic, they're not complicated, they're very budget friendly and easy to install if you want to DYI.
That's 28 years to recover the initial investment even without taking into account the opportunity cost. I have a similar problem justifying investing in solar power because our idiot Ontario government heavily subsidizes electricity use and both federal and provincial governments encourage the use of natural gas with negligible taxes. I have 1600 square feet of flat roof that would be ideal for panels but it would be financially disadvantageous to do even a partial conversion. I'm 61 and every year, my time limit for achieving a return on my investments gets shorter and shorter. It's very frustrating.
@@KeithHanlan I assume the OP is referring to a monthly bill, so $340 down to $92 for the peak month of summer electrical usage. He will get a benefit every other month of a smaller amount. If we assume that the average monthly saving is half the peak savings (124$/month) then he will break even at 4.7 years. If you take into account the opportunity cost of the install the pay back will be somewhat longer but only a couple years (based on some reasonable assumptions on RoR)
@@KeithHanlan I'm paralyzed, retired and limited income. I just built my 12kW solar, 6kW of 220v inverters, and 20kW of battery backup for $5k total. It took my sweat and tears to make happen, but I'm now paying $24 a month down from $300 (ROI-19 months). It, also, required me to be FRUGAL in my purchases. These are wealthy Millennials who weren't raised to be frugal. All of my equipment is used. Purchased at a price that I can just buy another if it fails. For example, I paid $750 for my 2 inverters to produce 6kW @ 220v. New, they would cost $1k each. Having retired from critical infrastructure, trust me when I say that in solar, used (within 10 years) is as good as new. My panels were used hard for 6 years, and they're still producing 114% of their declared output rating. Solar panels degrade minimally and never at the rate the manufacture claims. Oh, 2 of my 48v LiFePo4 battery packs I purchased used as well. It'll take a decade or more, before they degrade noticeably. Don't subsidize anything. Don't pull any permits. They can remove the systems when whomever replaces us, after we've died and made our money off of the solar. We don't have the time to play the long game. So, write your own short game. You can do it. A tip: don't put panels on a roof, if you have land available. Cheers.
All mini splits work with solar. The way they ramp up is inverter friendly. I've a 2 ton Pioneer mini split that runs off my 2-3k inverters. I understand the desire to have direct to A/C solar connection, though. Congrats on the bill reduction. Nice!
I’m currently getting a very similar set up on my house right now. Same brand, same batteries. My solar is 15kw and I’ll have 25kw of batteries. My yearly consumption is about 20k KWH per year. I’m hoping my set up will cover 100% of that. My house was built in 1960 and doesn’t even have insulated walls. I’m planning insulation up grades in the future to off set my future planned increase in electrical usage. I have one electric car, I’ll likely eventually get a 2nd one. My cost in California is nearly identical to yours plus a roof replacement. I am so happy and thankful to see a similar set up for similar price. My electrical rate is $0.50, and my average yearly bill was $750. My new theoretical bill should be $30 per month. $15 for electrical usage, and $15 service fee.
Did you take into account the time value of money? If you sent net 50K net for your system vs 20k for a gas or propane furnace you have a 30K difference in cost. Using the rule of 72, you would have made 30K in the first 10 years assuming a7.2% return, investing 60k for the next 10 years you would have 120K and the last 10 years it would turn into 240K. That is why using the time value of money is important. It is probable that you financed the extra cost. At a 6% mortgage cost it would still cost you around 200k in extra mortgage payments so not that much in savings. I know this is finance nerd stuff but is something to consider.
The calculation could be much more simpler: you probably don't have spare $100k so in the end comparing the raw prices is speculative. You should calculate the total prices with the loan applied to the difference, it makes the result at least somewhat practical.
I have a similar comment. He does appear to have done is math seriously wrong and his calculations are way, way off because of ignoring the time value of money.
and the true cost of Maintenace, this whole system has a derating annual factor. and can you afford those admittance bills. and this 30 loan. can you afford it when a total replacement is needed in 20 years? about as smart as using a credit card to pay off a credit card, thats how i see the whole thing.
@@diegojines-us9pc In theory one can insure, or factor in an insurance cost for the fairy small risk of the need for total replacement. I have not seen data on that, but it's reasonable to predict it. The real model is complex -- you must predict a real interest rate or rate of return, have a model for inflation or deflation of grid energy prices, panel output degradation etc. You can fudge some of these, but the one thing you absolutely can't fudge on is the time value of the money. MF seems to do a simple straightline calculation with interest rates set to zero and that makes the result way, way, way off.
Matt, did you consider the battery degradation rate during the next 30 years with your calculations, possibly needing to fix, replace, or add more, which will affect the ROI and overall energy cost per unit?
panels have a derate factor on 20 years. and batteries have a derate factor based on 10 years. now what you gonna do with 30 years of payments? in 30 years you have one system with 3 payments.
@@kansassolar then they are industry leaders. since all others are 10 year, and check those panels, with 4% annual derating they will only be producing 50% power. and thats a fact and warranty is also degraded for each year. so if they dont fail. they only be half as good. and no one makes them any better than to degrade any slower. or didn't you know that as well.
@@diegojines-us9pc Many panels have a 25 year warranty. Some have 30 years. Yes, 15 years for a battery is above the market average. This particular solar panel will degrade a total of 8% over 25 years. He talks about it on the video and it's quite easy to find.
Thanks for sharing, I live in Netherlands and I fully retrofitted my 1973 house with insulation, solar panels and the previous owner also installed a solar boiler system for hot water. I also made that boiler supply water to the washing machine. We have airconditioners (that we also use for heating) in 3 rooms and are in a process of getting an air-water heatpump to get heat in th eentire home. I found out my kids likes to shower to get warm after a cold or wet day and showered again seperately to wash and so I installed a shower timer giving them 7 minutes for one shower per day. The water actually gets cold after that. My energy bill is much lower than average but still high due to the Ukrain war
Wow, I did my own system, on an all aluminum ground mount with ground screws. 30 x 700 watt Bi-Facial panels, 16 kW Hybrid inverter, 2 x 15 kWh batteries. Tools, ladders, equipment, cables. USD $21k. This was 2 years ago, still working great. 16.93 MWh of production so far this year, 16.67 last year.
i put solar panels on my roof in December of 2019....I have a 4.4 meg system..... I front loaded my electric cost just as i retired....My monthly NIPSCO Electric bill is $14.98....the cost to rent the meter....I would do this again in a heartbeat .....I like your Videos they have been mentioned in my small towns TRC...Plan Commission and BZA meetings....I have also mentioned them in board meetings of a local Industrial Development board i sit on and the County Amateur Radio Club i belong to....Keep up the good work.
I took the money for a solar install and put them in an index-fund, then switched to an electricity provider that is 100% renewables. Since that moment, I get paid to use energy, forever. And the energy-provider used the money to build even more wind/solar. I don't have to worry about roof-leaks, fixing things. The generators are away from my home and managed efficiently by staff.
And now I have a full time job managing my overcomplicated automated house that requires me to constantly monitor why my smart light switch is not working
This is a factor nobody thinks of. The other thing is when new tech and falling-off-a-cliff energy storage pricing outpaces your otherwise carefully calculated ROI.
I was about to make a comment very similar to yours. I have better things to spend my life doing then micromanaging why one circuit in my house house cost me a penny more then last month. I just don't get why people need "smart" circuit breaker panels, "smart" appliances, etc.
Just wait until your local power grid gets congested as more people and companies add solar. First net metering will disappear, and then you get to pay for every watt you send to the grid, including all the same taxes you pay for using power from said grid. This is what is happening in the Netherlands as mass adoption of solar more than outstripped grid capacity. Commercial connections to the grid are now on a waiting list and companies will be forced to shut down during peak hours or are restricted in when they are allowed to send energy onto the grid. It's getting so bad that some business parks are considering building their own local grid so they can exchange power among themselves outside of the regular power grid. Very expensive but still better than dealing with the headaches of the normal grid. Also whole residential city districts get their solar shut off remotely to keep the grid from becoming unbalanced. Costing users money and extra wear on the controllers.
It's unavoidable, without a cheap efficient way to store electricity those grids are economicall nightmare. You think having few panels worth 2000€ not working for few hours is bad? Imagine building 200million € powerplant and finding out it wont be able to work 24h/7 cause EV panels push electric prices negative during peak solar 😂😂😂
I know of a farmer who just disables their solar panels in the weekend, when none of his machines are running. Otherwise he'd get like a 2000 euro bill for pushing too much energy to the net. One day the folks from who manage the net showed up to check out what was happening and asked him why, he explained that he wasn't stupid to pay for that and they couldn't give him a reason to not do it.
@@sznikers It gets even better than that: without storage on the grid you need backup powerplants, usually natural gas powered, to offset 'dunkelflaute'. And they basically idle the rest of the time, just costing stupid amounts of money without any return. Plus it means that every watt of 'clean/green energy' is directly tied to an equivalent fossil fuel watt. So much for 'no emissions'. Worse: if a natural gas plant could run at proper load its emissions would be only a fraction of what they are now, per watt generated. Also: at peak production moments some factories get paid to use power, to balance the grid when there is an excess of solar or wind. On the other end of the spectrum some factories shut down for months to do maintanance, because they earn more by renting out their grid capacity for that period, than they would by actually running the plant and producing goods.
@@FrietjeOorlog oh yeah, the amazing economics of political solutions 😂😂 On the other hand, sounds like good place to start a crypto mining farm : ) you can automatically regulate power draw of cryptominers in accordance to grid situation and there is no discrete steps. Instead of having to pay for power to mine be paid for providing load balancing to the grid, paid2mine : ) Now, per Watt efficiency of miner goes down with increased powerdraw, but one doesn't care if one is paid to use that power, only total output matters in that scenario. Per Watt efficiency goes up when you lower miner power draw (to a certain point), so when electric rates reverse from negative to positive you lower power draw, which lowers your total crypto output but increases efficiency per watt bought from grid. Win,win.
I think one of the rarely-mentioned issues in deciding about installing solar becomes, for some, a show-stopper. In ALL of the proposals - over the years I've been looking, and that I've gotten so far, although obviously it can change, and "your mileage may vary" - they've all had a highly undesirable flaw. For grid-locked systems, where you sell excess electricity back to the grid, that flaw is: when the grid loses power, so do you. That is, when the neighborhood power goes out - a line comes down in a storm, etc., and despite all those panels on the roof - your power goes out as well. That happens a lot up here in New England from fall hurricane season through winter storms, so going "autonomous" from power failures via a solar installation seemed a great way of avoiding that problem - but the systems offered don't provide such a solution. While energy savings was one of the attractive features of solar that initially drew me to the idea of solar, it was the idea that I would never again need to sit in front of a fireplace wrapped in a blanket, or throw out thawed food. Or the alternative of hurriedly stuffing food in coolers, left in the entryway, covered with ice - if any was left in local markets. That idea of grid independence represented a large part of my motivation to investigate solar - instead of, for example, using a gas generator. I was surprised to learn that while being able to sell surplus electricity back to the grid was a bonus, it came with a major caveat: the grid goes out - and so does your house. There's a good reason, of course - linemen working on downed lines need to be assured that if they isolate a line from the main source, there aren't hundreds of solar-powered houses still pumping electricity into that wire they are working on. So to accomplish that, if your power converters detect a power failure, they shut down the DC:AC conversion of YOUR solar panels, and your house goes black. There's a way around it, of course - but (surprise!) it costs money. You have to install an automatic transfer switch - an ATS - or a manual switch (less convenient, and doesn't work when you're not at home) in order to isolate yourself from the grid. When a grid failure is detected by the ATS, it disconnects you from the grid just as it would do if you had an emergency generator. And, if you have a smart inverter, at that point you can resume powering your home just as a generator would. When power is restored, the ATS detects it, you synch back up with the grid phase, and the ATS reconnects you. The hardware to do that isn't cheap - nor is it commonly offered by solar installers, either, who are trying to sell you on solar on a return on investment basis, and so are loathe to add to the investment side of the equation. The current (no pun intended) way around this for night time power gaps, is to offer battery backup to fill in for the panels - but not for grid failure. At night, the grid is still up, and the inverter is still synched to the grid phase - relying, as in the daytime, on the grid's presence to continue operating. Essentially, the battery is just a "virtual daytime" that provides DC to the inverter instead of the solar panels, and has the same restriction as the panels in a power outage. Having panels to generate energy, and a battery to store it, but not being able to use either if the grid goes down is a non-starter for me. And if you do have an ATS to disconnect yourself from the grid, you still need a ~"clock" to create a 60 Hz timing cycle for the inverter that mimics the grid clock. That's what it takes to be truly autonomous - at least until your batteries run flat. Stepping back from the issue of convenience, however, brings up an issue of even greater importance. While this extra equipment is an added expense, its absence also overlooks a potential strategic benefit of having autonomous power: national security. If the grid were taken out in an attack - by terrorists, rather than storms, for example - or even by an attack of a hostile government entity, the resultant disruption would be catastrophic. Well pumps don't work; sump pumps don't work; furnaces don't work; food goes bad because refrigeration doesn't work; stoves and microwaves don't work; security systems and lighting doesn't work; communications systems - TV, Radio, phone - don't work. A citizenry that can't be informed about what is going on is thrown back into the medieval state - one to which they are completely unaccustomed. A fully-"hardened" country - one as incapable of having its power cut off as the Internet is designed to be in case of disaster - is one that can be coordinated, informed, and marshalled to respond to the threat. One that can charge its electric vehicles and continue to transport goods and services. One that - at least for electrical machinery - can continue to operate as a nation. The value to the nation of being able to continue to operate through grid disaster is strong motivation to make the adoption of fully-autonomous, "hardened" solar/battery hybrid-powered housing a national goal. To make that a reality, it should be highly subsidized by the federal and state governments such that the cost of installation is not a deterrent to any homeowner - potentially, in fact, free. There's a pony in there someplace, and such a nation - armed as it is - would be a truly formidable and daunting prospect to an invader or hostile force. Not a bad objective as an extension to the goal of Net Zero.
The inverter will not; the panels should last without a problem. After 12 years I am currently waiting for delivery of a new inverter. Panels have not lost anything
Current Enphase microinverters are designed to last over 25 years (much longer than typical string inverters). We also installed an Enphase battery system.
Thanks for the video, I have 10mwh installed since 2010, and very happy. Our cars run 80% on electricity, but heating is still on natural gas. One thing to go into the calculation: I financed my installation with a mortgage loan at 2% for green loans, so actually I pay the installation over 20 years. This means that my savings montly outweigh my mortgage payements, so my installation made me money the moment it was switched on.
Are those panels made of solid gold, omg.. I just installed 60 400 watt (500 watt with bifacial) panels, 130kWH of lifep04 batteries.. Just passed final inspection last week. In Michigan in November on a sunny day I was hitting over 22k watts on the panels, I produced over 100 kwh in the day. I paid 7200 dollars shipped for all 72 of these panels, only using 60 of them so far. I am not using micro inverters, I spent 4200 on 3 EG4 6000XP inverters and running them in parallel. I diy the batteries and spent 18k total on them, they are all in rack mount cases, 15 kWh per battery using JK BMS's and Eve MB30 Grade A 306AH prismatic lifep04 cells. I don't know how the heck someone could charge so much for solar panels and batteries. I understand I did the labor myself but wow, someone is making a pretty penny.
@@slavko321 Yes I wrote that correctly, Eve MB30 306AH Cells (brand new grade A cells) in Yixiang DIY cases with JK BMS's. Can build each one for about 2k each shipped, each battery is over 15 kwh. The MB30 cells capacity are actually higher than the rated 306, typically 320+ per cell.
One thing I think you should consider is that someday when you're done living in the house and you sell it these features you've built in will be very attractive to the prospective buyer and the amount you make on the sale, assuming no issues with the market, should be significantly greater than without them.
11:00 I don't see any consideration of the cost of money. Based on an interest rate of 6% the solar will break even at 15 years, not 9 years and that's not allowing for maintenance/repairs. A cash flow of $4,800 per year for 10 years, with an interest rate of 6 percent has a present value of $35,000. For 15 years that would be $46,000, which matches the cost of the solar system. The choice of interest rate is subjective, if you have to borrow money or have other debt then a higher figure would be appropriate raising the present value.
A lot of details neglected, especially applying the credits/savings up front. It should be more than 15 yrs if those credits are measured as discounted future cash flows.
@@spoddie Annual increase in the cost of grid electricity should also be accounted for, the $4800 avoided cost is not fixed over the payback period. Interesting how difficult it is to find a tool/resource that does proper accounting for these installations.
I was impressed with myself for being able to follow with stats and financial numbers, and then it dawned on me that it's only because you did a great job as explaining it all. Kudos to you!
I think if people are installing new solar systems, they should oversize the system if their budget allows. Because eventually you will move on to EV's and all electric appliances. Our 10kW setup although sufficient for now might not be able to power EV's if we buy them. Current iCE cars we own are very old(2014) and we still have them coz we don't drive a lot. If your budget doesn't allow it use what we did: We left space for 3 extra panels which I think will help in out especially in our winter production. Guess the next step is to make out house more efficient 😁
Great video! Glad the house is working out! My wife and I added solar and air source heat pump to our house which was built in the 70’s. We upgraded the insulation and recently added a heat pump hot water heater. We both drive ev’s and pay about 1,500 a year out of pocket. I have been extremely happy with everything. I run an oyster farm in Massachusetts and just need to find a good electric outboard so I can switch that over too!
@@mikeselectricstuff yeah made a video complaining that solar isn’t worth it, but he significantly overpaid for those panels. I had 22 roof panels installed in Missouri for $14k, and the city loaned the money for it at 1% interest.
At least you think it was worth it. Great system. I have an insulated sand floor with some buried heating cables that are correct connected directly to solar with zero equipment. I was able to get the panels free and spent less than $100 on the heating cables. The sand is here already living near the beach in Chicago. Its a small system so far, but the proof of concept has been great! I plug the cables into the grid if i want to top off the heat sink in cloudy weather. Cheers! The sand floor is topped by concrete pavers.
When you said your electric cost is $.31/kwh my jaw hit the floor! We’re at $.09 for the first 700 then $.07 after that with a monthly $26 customer fee. Plus it’s a co-op so I get a check at the end of each year with about 1/2-2/3 of a months usage as a return. Solar just never pays back at those rates.
He did say it depends on your situation. Some people have insane electric bills and he did swap all of his household items/maintenance to electric so he is doubling down on it to maximize his investment. Where you are if you honestly wanted to get into solar then look at used panels and doing some DIY installations with basic RUclips tutorials. All the new technology is making the older panels significantly cheaper and if you buy them used from a wholesaler then you can get some decent panels for a fraction of the price. I helped my neighbor build a few racks for panels and it cost him 12k to build a 30kwh system on used parts and he intends to add some new batteries later when he buys some lithium ion power cells from China to make his own batteries and save even more money.
yea for me its partly a desire for lower costs but mostly a desire for reliable power that noone can take from me , i want to have power no matter what is going on outside
Yeah, in Massachusetts we have some of the most expensive rates in the country. Fortunately for me I get 1:1 net metering and even my $7/mo member fee is included. So I haven't had a bill since last March ($40) and still have $450 in credits, so I expect to not have a bill again,, unless their policy changes.
If you think that's a lot, we can pay over 60¢/kWh in California. I'm on Time of Use, and my cheapest rate is 32¢/kWh. This is why I have solar and battery storage.
My parents recently decided to add solar to their home and have just started the process of getting quotes, this has given me some tools and good questions to make sure get asked during the process. Thanks for putting this out there.
My geothermal unit gave out after 11 years. This ended up costing me many, many thousands more than natural gas. How much of your estimate is based on a longer life for the unit?
Pretty much all of it. I’m sorry you had that issue but the overwhelming majority of people I know who have geothermal units and the 2 guys in my church who install and work on them all say they are expected to last 25-50 years depending on your brand and who you have instal it. I have met one lady who had one fail at year 9 and it was due to a power grid failure during a freak ice storm. I hope you had more success after that one failed you. I’m so sorry.
Matt, with the fact being that a very, very tiny percentage of Americans actually stay in a home, such that it is truly a “forever” home. May I please ask for your thoughts, regarding just the financial aspects of your build, (not the environmental) 1) If the unthinkable should happen, and you need to sell, for any reason, in how many years, can you reasonably expect, to recoup all the costs for such a highly specialized system & house ? I ask because, it is likely a house with very much higher than typical, upfront costs for that sort of square footage. 2) Also, how do you figure in your more complex systems’ maintenance costs, compared to your states homes with more typical on-grid situations…heat, a/c, hot water, electric, and /or natural gas systems, maintenance costs ? 3) Do you now consider, because of time, money, and effort spent, moving is simply no longer an option, since the cost savings seem to come to you in year 10 or after ?
@@UndecidedMF Insurance isn't free, so you neighbors are paying more so you can pay less. Same for the tax credits. Your neighbors might not be smart enough to know this but you should be.
@@johnotken7388 Most houses in my neighborhood have solar, and most of their systems are much larger than mine. That's because I did my own design and did not have an installer upsell me.
@@johnotken7388 please explain how his neighbors are paying for his insurance? If there were higher costs for his house in the event of problems, wouldn't the ins company charge him more for that extra potential repair costs?
Love to see this type of analysis being done. From someone who has lived with a Climate Master geothermal HVAC for over a decade now, you need to account for the increased cost for maintenance and repairs vs air source. In my experience, maintenance and repairs cost about 3x to 4x vs air source strictly because there aren't as many qualified contractors in my area creating higher demand for the few contractors that will work on a geo system.
I can't begin to explain how complex this topic is and how well you covered it. I've been going over the same exact tradeoffs for my new house to make sure I was making a good decision. I landed on doing a ton of solar (40 kw) that I will install myself but I have 12 month 1:1 net metering at 17 cents/kwh. I also went with lower efficiency heat pump system and less insulation because the solar is going to have a way better payback. And to add to it, my 40kw system will be able to share power with my parents house on our bill, so it's double the return on investment. Similar ~50% selling rate to the power company after I go over 100% usage and an extra 3-4 cent/kwh for the PA solar credits. And once long range electric cars are cheap enough, I may cut my gasoline bill by charging my own electric car to save another $10/day. I think this level of thinking and math is in the top 1% of people who look into energy savings. You can do simple or even complex payoff calculations, but this really looks at it from the big picture.
It can't save me thousands on my energy bills when my energy bills run about $900 a year for a 1700 square foot house. Lots of insulation and LED bulbs will do that for you. And running my house at 77 or 78° in the summer but low humidity or 68 to 70° in the winter but with low humidity lower the single largest cost which is air conditioning cost.
Thanks for sharing. That's precisely why I said it's a very individual calculation if it works or not. In your case, it really doesn't sound like solar makes sense.
@@16jocko okay I can't even conceive of a 65 cent per kilowatt hour rate. Even Europe doesn't charge rates that high as far as I know. In my state the rates are about 15 cents per kilowatt hour. Why are your rates so expensive?
Appreciate your caveats for people's particular circumstances. Lattitude alone makes a huge difference for consideration of your options. We're at 36 degrees south (NZ) and our mix of solar 6 kw and battery 30kwh LFP works off-grid.
Wow...I'm having a 30KW system with batteries installed in Feb'2025, the UK price for everything inc. installation will be just over 30K GBP. We already have 3.5KW which we got over 10 years ago when the Feed In Tariff first appeared in the UK.
Just had a GivEnergy battery system installed on my house in the UK. Best thing ever! Just need more solar now. And with the various tariffs from octopus its a no brainer.
@@DarrenPoulson Looking forward to it, I am also with Octopus, I have a Tesla Model 3 long range model and I'm 55 next year so looking forward to not worrying about rising electricity costs.
@@SimonPlatten Yeah. I'm 50 next year and working on getting all bills as low as possible. New windows, doors, etc. anything to make the house more efficient.
@@DarrenPoulson , 55 in Feb, our house has been a long term project, a few years ago we got off oil and had Air Source Heat pump installed, its been brilliant. We have done everything we were supposed to do, except it seems there is always someone trying to pull the rug from under us. Pensions are a huge disappointment.
As someone who grew up in Eastern Idaho, I am used to houses all having basements due to the deeper water pipes and energy efficiency in the cold weather. For this reason, I was curious when I had seen your house build that was all above ground. This video answered my question: it's to age in place!
NH Electric Co-op currently charges $0.16746/kWh. Additionally, they charge a non-negotiable fee of $34.66 to be a member. Fun fact: Our PUC approved of a $0.007270/kWh line item (System Benefit Charge) figured into that total cost, which is in fact the amount paying customers are charged to subsidize certain other customers. Notwithstanding, even if the Co-op payed a 1-to-1 return on electricity returned into the grid, we will never pay less than $34.66. We have a nuclear power plant (Northeast Utilities) which sells the electricity (in part) out of state, while we purchase (in part) power from Hydro Quebec through Northeast Utilities. Somehow, I get the impression that going solar will simply drive most of us into debt while freeing up more electricity for NU and its stockholders to profit even more from by selling elsewhere (CT in particular). So much corruption in energy, honestly.
Hearing how much energy US houses uses is so eye-opening. Compared the the uk these numbers are huge. Clearly heating and air con needs are different, but for energy efficent homes you could still run a small street in uk on this amount of power!
It's been nearly 20 years since I lived in America, I remember paying $100 a month for gas in the winter when the heating was on. Then we had a month of low utility bills. Then summer hit and it was $100 a month on electricity for the AC. In Europe, I just have to pay for heating in the winter. Summers where I live are fine with no AC, nothing like the summers in OK.
@@BAZvonRichthofenIt's also a big thing in Japan, where the earthquake-proof houses and small blocks (I live in a notoriously-naff Leopalace, if somebody in Britain was asked to live in something so small, they'd be running to the ECHR) have almost no insulation. Decadent, wasteful, first-world "air conditioners" and efficient, green, planet-saving "heat pumps" are THE SAME THING. in spring and early autumn my electric bill is about ¥1200, in the height of summer my AC gets a lot of use and the bill can be ¥6000, an increase, but not a vast amount. Mind you I have a new air conditioner, the first winter I used two 1000w space heaters a lot, because my old one's heat mode was really weak, and got the bill to just over ¥10,000. One spring, on the other hand, I was really careful and got it down to ¥980 for April or May!
My wife and I do fine in America with just a 5 KW solar system. Most American heat or cool their entire McMansion all the time. We just heat or cool the room we are in.
I literally started watching this video while eating supper just before windstorm. I paused the video because the wind blew over a neighbor's fence. And then the power went out for most of the city. We didn't immediately notice. That was 3 hours ago, I'm the only one in sight with working lights. We're running a Sol-Ark + HomeGrid + a whole bunch of solar panels. But we only have one panel that runs off the battery. It's the "important stuff" panel for the fridges + HVAC + internet... plus one TV. This is our first major outage since the install and it's working quite well. I'm honestly still setting up the all of the automation and monitoring for the Span panel, but knowing that we can still operate for a while has been great. We don't have enough to power our whole home with the grid down. Though that's actually an issue with local regulations more than one of desire to operate this way. Honestly, there's probably a fun video on the things we underwent getting this all set up. I wish I could plug in my EV as an extra charging source, but the local regulations won't allow it. But as we electrify and diversify more of the grid. I think home like this are an essential blueprint for the future. Thanks for sharing everything you're doing.
Solar Designer here: those panels facing west will produce more energy if they are facing South. Your logic of capturing evening sun is solid, until you apply the Math. You always want as many panels facing south as possible especially with a battery system.
Yep, agreed. I did max out my southern facing roof space. Those west facing panels were thrown in because it didn't dramatically jack the cost up at that point and still gives us extra power. Looking at my production today, my southern panels generated 1.4kWh each and the west generated 1.1kWh each.
And morningcsnd evening power are crucial unless like Matt you spend tons on an overbuilt system. Late in the day is the crunch time. As the other panels start to make less, your usage goes way up. Morning and evening pridiction are key for just adequate dystems especially.
solar designer? you know the good thing about facing south. at the end of the day when you get home you use the most. and where is the sun? now much of a designer. because if it faced south. you need to increase battery size, now count up energy lost in putting it in then out of the batteries. do the math buddy. don't you understand the 2 times people use the most. morning and evening. and if it wasn't wasted in the charging system you increase useability by 10% a day. and for those people still has a grid tie. when do they buy the most from the company. mornings when their batteries are dead. they have to buy until the sun hits mid day. if they had a few facing east. they would produce more faster instead of having to buy. now go back to what night school you boss sent you to. I AM NOT A DESIGNER. i just stop and thought about it.
@@probablynotabigtoe9407 I disagree, west is a good idea. Most people use most electricity in the evening and solar panels are a lot cheaper than batteries. Panels facing east are also a good idea.
@ and I just did it. Get up in the morning with low power and look at those south facing panels you wish were facing east. Day after day, living it. And as you crank up the loads in late afternoon on low batteies, it's the same feeling, month after month, year after year.
8:15 I can't imagine paying $0.31/kWh for electricity!! I'm unhappy with 9.79¢ (Canadian), although that number is roughly double due to other fees, it's still significantly lower than your rates.
one way of doing the accounting (philosophically) is that the first kwh cost you $61,000, the second kwh cost you „only“ $30,500! the good news is that your cost per kwh will likely only go down if you do the accounting this way and that should put a smile on everyone‘s face 😊! with 16 mwh in your first year, your cost per kwh is already down to $3.81 - which is a „huge“ improvement of your cost per kwh!
Thanks for sharing Matt. Mind blowing what your installation and energy costs were. My electric costs here in MO average about $0.08/kwh in the winter and $.11/kwh in the summer. I have focused on insulation, efficient heat pump, heat pump dryer and pushing electric use to match TOU billing. I could never payout a system like yours with our energy bill averaging $130 per month.
I paid $16,000 (net after the tax credit) for a 5kW system 5 years ago. Average savings per year on my electricity bill have been $530. So, it will take over 30 years just to get my money back. If I put that same $16,000 into a conservative investment, it would have produced a return of roughly $1,200 per year. My net loss by “investing” in solar comes out to $3,500 to date ($19,500 if you include the initial 16k). After 30 years, my total loss to my net worth will be $37,000. (That amount is much greater if you reinvest dividends from a 16k investment.). Bottom line: solar is a terrible investment. Unless a $37,000 hit to your retirement fund is no big deal, don’t put your money into a solar system.
This is along the lines of what I was going to mention. 50k up front put into conservative market vehicles over 15-20 years is going to compound much higher than the savings will be. Solar is sadly almost completely dead. Now some will say that an offgrid situation for when we are living in Mad Max times justifies it but probably the only house with lights on is going to be a target for a raid. However I think that when I price out everything in components, especially when mounting in the yard vs the nightmare on the roof with the leak potential, then it can work out if you have some know how or have a friend assist. Getting everything on marketplace or black friday specials could make it all work, but certainly not with a contractor.
Ours is looking more like 12 years (Australia based), Our last bill was -20$. Perhaps investing it would have come out better, but energy costs are on the rise, we have blackout protection for when there are storms or line maintenance, and I can thrash our high draw devices like AC/dryer all the time without thinking about it, it allows us to increase consumption without paying more. This was with one of the larger solar providers that charge a premium too, as I want them to still be around if I need to make use of the 20yr warranty.
@@luke5957 Prior to interest rates on the higher end going up, someone could technically finance the solar system and it would make sense. The banks however now bake in a higher rate than normal to cover the risk of the solar installer going out of business before the permits/installs are even completed, as that was also becoming an issue.
Most home have hot+cold mixture water faucets. These unknowingly cause you to use heated water even when you don't need for example in summer. Hence adding a solar water heater which you can disconnect off during freeze could be an excellent addition to take some water heating load off the electrical system. The geothermal system is also excellent option to keep the water warmer then usual.
As another MA resident; I can't help but chuckle at all this because I am in a very old home with single pipe steam; and am personally really amazed at how much I have been able to improve it with just some rather minor upgrades. I setup home assistant, deployed temp/humidity sensors, and got a thermostat that I could control... and wow the heat in this house is working better than it ever has in my lifetime and eliminated overshoot.
if americans just invert 1000 in insultation. they would recover that money in less than 2 years. then make money off it for LIFE> add it up. 500 a year for for 50 years of your life.
@@diegojines-us9pc No idea what you are saying but; "Americans" are a diverse group that live in several different climate zones. We don't all have the same issues. A home from the south would not be fun to live in up in the north where I am.
@@carpdog42 now its cheap to build a home down south compared to the north. because of heating needs, but people down south only thinks that. that dont consider that insulation will reduced their cooling. example. one early spring in san Antonio i listen to the media asking out to help the poor to pay heating bills. it got down to the 40's. but imagine what their cooling bills was all year because they had no insulation.
I'd love to have solar with battery, because here in Oklahoma we have storms where the power can be out for days if not longer. But my 2023 electric usage was 4696 kwh for a total of $885. My 2024 looks like it will be less. Being 75 and retired, even a small system would probably not payoff in my lifetime. A friend had a system installed and he saw a huge jump in his homeowner's insurance.
I just can't get these prices around my head. over $80K for panels and batteries alone? 430 bifacial panels are easily found around 60 euros in Germany and they sell like hotcakes. 40 panels (430 watts) x 60 euros = 2,400 euros (17,2 kW). $55,000 for the same amount of kilowatts? Am I missing something here? Like 20 times more expensive?
Yep, it's the soft costs (labor) that really jack up the costs in my area, along with permitting costs that don't exist in other areas of the world. The US is really lagging behind on that front.
They're even cheaper than that.I got my 445W panels for about 53€+tax. High quanitity panels can drop to as low as 0,1€/kWp, if you're an installerand buy in bulk. Panels are really really cheap these days. Some roofs are more expensive than solar per m2.
Well Enphase is one of the most expensive systems on the market. With my quotes for a relatively small system I had REC Panel + Enphase quotes that were almost 10K more than a similar Tesla or String Inverter. Rec panels added an extra 2000-2500 and the Enphase batteries were an extra 1000 per 5kw units also there were extra charges for whole home backup/software upgrade fee. Enphase is considered super premium.
@@UndecidedMF I really lucked out: Almost zero labor costs because I could do it myself, and my county charged nothing for a building permit because they wanted to encourage solar. No lease because I paid cash for the equipment. No contractor costs because my county lets a homeowner do their own work, even electric as long as you can pass inspection.
1:54 The onscreen graphic should show kWh and MWh, not kW and MW. kW is the unit showing how much power you're generating, kW/h (kilowatt hour) is the total amount of power generated. Would be nice to update this with an annotation to keep people from mixing up these units.
Thanks for stats sharing... helps to know where we Waterfurnace owners align. Not too different - 1500 sqft home in southern Wisconsin plus full basement. Waterfurnace 7 - slinky loops. Turned one year old yesterday - 1,669.68 kWh for the year. Same water heater... with superdeheater and 598kWh for a year's worth of hot water. Solar install starts this Friday... 16.49kW annual projected at 21,592 kWh (all angled south). Two Powerwall 3's once they ship.
Coincidentally we have our solar fitter on-site this morning measuring up for 13 panels and an EcoFlow PowerOcean 15kwh battery in the garage. At approx £10k uk solar prices feel cheaper at the moment. We are predicting ROI in 6 years, from a combination of solar generation, and time shifting our consumption from 25p per kWh in the day to 8.5p per kWh at night when we’ll fill up the battery for usage during the day. Great video as always. Loving your work.
I have an 1890 brick 3 floor and sub-basement row house in brooklyn. Little by little I am heading towards as net zero as I can get. I have gotten a 7.2 kwh solar canopy rooftop system, producing about 10mw a year, and insulation between the roof and top floor ceiling, mostly new windows and getting all electric appliances, the last of which is to get is a 208 ac electric dryer. I am torn between a heat pump dryer, and regulular electric vented dryer in the basement. The basement has two heat pump 50 gallon hot water tanks, one for the rental unit and one for my unit. that is great for the basement in the summer, cooler and dryer, but pretty chilly in the winter and adding a heat pump clothes dryer seems like it would make it even more cool in the winter. what do you think matt? Or use the regular electric vented dryer in winter, unto the basement, with a lint screen, to create more warmth and less dry environment. During drought that recently hit brooklyn the humidity was only 34 %, but now it is raining and the humidity is 48% in the basement. The temp outsid is 55 and in the basement 67 f. when it was 35 d outlside last week at night, the basement got down to 63 f. with the hot water heat pumps running, full blast as I had to clean one and restart the hot water system. Energy star says the heat pump dryer an LG 5502 will use about 300 kwh and the lg 4000 regular dryer will use about 600 kwh. the vent of the regular dryer will have to be kept clean, bu the lint traps of the heat pump dryer require twice as much work ith eqch use to clean. The heating system has been gas hydronic, but last year I used various electric heataers, until january and february because someone else was staying in the house, and dI didnt want them to have to mess the electrici heats. Then in May I got some convection wall heaters by envi, and am using those now on the top two floors, and this summer installed a heat pump mini split air source system for the 1 floor. Next I will probably get an air source heat pump mini split system for the top two floors, and a ev charger, though I will have to drag it accross the sidewalk to the street, no driveway., and no car yet Energy use is probably going to be 8 to 8.5 megawatts a year, without charging an ev, or other peoples evs. I am looking for an ev charger that has an app where people can pay, but maybe it would just be better to have a portabable one, and let them pre-pay with venmo or something, since I would have to throw a mat across the cable as it transverses the sidewalk to the street. I am undecided too Tracy :)
You missed several major costs. Insurance cost increase (if coverage is available at all), property tax increase (varies state to state), replacement labor and costs of failed and damaged equipment (inverters, panels, switches, wiring, BMS, cleaning, etc.), longevity of your warranty providers (manufacturers, sellers, installers), lack of compatibility of new equipment (this is why used solar is cheap), and increase in labor from inflation. Electronics that use electrolytic capacitors have a limited life span. What happens when your Chinese panel provider goes belly up and new panels don't fit? And what bothers me most is those tax credits are paid for by the taxpayer not the government. I don't like subsidizing your solar experiment at my cost (intentionally redundant). Overall, I call your analysis incomplete with significant unknown future costs. Additionally, your thumbnail headline stated regrets, but you provided no regrets or lack thereof in your analysis. This is deception.
While I certainly enjoy your content, and as an engineer-minded practical man I love the numbers and the time you have taken to work it all out, as a man without what to me would be unachievable financial backing to even think about the sort of project you have undertaken.... You see where I am going with this? However, I am not one of those people suffering from wealth envy. I am in Scotland, west coast - which means not desperately cold winters but long ones - I am retired on a State Pension ie, not a lot (!), but two years ago received a 100% grant for an air source heat pump, also covering insulation, in what is a fairly well thought out 'room-in-roof' house of 1980 vintage. My total electricity costs for a very cosy house all year round, and as much hot water as one man could ever use, is about £1,300 (add about 20+% for dollar numbers), compared with twice that for the coal and wood I previously burned for similar warmth and HW returns. (kWh costs here are around 25p, so about 30 cents, plus £15/$18 a month for service costs. Yes, power is pretty expensive in the UK, nationwide) Even if I had the money to fit solar and battery, I doubt I would make the cost back in my lifetime. Sadly, no such grant was going at the same time as the ASHP offer, but I jumped at it anyway. Since Scotland has plenty of wind, and hydro is evolving at pace (and two things we are not short of are wind and water!), at least my green creds are not too shabby, and the total power bill for all my usage is around a fairly affordable £1,800 pa, I doubt I will do much more to reduce my bill for electrons. But I like your content, it always makes me THINK, an attribute that seems in short supply the world over.
I stopped watching at 2:39 with your costs.....Up until now I thought you were a sharp guy. obviously I was wrong. You obviously have been scammed. Poor soul. In the UK the subsidies are gone , but the costs are on the floor. Why did you opt for gold plated panels??? You obviously have no buying nor business skills.Most of the old folks in the uk got their panels for free, with free power?
Nice work, great house, your lucky to have the resources for all that. I'll never be able to afford something like that so as I'm renovating my old farmhouse I install a plug, switch and sconce light just inside the door in every room that's hooked to a small solar array with a few batteries for backup mostly, but it can be used all the time if you want. The house is on the grid so my solar setup doesn't effect it in anyway. I'm in a small rural town so power goes out all the time in the winter and having the basic lights, a plug for charging is huge along with pulling out the camp stove for cooking makes life a little easier.
I have 2 houses and don't pay the utility cost for your home monthly. But North FLA has mild winters and summers aren't horrible. And my houses were built to be "green" and very well insulated. I have tons of sun all year long...blazing sun and both my houses backsides face east. But when I did the break even time vs the cost, because of my low bills, I will be dead long before the break even point. So, if a nice young couple buys my places after we're gone, they can consider it. But you do live in an expensive state. I have no state income tax and lower utility bills and a good heat pump and tankless hot water so even with solar being cheaper here, I can see your point.
In the summer of 2023 I had installed a 7.4kWh system (20X370W panels) and a SolArk 15 kWh inverter; with 20.48 kWh of batteries. It worked well, but I wanted more... for electricity security. So this fall I had the same company (ShineSolar) install another 13 panels X 370 watts for another 4.7 Kw (12.21 total kWh), and doubled the batteries to 40.96 kWh capacity. I run my property off the batteries, and use the grid only for backup. I am pleased thus far.
Thanks for the analysis and review of your system! I am in Southern California and my original net metering contract just ended this year. The new contract pays me .015$ per kilowatt hour that I generate, and charges me $.62 for any electricity that I use. Talk about a negative to installing solar! I recently had a contractor add 10 new panels and a Tesla 3 Powerwall so that I can become net neutral annually. It is a crime that the utilities got away with the new contract. I am so happy that all your hard work in research into this topic paid off!
Hi Matt, our Standard electric water heater failed the same month we took delivery of our Volvo C40 Recharge. I replaced the water heater with the same Rheem hybrid that you have. That was in September of 2022. We only charge our car at home. Since then our average monthly electric usage has stayed within a few kilowatt hours of the average monthly usage prior to having the electric car and hybrid water heater. We were amazed. We are in NE Florida. The water heater is in the 2 car garage and our other car is gas keeping the garage temperature no lower than 70degrees even on the cooler winter nights.
I live in Southern California, so our 5 KW system has always more than covered out electricity use. It's zeroed out about $2000 worth of electric bills since we installed it. We very rarely have outages, so a grid-tied system with no batteries has worked fine for us. I designed it and installed it myself, with no installer or lease. My only outside labor cost was for a concrete pump operator, but he just ran the pump while I directed the hose filling the forms. We got rid of a leased propane tank and converted everything to electric. We do just heat or cool the rooms we are in, so cheap space heaters and window AC works fine. Considering the tax credit we got, my payback period will be less than 6 years. We even have enough surplus electric credit we can run AC for our dogs!
I installed a 10Kw off grid system 4 years ago and it was the best decision I ever made. The system has now paid for itself. During the rainy season we have learned how to use less power so we still use 0 energy from utility. All my power is free.
One thing you *REALLY* need to consider - what if you took that initial investment and put it in the market? $88k would be $143,347 after 10 years @5% annual return. Now if you are just taking more money out of a mortgage, then maybe that's not really funds you can just throw in the market, so it's not a fair comparison, but it is something to consider. If you think about the opportunity cost of not investing that money into the market, you can turn a 9-year breakeven to closer to a 25 year breakeven. Or maybe never? $88k in the market for 25 years with a measly 5% return would be $298k after 25 years. So you actually might never break even if you consider what else you can do with the money. Change the return to 7% and now that $88k is $477k after 25 years. You'd actually be losing quite a lot of money. Opportunity cost is very real. Hopefully these would be loans or other funds that could not be alternatively placed into the market. Otherwise I think the financial benefit is completely moot.
Worth it. I have an 11Kw system that covered everything until I bought an EV, but I still never pay as much as I did before. I put about 50k miles on the EV every year and still pay a smaller electric bill than anytime before the solar went up. I calculated break even at about 8 1/2 years. I'll definitely make that.
Wow, the electricity prices there are brutal. I am in BC, Canada and our tier 1 rate works out to 7.8c/kw I have a 15.8kw grid tie, and looking at ways to advance my home's efficiency. I am really enjoying your videos.
Have you done anything like this or are there any specific elements you’d want to do for your home? Go to surfshark.com/undecided for 4 extra months of Surfshark at an unbeatable price!
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88.000 $ for just 16 kWp and 20 kWh ?
I build that on my own using 540 Wp panels and got 30 kWp with 22 kWh of batteries with eve LF280 K cells.
Paid less than 18000€ or 19000 $
I guess prices must be way off than what we pay here in the EU.
2 panels each 540 Wp cost about 136€ and they are VAT free like inverter and batteries too.
For 100 k you could get a picea system which is storing the surplus energy in Hydrogen bottles for usage in the winter. Their fuel cell is uising 1/3 of the hydrogen power to heat during winter and 2/3 for electricity production.
Made in Berlin, Germany and quite expensive, but those who got it, they were convinced.
There is of course interest expense for a higher mortgage by doing all this upfront.
My goal is to follow your example when I buy a house. I'm happy to pay whatever it costs to leave the grid. I'm in southern California so this is achievable.
An absolutely critical factor is that any series of systems like this must be reliable, robust and as simple as possible. There's nothing worse than some amazing but complicated system that when it has a problem five or ten years down the line can't be fixed because there is no tech support or parts. (As a sailboat owner this is far more common than you'd ever possibly imagine.) Or after a year you don't remember all the complex steps needed to operate it. (I remember the days of the first VCR video recorders. I used to rant about all the pokey pokey button nonsense. People seemed to love telling me that they can do it so I must be stupid. And then they'd call, "Did you record that HBO show?" If I had it it was only because I was there at the time and pressed Record. I wouldn't want a mid winter water heater shut down because of a glitch and there was no way to just press a button to do a manual override.)
I live in the SF Bay area and we've had solar for nearly two years now. I started with a 6,400 watt system plus a 10 kwh backup battery that we had installed in Feb 2023. Over the next year our panels generated 8.9 mwh of power and our total energy costs were reduced by more than 50% over the year (electricity + NG cost us $3,967 in 2022 and only $1,795 in 2023).
This year, we went all in and added 14 more panels (which appear to be more efficient than the ones installed last year) got a heat pump water heater, two Mini Split heat pump AC/Heater units, an electric dryer, an EV with a home level 2 charger and an induction stove. We have yet to turn our gas furnace on, and probably won't this winter (or ever again). After rebates, we probably spent about $50,000 for all of the home upgrades (including solar) and another $50 k for the EV (a Hyundai Ionic 5).
Our new system (which was upgraded in May) is projected to generate nearly 19 MWH per year and our total energy costs should be less than $500. In addition, we almost never buy gasoline since we rarely drive our second car (a 2010 Honda Fit). Since energy costs continue to rise here in Northern California, it's hard to project exactly how much we'll save over the next 10 years, but it's nice to know that, no matter what happens, we'll pay almost nothing for energy for the next several decades.
@@davidbelk46Thanks David, this is like this video but for Californians.
A few years ago I contacted Southern Cal Edison to let them know the weed tree in my neighbor's yard was arcing against their power line. We're hillside which makes it even more dangerous. Two weeks later I got a text message saying, "Just have your gardener trim the tree." I'd mentioned in my first message that my gardener told me no one he knows would touch it. Also the SCE yard it took that guy two weeks to take a look? It's a mile away. I called the state regulatory dept and was told: We can't make the utilities do anything. They got laws passed.... Then PGE and murdered 71 people. I finally put on heavy neoprene gloves and cut down the tree.
After the PG&E murders the utilities got a huge spike in rates and extra fees to pay for tree trimming -- something that had always been part of their responsibilities. When I got a bill for almost $0.50/kWh is when I set the goal of disconnecting as soon as I could.
Western NY state, 70's era ranch house aligned on east/west axis with clear south exposure. We had 20 265-W panels (5.3kW total) installed in late 2015, after living in the house for about a year. Net cost after NYS and Federal credits was just over $6300.
We're still grid-connected and pay $22-$23 per month to use the utility as our battery. Utility offsets our back-fed kW's against our usage and banks the excess, with an annual reconciliation where they reset the account to 0 and pay us wholesale prices for the excess generation. It's hard to figure out current $/kWh on the supply side, so I don't know where we are bottom-line, but I think we're doing ok.
Annual generation has exceeded annual usage since Feb. 2016, so we haven't bought any electricity since then. Total generation of about 50 MWh, or about 7MWh annually.
Two years ago we upgraded the AC system and gained better summer comfort and more efficient energy use. About a year ago we switched the gas water heater to heat-pump electric hybrid, figuring that the improvement in efficiency made it workable with the average excess generation, and so far we're still running a surplus.
Have considered batteries for backup, but the payback just doesn't seem to be there.
Your comment about choosing the design of your home without stairs so that you can age in place is so crucial! As a realtor, I handle many clients who find themselves in a position where they have to leave their home because life has dealt them circumstances where they cannot navigate stairways at all. It’s so sad to be backed into a corner where you have to leave the home you love. Highly recommend people to plan ahead and move because they want to rather than waiting until they have to.
Love your channel. Thanks so much!
Elevators should be more popular. If more homes had them, they would probably be cheaper
@@bighaasfly can't it be like children use the upstairs and older people use the area below?
@@bighaasfly I would happily just install a stair lift over changing houses.
@@Bryan-Hensley you can only really build them where you also have some sort of potent frame, which the paperhouses of northamerica do not have
I'm building now... Stairs only to a storage loft, wide hallway, extra wide doors. Curbless shower. Blocking installed in case of installing handrails throughout. (and blocking at the 5 to 6.5 ft height typical for hanging pictures, TVs, shelves)
The storage loft is designed with a balcony access (good place for holiday decorations) having a section of removable handrail to use a power lift to get anything heavy up.
Very cheap to put the blocking in while building. Nightmarishly expensive to put it in by remodeling.
That's a dream system you have. Here in Zambia we've been getting 3-4hrs of utility supply due to drought drying up our hydro power supply. Solar is not an option but a necessity.
I installed a 5kw system with 8x 550w panels and 2x 5kwh batteries for just over $3,000. It powers everything apart from the water heaters. With your solar budget I could build a whole new house off grid over here
Right?! Nice to see I'm not the only one on a budget 😂
Good job Joseph. Nice to see amazing enginers in Africa, the continent of sunshine.😃
The main challenge with your case lies in the significantly high investment cost: $88,000 for a system comprising 17 kWp PV and a 24 kWh battery ($55,000 for PV + $33,400 for storage).
In comparison, similar systems in Vietnam cost less than $10,000, with a break-even period of up to five years in a conservative scenario.
For example, I personally installed a 31 kWp PV system (54 REC x 575W panels) and 50 kWh of storage for approximately $17,000, showcasing a far more competitive cost structure.
This is interesting. I’m looking to retire in the Philippines, our house is mostly built at this point and we will eventually retrofit with solar. We didn’t do it up front as the priorities are a little different. Based on our location off grid, or at least a hybrid solution is required given that brownouts happen frequently. My biggest concern, if you want to call it that, is longevity of the batteries in the heat. With ambient temperatures basically never below 25C finding a suitable cubbyhole somewhere that doesn’t heat up thanks to 20kWh of storage isn’t going to be trivial. I wonder what this sort of thing looks like in Vietnam.
Thisssss! I installed 4kw solar system with 10kwh battery for €6k in Ireland
What do you build high power system for!?
I can’t imagine how much that company made on installation.
@@HOOFBizite 7-8 million VND/ kwp (full set) ... around $200-250/kwp ...
I live in Brazil and have installed 12 solar panels (each 550W) with 3 microinverters. The total cost, including installation, was approximately $3,000 USD. It is an on-grid system that generated 41 kWh just today. That is a lot for a single day. My house is entirely electric, and I use induction oven for cooking and AC for cooling and heating. Also the water is heated by electricity.
The cost of a kWh is around R$0,95 (real) that converts to $0,16 USD.
The return on investment for solar in my case is around 2 years.
Also, no government incentive.
yah, 55k for panels? My entire system is as big as his, and my cost before incentives was lower than his panel cost alone. I did not install any of it myself. Someone ripped him off.
@ fun fact: 94% of the energy produced in Brazil comes from renewable sources. Solar is growing rapidly here. I’ve noticed a sharp decline in solar panel prices in the last few years.
@@zarroth That's typical MA price, contractors eat all incentives....
@@BrunoMoreira43 2 anos de payback tá excelente. No Brasil vc consegue vender o excedente p rede elétrica? Acha q adicionar uns 10kw de bateria pra rodar ac a noite valeria a pena?
Holy hell! $55K for 43 400w panels??
Here in Spain we pay ~€70 for a 455w panel. Your 43 panels would have cost ~€3000 including taxes!
And LiFePO batteries are about €300 per kWh.
You entire system would have cost no more than €15,000 fitted! (I know because we have a 6kwp and 21kwh battery system that cost €9000 3 years ago)
My local installer said $3/W. If I do it myself I think I can get that closer to $1/W for the full system cost. I think with more local competition, that would drop to $2/W.
He got scammed like most US citizen - he is just no too smart. But if he is ok to give away his $$ to scammers - his problem.
In Lebanon, the current cost for solar panels is $80-85 for a Jinko 585W panel. That's $0.14/W.
@@Jil1A similar in Poland! Eastern Europe.
530w longi - 90$
435w N-type - 62$
Same shop bundle 24x400w panels plus 10kw inverter 2137$
@@wfm125m He only had to take advice from Will Prowse to spend about 40% of what he did on capital costs and perhaps have an installer to it all as well, so the cost would have been perhaps 50% of what he paid? I'm in shock about the huge total bill.
The best description I have ever heard from someone who lived off grid is that you pay for your energy in advance with solar. This is due to panel lifespan and efficiency. While you see benefits up front, later it dwindles and eventually you replace the panels and spend again. I think the biggest thing people miss is the source. Everyone wants to save $10 million dollars, but in reality we are using energy from a renewable source. THAT is the important thing. Finding more ways to sustainably live renewable needs to be the focus.
For a Finnish person who also installs these systems, all prices seem super inflated!
e.g. 430W panels cost approx. €100 each, mounting rails and fasteners for 43 panels cost approx. 2000€ and a good 20kW inverter costs €4000. The installation time for a system like Matt's is approx. 50 hours.
A 20kWh battery with installation accessories costs approx. €14,000 and its installation time is approx. 16 hours.
An all-inclusive geothermal heat pump (no separate water heater) without a heat distribution system, as a turnkey package costs approx. €25,000.
I know that since these systems are very common and everyday here, it lowers the prices, but still the American 4x price level seems absurd.
I‘ve never seen 400w panels for 1200$. Even with all installation brackets and everything.
I just helped install 74 panels with controllers for every panel that cost less than 10k$.
Someone profited through the nose off of you….
I'm off-grid with ~11kW of ground mount panels and 43kWh of battery. 12kW of inverters, electric hot water (8kw, 2 gpm), and a mini-split. About $30k all-in, $22k after rebates. His cost is astronomical. Possibly offset by sponsorship.
Everything is 4 x bigger in USA .
You're making the mistake of comparing the price things cost, with how much it costs OTHERS to put those in for you. Lab costs easily double or often triple the cost of the equipment which is why the DIY options save you considerable money. For instance, the exact same batteries he uses would cost about $14000 for the batteries, but the installation of those added nearly $20000 to the price. The panels, well these specific ones show about $300 each with a quick Google search, but if you went with another brand you can get 400W for about $125 or so.
The quote I got was $40k. I pointed out to the sales guy that I only spent $1800/yr on electricity and the payback was longer than I would likely live. I think he found that offensive. LOL.
I am in Queensland, Australia and have just tried to do what you have done. What I found is that we are so backward that I had to show videos to the tradies on how to do things like insulation and they don't know what a Net Zero target is or proper insulation. That said got a 19Kw Solar and 10Kw battery costing just over $30k. You are correct that everyone's situation is different as during winter I was still pulling over 8Kw+ a day and in the down pour of ran 6 to 7Kw and when the sun is out 15K+.
I can't believe the cost of Solar & Batteries in America and stunned that people still pay for it.
Thank you for sharing your experience as it highlighted things for me to do in the future and for my next home (if my wife lets me :))
@@gavinrobinson7965 interesting to hear that from Australia. In the desert here in the US, I went with a Tesla solar system. 12kw system for around $17k after rebate. Being in the desert, I get 35kWh generated in a day in winter and beyond 60 in summer. The prices he paid I find absolutely crazy, especially knowing Tesla was available for him. I suppose he really didn't want them to take the 20% cut from the pay-back grid support program.
I appreciate how, through all of these videos, he has pointed out that it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows and that this is his experience, not a blueprint.
Agreed.
A factor here is the 30-year plan. The plan works when looking at 30 years. Most people don't live in a home for 30 years. Most don't live in a home for five. In my opinion, to do this on a not-forever-home isn't very feasible. Even if you were to recoup the costs of installing the infrastructure when selling the home, you've just passed it on to someone else. They aren't likely to live there for 30 years either. Good job for doing the right thing for you and for being transparent about it. I had no doubt of your outcome because you analyzed it to death before you started. What would be appreciated is the scenario that doesn't work - i.e. recovering in 10 years.
And that doesn't even take into account technical innovations and the commoditization of energy well before 30yrs is up. 30 years is literally stupid because that assumes that the economic paradigm won't evolve in the next 30years.
does it. his design adds 1000 amonth in princible and interest for 30 years, on systems likely to last only 10 to 25 years. so at the end when you think you got ahead. you will need to start it all again.
@@diegojines-us9pc
My guess is that Matt is banking on the solar panels and batteries lasting well beyond their warranty periods. If it's just a matter of capacity degradation, he can compensate for that by buying a few additional solar panels and batteries alongside of it, rather than replacing the entire thing.
@@ab-tf5fl i was banking on my 10 year car to last longer. but the cost of repairs were higher than new payments. but i wasn't counting on spending on either one. what do i do now?
@@diegojines-us9pc You sell the car and buy a phev with 7 year warranty
I have been a general contractor in California for over 33 years. All new houses require solar and our electric cost is similar to yours. Your cost for panels, micro inverters and batteries is double what I pay 💰. You obviously made a significant contribution to some contractor's college fund for their children.
And this is energy regulation 101 that shows better energy standards stimulates economies of scale to reduce the cost of the equipment used. Not to mention competition in the implementation of systems like this.
I did a naah, when I saw what he paid for solar.
But when I saw he paid triple for geothermal I scathed from the screen.
Yeah, the panel price isn't criminal at low'ish $3 per watt but the battery per kWh is lol for a 20kWh system. Even with the good panels you'd expect per watt to go down with the size of this system.
I agree. I paid a 1/3 of what he did for solar for half the capacity. Some contractors brat or wife has a new BMW
He already did a video on this. You can't compare your local prices with his. There are just too many location and situation-specific factors that will drastically affect the pricing.
I appreciate that you see value in being tied to the grid, and that you're doing what you can to help keep the grid stable. This is really nice for renters or those of us who can't afford solar yet.
As a nearly 66 year old man who lives alone, my energy costs aren’t much. I can’t project out 30 years to calculate return on the expense of installing a net zero solar system.
I built a solar system to mostly act as an emergency backup but currently expanding it to take over some, if not all, my electric energy needs.
My efforts are more focused on using less energy than paying for energy I don’t really have to consume.
According to advertisement i can save thousends of euros a month. I pay €180,- a month for energy. Most is consumed in winter.
same here.......
Meanwhile, I'm here in an apartment in an older build and wishing for insulation.
I'm on "partial solar" too. I use more energy without paying for it! I have a hot water urn on the whole time I'm awake at home, no more waiting for a kettle when I fancy tea. Also a countertop dishwasher I run twice a day. I doubt I'd do that otherwise. I need to shift my floppy CIGS panels out of the shadow of another building and I may be able to run a 300w "hot carpet" for free for several hours too, depends on cloud.
yes, he said 20kwh not enough for 1 day, for me its like whole month
Around $33k in cost was the battery pack. What is the lifetime of that?
Not mentioned warranty or replacement cost in 25 or 30 year projection from what I could see.
This is one of the major concerns for existing battery technology available. Battery packs degrade and costly to replace.
You break even on year 10 or 11, then get hit with $33k battery replacement cost?
Major concern or not? Would love to see community comments.
@@Dmitry_GBR 100% agree. Batteries also loos capacity way before 10 years.
you said 25 to 30 years. like a car what is the average yearly cost of maintance. and with all the peyments. could you afford to replace in case of total failure?
Don't worry, get a 20 year old EV battery for dirt cheap and use it for 20 more years easily because the load on the battery is way less in a storage situation vs. vehicle use. Or use LTO batteries which have 4x the lifecycle span than LFP. Well unless there is a catastrophic event like a meteorite, best be vigilant!
@ I don’t think that’s how “old car batteries “ work, you can legally only use battery system compatible for solar by voltage etc and permitted by city inspectors
Allways morgage your investment in 10 years.
It's worth it. I've been off-grid for 4 years and would never go back. I installed our own 15.3kw system for $27k.
Another off grid guy said he would skip the solar panels, but loves his wood stove.
That sound more in line, His package was HIGH
@@theredboneking Why would you dish solar panels? They will run led lights in a 24/7 format with minimal investment.
Depends on your needs, my utility bill is $45 a month and thats natural gas included, it's 8.4cents KwH, my home soaks up the sun through out the day and radiates it back into my home through out the night during the winter and during the summer I open the windows and I have a natural AC in the last 3 years I think my AC kicked in twice right around August when it's 95f (35c), and my gas heater doesn't really get used much. No geothermal in place, it's just a hole that was built right before AC was a thing and has proper insulation.
My utility company also will not to a buy back program so it's not like I can get a little extra income once I surpass net zero.
I've always been amazed at how little lights and most appliances use power. The biggest energy hog is the HVAC.
At 72 yrs old this makes no sense for older folks. $50K-$80K to install the panels and batteries just doesn’t make sense for me and frankly for most Americans. The per month cost for these is more than my present electric bill and that is for the next 20 yrs. Also the power companies are changing the terms of what they will accept and how they pay or credit you on what you produce.
I had 19 Q-Cell 405W panels installed in December of last year, and became active in early January. I thought I wasn't going to produce enough juice to cover my electric bill 100%, so I added 4 more Q-Cell 405w panels over my garage in April. So far I've produced a little over 7MW and projecting forward through the end of December be closer to 7.3-7.5MW, or about 1MW more than I will use. I currently have a $450 credit with National Grid (I'm in northeastern MA). I installed a 1.5 ton mini split in my kitchen which should more efficiently cool my downstairs than my previous cooling system, and also produce heat in the shoulder months, cutting into my heating bill. My system cost $28k. but I got back $10k in federal and state tax credits. It should pay for itself in 6 or so years (I currently have a $9k loan on it for the next 4 years). Then it should result in no electric bill, and my heating bill cut by about 1/4 to about $1500/yr. I say it was well worth it for me.
*MWh. The 'h' matters a lot.
@@oasntet Not me thinking he had an entire Walmart parking lot of solar panels and thought it wasn't enough
I'm afraid I agree, as much as I enjoy seeing all of Matt's gizmos. For reference, I went solar in a much smaller house for just $16k plus another $3k for appliances & electrical to hook them up. System pays for itself in 9 years, after which it will pay me $30k over its lifetime.
I live in Seattle. 12 years ago, I spent 10 grand for a 3kw roof mount system. Huge mistake. Constant maintenance, only 300 dollar per year return, too cloudy, cold, rainy, constant cleaning under the panels otherwise you get roof damage. Expensive replacement of microinverters. I will never get my money back. I would have been way ahead to have put the 10 grand in the S&P 500. I would have made a grand a year and still had the original 10k without hassle.
However, one great win is the $3,500 I spent on installing a heat pump the same year. Highly efficient, saves 900 a year on energy costs. very little maintenance, and works 24-7, 365 regardless of sun, rain, wind, and darkness. No pristine environment is required. Contrapositively, I would not have benefited by putting that money into the S & P, I would have only made 1/3 of the annual return of my heat pump.
Like my marriages, only about 1/2 of what we do works. Half of what we attempt is successful and heavenly, the other half a nightmare. Go figure.
I don’t see why you would ever need to clean the panels or under them. I would imagine it rains enough in Seattle you shouldn’t have to worry about that.
Here in Michigan rain cleans my panels. Snow in the winter, but that's worse because they don't operate the next day, until the snow melts off. Not sure what you did wrong but sounds like a lot of things. Zero problems with my Enphase microinverters, zero problems with my larger array with the SMA inverter. Zero maintenance so far but maybe I'll take a look in the spring and clean them myself, 5-6 years in.
@@maartenvanrossen6138 My neighborhood has a lot of deciduous trees. The leaves end up covering the solar panels rendering them useless. I have to climb on the roof often and hose both the top of the panels and under. Leaves create mold and moss, hurting the roof underneath. It costs 20k to replace the roof from leaving moss there. Again, the heat pump is a ground unit, is easily accessible, and never has problems from leaves.
@@whattheschmidt What kind of return are you getting? Mine is pretty dismal. Seattle and Portland are not good for solar. 3% ROI at best. The microinverter replacement and hassle of getting on the roof frequently make the project not worthwhile. But other folks have different experiences, and living in the sun belt should produce 3 to 4x my returns.
@ChrisPat-kq4fw The 2.5kw array with Enphase inverters is only a couple months from ROI. Cost $2700 to install in early 2020. Makes 3mwh a year. The one I paid for is about 4 years away, less if rates go up further. Installed in 2019, 5.4kw. I generate around 9mWh a year. Offsets my house and EV. I even installed a heated family room floor to use more electricity.
I had a passive net zero home built 6 years ago. This home takes advantage of the solar gain with passive heating and wide overhang roof to stay cool in the summer. The energy produced from the Solar Panels (PVs) is used to heat and cool our home as well hot water, electric vehicles as well for all the electrical uses for the home. With no utility bill, except for small service charge from our utility company.
Bad decisions we avoided: No geothermal system both expensive and unnecessary with passive heating. No expensive battery backup or storage system because our utility company take the energy we produce in the summer months and we get it back in the winter.
We needed only good thermal envelope, south facing triple pane windows and PVs, Energy recovery ventilator (ERV) and heat pumps. Simple is better!
Without battery backup, do you rely on the grid when the sun goes down? I plan to build my own passive house soon.
Don't worry, you will get screwed by your utility company pretty soon...
Very few utility companies can operate like that, must be in an area with a lot of hydro.
I was hoping he would address a solution like yours in the video. Before I did what he did I would have wanted to do a cost tradeoff on increasing the passive efficiency of the house versus geothermal heat pumps.. I don't know how real it is but there are videos where people claim that a hairdryer can heat their home. I also would have been very reluctant to invest that kind of capital in devices that were experiencing large price drops over time.
@@DanielDuedu I have a small gas Honda generator. If I lose power, which hardly ever happens I can plug in my refrigerator, microwave oven, till I get power back.
Been offgrid for four years. Have a 5kw pv with 40kwh battery. Works fine for the whole year because we're energy frugal.
Nice! Wherabouts are you located? I would have gotten something like 30-40kWh on my battery system if I could have. Local permitting would have required installing a sprinkler system in my garage if I went over the 20kWh I got though.
@UndecidedMF I'm in Australia, so we have more sunshine. It's unfortunate having to install a sprinkler system for 40kwh of battery. We don't have that problem here, but def worth having more storage if feasible.
off grid is much less green than grid-tied. Sometimes even negatively green. Presumably you live far from the grid, because otherwise it is a big error to be off-grid. Any off-grid system will have batteries that get nearly full and then all your extra solar is discarded, instead of going to reduce fossil on the grid.
@bradtem True ... By about 12pm the batteries are fully charged. If we don't use the oven or air conditioning after 12pm, it's wasted energy 👍
11:43 even when they hit the low end doesn't mean you have to replace them. A few more panels can be added to make up for what is lost.
Provided their inverter can support that (clipping).
I have 7.2kW inverter for my 8.8kw panel system (originally 9.6kw system, but they ran out of room on the south facing).
@Here2Enjoy-b8z if you loose 2kw on a 20kw system then and 2kw you are back to 20kw for the price of 2kw instead of 20kw.
We have a typical mid- 2000's semi custom totally electric suburban home that is roughly 4000 sq. ft.. I've added insulation in the walls and ceiling above and beyond what the builder installed, replaced all windows and doors and upgraded the water heater and HVAC. Over the year, our electric bill averages just under $200/month. It would take forever for us to recover the install/cost of adding solar to our home. Great video, as always, Matt.
Everything he bought just seems so much more than what I did: $1400 Heat pump water heater, $7k cold climate air source whole house heat pump, $20k for 14.5kw of solar, 30kw battery, hybrid inverter … all that is costs installed before incentives and rebates
Battery and solar panel prices have crashed in the last 3 years at least in Europe. If he did it now you'd get it for half price max.
Yeah, his home seems way over engineered to me. I have net zero in Washington from decent insulation, 15kw solar, air sourced heat pump, and regular electric water heater. No battery, no geothermal, no heat pump water heater
Any reasonably priced ideas for living in California, Mojave Desert? I'm getting racked over the coals during the summer.
@@edwarddiaz8371 Improve your insulation. Get that R value up so the cold doesn't leak out. Upgrading to triple pane windows will do a whole lot on its own, if they're installed correctly; sealing corners & holes to prevent air movement is fussier but does a lot too.
7k for heat pump installed is a great price. Where do you live? Most people get quoted 20k near me
Having just retired from Trane Commercial and being a service technician for 44 of those years. I've never seen a heatpump compressor that will last 30 years or even 10 year's. So you need to be pricing in a few compressor changes in your total cost to operate.
I have a 11 KWH solar system and A variable speed 96% furnace and a 18seer 2 stage Trane condensing unit. I only pay in the summer the minimum of $11.99 each month. Of course the gas goes up in December and the winter months to around $150.00 for a super insulated 6000 square foot house.
It'd be interesting to see how that comes in comparison.
repairs for 30 years. what about total replacement after 15 years. when you still have 15 more years of payments on the old one. and the solar system. same quality. and the whole system has a annual derating factor if it doesn't fail. and batteries. the best out there are only rated for 10 years. with annual derating factors.
Air heat pumps will last 10 years. That is mature technology.
@karinoren I know but that has to be part of the equation to plan on a compressor of pump, etc. During that time.
The 10 year's also depends on the operating conditions. Extreme weather conditions, having the correct charge, good electrical power.
I was a technician for 44 year's so I've worked on a few During that time, mainly large commercial units.
@@karinoren mine lasted 19 years before the first service call.
Thanks Matt, I have been retrofitting a 25 year old home with a remodel, taking the opportunity to install as much solar (25 panels), batteries (2xPowerwall2), AirSource heat pump as possible.. In the process of remodelling I have been amazed at how insulation standards have changed over the past 25/30 years, I suspect my wife is going to very pleased with the result, and like you, I'm exporting a little more than we consume.
You have to be quite privileged at this point to do *all* of that, but actually it is all worth it.
There was a good article about minimum code building standards. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Last winter we had a couple of days of - 50 degrees. De icing on airplanes doesn’t work at that temperature. There is a window company in Edmonton that makes the highway R rated windows in the world.
@@theredboneking I bought R8 triple pane windows from Germany for my new house. I heard Pella triple pane windows were only about R4.
if you just use 10% of this money and put it into insulation. you will recover that cost in just a couple of years. then save that amount each year. forever.
@diegojines-us9pc it all depends on what insulation and how expensive more solar is. For my system, it was 10x faster payback to put more solar up than the insulation I was looking up. I'm sure the numbers could go the other way too if you had expensive solar and cheap insulation
@@MrPizzaman09 $1000 of attic insulation saves you $100 the very first month. then every month. now how fast was your payback? no other system pays back faster, as much, and as long as a simple thing as insulation. now the next step. is windows. bigger investment with life time repayment but as a slower rate. and most of America dont even come close to having either.
Our energy here in Arkansas is about 1/3 of what you pay. That makes the return take so much longer to the point where it’s a flip of a coin on if the system would even break even. I’m glad to hear you have a balanced approach saying, “it’s not for everyone.”
Too many of the environmentally conscious people don’t understand that.
I'm curious on the decision to have the house shaped as a H instead of a rectangle. Would a large rectangle not have maximised internal volume, reduced energy loss by reducing the surface area to volume ratio, simplified construction, simplified the roof, reduced cost, increased the roof area for solar panels, reduced future maintenance costs in 20+ years, etc. As someone from the UK your house is quite a complex shape relative to what we have over here. I'm not hating just intrigued.
His house is predesigned the main part of it is a rectangle, It's H shaped because he added a garage and his office to it. You are correct that it would have been more efficient, but the design cost for him would have increased significantly and taken him longer to build. It was designed and panelized by Unity homes.
Nice pondering. To the effect, why not just a 100 square foot room. surely we can manage with out any luxuries. why have anything we enjoy that eclipses what is necessary.
The H shape increases window views, their up sides to the complex shape. Also the shape can create more privacy inside the home, isolating bedrooms from the entryway.
Not building like the 2nd of the "Three Little Piggies" would help as well. I'm looking at the builders website and I can't help but laugh, seeing how they are proud of R-35 walls and R-50 roof.
I live in Poland, which has climate roughly equivalent to that of Chicago, and our walls (in new construction) are required by law to be, at the absolute minimum, about R-30, with >R-60 being a fairly normal value - that's just 10" aerated concrete brick walls and 12" of graphite-infused XPS insulation. Another R-64 for the roof (18" of mineral wool is normal).
Another good point.
I went off the grid eight years a go and i'm loving every minute of it. Used solar panels chevy volt lithium batteries And a great big transformer inverter and Some AC coupled in phase micro inverters.
One thing missing in this whole cost calculation is the possibility to invest the upfront saved money and have a return on that as well.
Came here to see if anyone else pointed out he lacked any “cost of money” calculations
he stated his goal.
he never said "i want to maximize my returns without any other consideration"
if you only ate ramen and invested all the money you invest on food could you be better off?
@@wtfdoicareno but it still needs to make sense, most people don't get a Tesla charger sponsored, a smart main panel, solar panels or water heater. We have to buy it ourselves. So if it's just a black hole you toss money down there are unlimited ways to do that. The HVAC, water heater, solar panels, battery pack, smart panels are almost the same amount of our house. If we install it, our house won't increase in value to support that investment.
It doesn't inform the viewer to decide if it's a good idea for them. I walk away still undecided.....
@@wtfdoicare Exactly, and this is his Lifetime investment in housing... And what if your Invested money in stocks crashes ?.... It's a Long Term outlook when you build these. It's like my EV car I bought. $50k for the car, $7500 Fed rebate (because I can use it all, not everyone can- FYI it has changed since 2022) $2500 check from MA state (so this is $10k off in the 1st year) and 2 years Free charging that for me equaled $15k just back and forth to work..... so my $50k car turns into a $25k car.
@@Steven.spendlesstime if you crunch the numbers and they don't work...that's not undecided.
he explains his numbers, his goals, and his decision.
Great video summary!! Well laid out and reasoned. As a home builder, I nerd out on this stuff too! Matt is very open, but there are a couple of points that deserve more note - the upfront costs and ROI time. People need to accept that this is a 10-30 year project. That is a major commitment that does hold some significant risk. Like Matt states he is Pre-Purchasing a lot of future costs. This only works well IF the future goes his way. I know he plans this as a forever home, but we all make "permanent" plans that life forces you to change over 10-30 years. If he never has a major disaster. I'm in North Texas subject to hail and tornadoes. One good storm can easily wipe the extra $100k in these upgrades. Technology advancements - 10 years from now we could have solar panels that are up 10x better for 10x less. Remember, the 1st iPhone was in 2007. How many cell phones have you owned over 20 years and how does your phone now compare to the 1st one you ever had.
So, there is always large risks to being on the cutting edge of change. But Change ALWAYS REQUIRES PIONEERS. So major kudos and thanks to Matt for accepting that challenge (and cost because I ain't writing the check for an extra $100k on my house) for us all. And for that, I just subscribed here.
other words. good sell pitch for his services which increases the cost.
But Change ALWAYS REQUIRES PIONEERS. So major kudos and thanks to Matt for accepting that challenge
Matt did a full installation in a new home and spent a lot of money but it's not necessary to do that just to get the benefits of solar. Matt's system is amazing and will give him many years of energy savings but you can do it for a whole lot less money and still save money. I installed solar powered mini split heat pumps in our home when we needed to replace our AC unit. The kits come with solar panels and are all self-contained you simply install and plug in, no batteries to worry about, no inverters, just plug the solar panels in and plug it into an electrical backup and you're off and running. Three units cost us $7,000 total including installation. My electricity bill in the summer went from $340 down to $92. The units use solar power during the day and automatically switch over to grid power when the sun goes down. They work fantastic, they're not complicated, they're very budget friendly and easy to install if you want to DYI.
That's 28 years to recover the initial investment even without taking into account the opportunity cost.
I have a similar problem justifying investing in solar power because our idiot Ontario government heavily subsidizes electricity use and both federal and provincial governments encourage the use of natural gas with negligible taxes. I have 1600 square feet of flat roof that would be ideal for panels but it would be financially disadvantageous to do even a partial conversion. I'm 61 and every year, my time limit for achieving a return on my investments gets shorter and shorter. It's very frustrating.
@@KeithHanlan I assume the OP is referring to a monthly bill, so $340 down to $92 for the peak month of summer electrical usage. He will get a benefit every other month of a smaller amount. If we assume that the average monthly saving is half the peak savings (124$/month) then he will break even at 4.7 years. If you take into account the opportunity cost of the install the pay back will be somewhat longer but only a couple years (based on some reasonable assumptions on RoR)
@@KeithHanlan think about your children benefitting from your investment of conversion.
@@KeithHanlan I'm paralyzed, retired and limited income. I just built my 12kW solar, 6kW of 220v inverters, and 20kW of battery backup for $5k total. It took my sweat and tears to make happen, but I'm now paying $24 a month down from $300 (ROI-19 months). It, also, required me to be FRUGAL in my purchases. These are wealthy Millennials who weren't raised to be frugal.
All of my equipment is used. Purchased at a price that I can just buy another if it fails. For example, I paid $750 for my 2 inverters to produce 6kW @ 220v. New, they would cost $1k each. Having retired from critical infrastructure, trust me when I say that in solar, used (within 10 years) is as good as new. My panels were used hard for 6 years, and they're still producing 114% of their declared output rating. Solar panels degrade minimally and never at the rate the manufacture claims. Oh, 2 of my 48v LiFePo4 battery packs I purchased used as well. It'll take a decade or more, before they degrade noticeably.
Don't subsidize anything. Don't pull any permits. They can remove the systems when whomever replaces us, after we've died and made our money off of the solar. We don't have the time to play the long game. So, write your own short game. You can do it. A tip: don't put panels on a roof, if you have land available. Cheers.
All mini splits work with solar. The way they ramp up is inverter friendly. I've a 2 ton Pioneer mini split that runs off my 2-3k inverters. I understand the desire to have direct to A/C solar connection, though. Congrats on the bill reduction. Nice!
I’m currently getting a very similar set up on my house right now. Same brand, same batteries. My solar is 15kw and I’ll have 25kw of batteries. My yearly consumption is about 20k KWH per year. I’m hoping my set up will cover 100% of that. My house was built in 1960 and doesn’t even have insulated walls. I’m planning insulation up grades in the future to off set my future planned increase in electrical usage. I have one electric car, I’ll likely eventually get a 2nd one. My cost in California is nearly identical to yours plus a roof replacement. I am so happy and thankful to see a similar set up for similar price. My electrical rate is $0.50, and my average yearly bill was $750. My new theoretical bill should be $30 per month. $15 for electrical usage, and $15 service fee.
Did you take into account the time value of money? If you sent net 50K net for your system vs 20k for a gas or propane furnace you have a 30K difference in cost. Using the rule of 72, you would have made 30K in the first 10 years assuming a7.2% return, investing 60k for the next 10 years you would have 120K and the last 10 years it would turn into 240K. That is why using the time value of money is important. It is probable that you financed the extra cost. At a 6% mortgage cost it would still cost you around 200k in extra mortgage payments so not that much in savings. I know this is finance nerd stuff but is something to consider.
@@stephenmontgomery5157 All that to say absolutely nothing.
The calculation could be much more simpler: you probably don't have spare $100k so in the end comparing the raw prices is speculative. You should calculate the total prices with the loan applied to the difference, it makes the result at least somewhat practical.
I have a similar comment. He does appear to have done is math seriously wrong and his calculations are way, way off because of ignoring the time value of money.
and the true cost of Maintenace, this whole system has a derating annual factor. and can you afford those admittance bills. and this 30 loan. can you afford it when a total replacement is needed in 20 years? about as smart as using a credit card to pay off a credit card, thats how i see the whole thing.
@@diegojines-us9pc In theory one can insure, or factor in an insurance cost for the fairy small risk of the need for total replacement. I have not seen data on that, but it's reasonable to predict it. The real model is complex -- you must predict a real interest rate or rate of return, have a model for inflation or deflation of grid energy prices, panel output degradation etc. You can fudge some of these, but the one thing you absolutely can't fudge on is the time value of the money. MF seems to do a simple straightline calculation with interest rates set to zero and that makes the result way, way, way off.
The moment I saw a Miele washing machine at your house, I could see how good of a quality-eye you have for things. Good video about solar energy.
Matt, did you consider the battery degradation rate during the next 30 years with your calculations, possibly needing to fix, replace, or add more, which will affect the ROI and overall energy cost per unit?
panels have a derate factor on 20 years. and batteries have a derate factor based on 10 years. now what you gonna do with 30 years of payments? in 30 years you have one system with 3 payments.
I would hope that by the time batteries eventually need replacement, costs will have gone down considerably.
@@diegojines-us9pc REC panels have a 25 year warranty and Enphase batteries 15 years.
@@kansassolar then they are industry leaders. since all others are 10 year, and check those panels, with 4% annual derating they will only be producing 50% power. and thats a fact and warranty is also degraded for each year. so if they dont fail. they only be half as good. and no one makes them any better than to degrade any slower. or didn't you know that as well.
@@diegojines-us9pc Many panels have a 25 year warranty. Some have 30 years. Yes, 15 years for a battery is above the market average. This particular solar panel will degrade a total of 8% over 25 years. He talks about it on the video and it's quite easy to find.
Thanks for sharing, I live in Netherlands and I fully retrofitted my 1973 house with insulation, solar panels and the previous owner also installed a solar boiler system for hot water. I also made that boiler supply water to the washing machine. We have airconditioners (that we also use for heating) in 3 rooms and are in a process of getting an air-water heatpump to get heat in th eentire home. I found out my kids likes to shower to get warm after a cold or wet day and showered again seperately to wash and so I installed a shower timer giving them 7 minutes for one shower per day. The water actually gets cold after that. My energy bill is much lower than average but still high due to the Ukrain war
Wow, I did my own system, on an all aluminum ground mount with ground screws. 30 x 700 watt Bi-Facial panels, 16 kW Hybrid inverter, 2 x 15 kWh batteries. Tools, ladders, equipment, cables. USD $21k. This was 2 years ago, still working great. 16.93 MWh of production so far this year, 16.67 last year.
yeah he was ripped off HARD... i mean 33k for 20kWh of batteries... crazy
now the system will cost you half the price, panels and battery prices have tanked.
@@no-eb2xx Yeah, I don't get that price for the batteries. You can get that much storage for $5-6k.
Holy shit, DIY is cheaper than contractors?
you might be on to something.
@@majidmehmood3780 for 33k you can easily get 130kwh these days, even more with bulk discount.
i put solar panels on my roof in December of 2019....I have a 4.4 meg system..... I front loaded my electric cost just as i retired....My monthly NIPSCO Electric bill is $14.98....the cost to rent the meter....I would do this again in a heartbeat .....I like your Videos they have been mentioned in my small towns TRC...Plan Commission and BZA meetings....I have also mentioned them in board meetings of a local Industrial Development board i sit on and the County Amateur Radio Club i belong to....Keep up the good work.
I took the money for a solar install and put them in an index-fund, then switched to an electricity provider that is 100% renewables. Since that moment, I get paid to use energy, forever. And the energy-provider used the money to build even more wind/solar. I don't have to worry about roof-leaks, fixing things. The generators are away from my home and managed efficiently by staff.
And now I have a full time job managing my overcomplicated automated house that requires me to constantly monitor why my smart light switch is not working
This is a factor nobody thinks of. The other thing is when new tech and falling-off-a-cliff energy storage pricing outpaces your otherwise carefully calculated ROI.
I was about to make a comment very similar to yours. I have better things to spend my life doing then micromanaging why one circuit in my house house cost me a penny more then last month. I just don't get why people need "smart" circuit breaker panels, "smart" appliances, etc.
Just wait until your local power grid gets congested as more people and companies add solar. First net metering will disappear, and then you get to pay for every watt you send to the grid, including all the same taxes you pay for using power from said grid. This is what is happening in the Netherlands as mass adoption of solar more than outstripped grid capacity. Commercial connections to the grid are now on a waiting list and companies will be forced to shut down during peak hours or are restricted in when they are allowed to send energy onto the grid. It's getting so bad that some business parks are considering building their own local grid so they can exchange power among themselves outside of the regular power grid. Very expensive but still better than dealing with the headaches of the normal grid. Also whole residential city districts get their solar shut off remotely to keep the grid from becoming unbalanced. Costing users money and extra wear on the controllers.
It's unavoidable, without a cheap efficient way to store electricity those grids are economicall nightmare.
You think having few panels worth 2000€ not working for few hours is bad? Imagine building 200million € powerplant and finding out it wont be able to work 24h/7 cause EV panels push electric prices negative during peak solar 😂😂😂
I would just not grid tie them.
I know of a farmer who just disables their solar panels in the weekend, when none of his machines are running. Otherwise he'd get like a 2000 euro bill for pushing too much energy to the net. One day the folks from who manage the net showed up to check out what was happening and asked him why, he explained that he wasn't stupid to pay for that and they couldn't give him a reason to not do it.
@@sznikers It gets even better than that: without storage on the grid you need backup powerplants, usually natural gas powered, to offset 'dunkelflaute'. And they basically idle the rest of the time, just costing stupid amounts of money without any return. Plus it means that every watt of 'clean/green energy' is directly tied to an equivalent fossil fuel watt. So much for 'no emissions'. Worse: if a natural gas plant could run at proper load its emissions would be only a fraction of what they are now, per watt generated.
Also: at peak production moments some factories get paid to use power, to balance the grid when there is an excess of solar or wind. On the other end of the spectrum some factories shut down for months to do maintanance, because they earn more by renting out their grid capacity for that period, than they would by actually running the plant and producing goods.
@@FrietjeOorlog oh yeah, the amazing economics of political solutions 😂😂
On the other hand, sounds like good place to start a crypto mining farm : ) you can automatically regulate power draw of cryptominers in accordance to grid situation and there is no discrete steps. Instead of having to pay for power to mine be paid for providing load balancing to the grid, paid2mine : ) Now, per Watt efficiency of miner goes down with increased powerdraw, but one doesn't care if one is paid to use that power, only total output matters in that scenario. Per Watt efficiency goes up when you lower miner power draw (to a certain point), so when electric rates reverse from negative to positive you lower power draw, which lowers your total crypto output but increases efficiency per watt bought from grid. Win,win.
I think one of the rarely-mentioned issues in deciding about installing solar becomes, for some, a show-stopper. In ALL of the proposals - over the years I've been looking, and that I've gotten so far, although obviously it can change, and "your mileage may vary" - they've all had a highly undesirable flaw. For grid-locked systems, where you sell excess electricity back to the grid, that flaw is: when the grid loses power, so do you.
That is, when the neighborhood power goes out - a line comes down in a storm, etc., and despite all those panels on the roof - your power goes out as well. That happens a lot up here in New England from fall hurricane season through winter storms, so going "autonomous" from power failures via a solar installation seemed a great way of avoiding that problem - but the systems offered don't provide such a solution.
While energy savings was one of the attractive features of solar that initially drew me to the idea of solar, it was the idea that I would never again need to sit in front of a fireplace wrapped in a blanket, or throw out thawed food. Or the alternative of hurriedly stuffing food in coolers, left in the entryway, covered with ice - if any was left in local markets. That idea of grid independence represented a large part of my motivation to investigate solar - instead of, for example, using a gas generator. I was surprised to learn that while being able to sell surplus electricity back to the grid was a bonus, it came with a major caveat: the grid goes out - and so does your house.
There's a good reason, of course - linemen working on downed lines need to be assured that if they isolate a line from the main source, there aren't hundreds of solar-powered houses still pumping electricity into that wire they are working on. So to accomplish that, if your power converters detect a power failure, they shut down the DC:AC conversion of YOUR solar panels, and your house goes black.
There's a way around it, of course - but (surprise!) it costs money. You have to install an automatic transfer switch - an ATS - or a manual switch (less convenient, and doesn't work when you're not at home) in order to isolate yourself from the grid. When a grid failure is detected by the ATS, it disconnects you from the grid just as it would do if you had an emergency generator. And, if you have a smart inverter, at that point you can resume powering your home just as a generator would.
When power is restored, the ATS detects it, you synch back up with the grid phase, and the ATS reconnects you. The hardware to do that isn't cheap - nor is it commonly offered by solar installers, either, who are trying to sell you on solar on a return on investment basis, and so are loathe to add to the investment side of the equation.
The current (no pun intended) way around this for night time power gaps, is to offer battery backup to fill in for the panels - but not for grid failure. At night, the grid is still up, and the inverter is still synched to the grid phase - relying, as in the daytime, on the grid's presence to continue operating. Essentially, the battery is just a "virtual daytime" that provides DC to the inverter instead of the solar panels, and has the same restriction as the panels in a power outage.
Having panels to generate energy, and a battery to store it, but not being able to use either if the grid goes down is a non-starter for me. And if you do have an ATS to disconnect yourself from the grid, you still need a ~"clock" to create a 60 Hz timing cycle for the inverter that mimics the grid clock. That's what it takes to be truly autonomous - at least until your batteries run flat.
Stepping back from the issue of convenience, however, brings up an issue of even greater importance. While this extra equipment is an added expense, its absence also overlooks a potential strategic benefit of having autonomous power: national security. If the grid were taken out in an attack - by terrorists, rather than storms, for example - or even by an attack of a hostile government entity, the resultant disruption would be catastrophic. Well pumps don't work; sump pumps don't work; furnaces don't work; food goes bad because refrigeration doesn't work; stoves and microwaves don't work; security systems and lighting doesn't work; communications systems - TV, Radio, phone - don't work.
A citizenry that can't be informed about what is going on is thrown back into the medieval state - one to which they are completely unaccustomed. A fully-"hardened" country - one as incapable of having its power cut off as the Internet is designed to be in case of disaster - is one that can be coordinated, informed, and marshalled to respond to the threat.
One that can charge its electric vehicles and continue to transport goods and services. One that - at least for electrical machinery - can continue to operate as a nation. The value to the nation of being able to continue to operate through grid disaster is strong motivation to make the adoption of fully-autonomous, "hardened" solar/battery hybrid-powered housing a national goal.
To make that a reality, it should be highly subsidized by the federal and state governments such that the cost of installation is not a deterrent to any homeowner - potentially, in fact, free. There's a pony in there someplace, and such a nation - armed as it is - would be a truly formidable and daunting prospect to an invader or hostile force. Not a bad objective as an extension to the goal of Net Zero.
your batteries and inverters wont last 25 years, need to also factor in their replacement/installation costs
He has already done that.
The inverter will not; the panels should last without a problem. After 12 years I am currently waiting for delivery of a new inverter. Panels have not lost anything
Current Enphase microinverters are designed to last over 25 years (much longer than typical string inverters). We also installed an Enphase battery system.
If you can't pay cash, then you need to factor in the interest cost to purchase over the life of the loan.
Enphase microinverters come with a 25 year warranty
Thanks for the video,
I have 10mwh installed since 2010, and very happy. Our cars run 80% on electricity, but heating is still on natural gas.
One thing to go into the calculation: I financed my installation with a mortgage loan at 2% for green loans, so actually I pay the installation over 20 years. This means that my savings montly outweigh my mortgage payements, so my installation made me money the moment it was switched on.
Are those panels made of solid gold, omg.. I just installed 60 400 watt (500 watt with bifacial) panels, 130kWH of lifep04 batteries.. Just passed final inspection last week. In Michigan in November on a sunny day I was hitting over 22k watts on the panels, I produced over 100 kwh in the day. I paid 7200 dollars shipped for all 72 of these panels, only using 60 of them so far. I am not using micro inverters, I spent 4200 on 3 EG4 6000XP inverters and running them in parallel. I diy the batteries and spent 18k total on them, they are all in rack mount cases, 15 kWh per battery using JK BMS's and Eve MB30 Grade A 306AH prismatic lifep04 cells. I don't know how the heck someone could charge so much for solar panels and batteries. I understand I did the labor myself but wow, someone is making a pretty penny.
18k for 130kwh of batteries, did you write that correctly? Used cells?
@@slavko321 Yes I wrote that correctly, Eve MB30 306AH Cells (brand new grade A cells) in Yixiang DIY cases with JK BMS's. Can build each one for about 2k each shipped, each battery is over 15 kwh. The MB30 cells capacity are actually higher than the rated 306, typically 320+ per cell.
I mean look at the guy, he asked one contractor and got bullied into accepting an over priced bid.
One thing I think you should consider is that someday when you're done living in the house and you sell it these features you've built in will be very attractive to the prospective buyer and the amount you make on the sale, assuming no issues with the market, should be significantly greater than without them.
11:00
I don't see any consideration of the cost of money. Based on an interest rate of 6% the solar will break even at 15 years, not 9 years and that's not allowing for maintenance/repairs.
A cash flow of $4,800 per year for 10 years, with an interest rate of 6 percent has a present value of $35,000. For 15 years that would be $46,000, which matches the cost of the solar system.
The choice of interest rate is subjective, if you have to borrow money or have other debt then a higher figure would be appropriate raising the present value.
A lot of details neglected, especially applying the credits/savings up front. It should be more than 15 yrs if those credits are measured as discounted future cash flows.
@@killacrad I added the details. I haven't included all the items you mentioned.
@@spoddie Annual increase in the cost of grid electricity should also be accounted for, the $4800 avoided cost is not fixed over the payback period. Interesting how difficult it is to find a tool/resource that does proper accounting for these installations.
I was impressed with myself for being able to follow with stats and financial numbers, and then it dawned on me that it's only because you did a great job as explaining it all. Kudos to you!
I think if people are installing new solar systems, they should oversize the system if their budget allows. Because eventually you will move on to EV's and all electric appliances. Our 10kW setup although sufficient for now might not be able to power EV's if we buy them. Current iCE cars we own are very old(2014) and we still have them coz we don't drive a lot.
If your budget doesn't allow it use what we did: We left space for 3 extra panels which I think will help in out especially in our winter production.
Guess the next step is to make out house more efficient 😁
MGUY Australia doesn’t think highly about EV’s.
@@theredboneking why?
"Very old", lol, I've got a 94' van and a 00' pickup.
umm 2014 is not very old, if properly maintained thats just a normal car age, 30 years of daily use is getting older
@@corradoalamanni179 listen to him yourself on RUclips
Great video! Glad the house is working out!
My wife and I added solar and air source heat pump to our house which was built in the 70’s. We upgraded the insulation and recently added a heat pump hot water heater. We both drive ev’s and pay about 1,500 a year out of pocket. I have been extremely happy with everything. I run an oyster farm in Massachusetts and just need to find a good electric outboard so I can switch that over too!
$55K seems ridiculously expensive for 43 panels
It Denmark that would cost about 1/6 of what he paid.
Price as of yesterday, Nov 20th 2024.
remember hes a design specialist. his price is in the cost. so he makes more that the guys who make the panels.
In the UK it would have cost £2943 for the same panels.
@@mikeselectricstuff yeah made a video complaining that solar isn’t worth it, but he significantly overpaid for those panels.
I had 22 roof panels installed in Missouri for $14k, and the city loaned the money for it at 1% interest.
Depends when he bought in. not so much for 10 years ago. dirt cheap compared to prices 30 years ago, and a ripoff now. That's how progress goes.
At least you think it was worth it.
Great system.
I have an insulated sand floor with some buried heating cables that are correct connected directly to solar with zero equipment.
I was able to get the panels free and spent less than $100 on the heating cables.
The sand is here already living near the beach in Chicago.
Its a small system so far, but the proof of concept has been great!
I plug the cables into the grid if i want to top off the heat sink in cloudy weather.
Cheers!
The sand floor is topped by concrete pavers.
When you said your electric cost is $.31/kwh my jaw hit the floor! We’re at $.09 for the first 700 then $.07 after that with a monthly $26 customer fee. Plus it’s a co-op so I get a check at the end of each year with about 1/2-2/3 of a months usage as a return.
Solar just never pays back at those rates.
He did say it depends on your situation. Some people have insane electric bills and he did swap all of his household items/maintenance to electric so he is doubling down on it to maximize his investment.
Where you are if you honestly wanted to get into solar then look at used panels and doing some DIY installations with basic RUclips tutorials. All the new technology is making the older panels significantly cheaper and if you buy them used from a wholesaler then you can get some decent panels for a fraction of the price. I helped my neighbor build a few racks for panels and it cost him 12k to build a 30kwh system on used parts and he intends to add some new batteries later when he buys some lithium ion power cells from China to make his own batteries and save even more money.
yea for me its partly a desire for lower costs but mostly a desire for reliable power that noone can take from me , i want to have power no matter what is going on outside
Yeah, in Massachusetts we have some of the most expensive rates in the country. Fortunately for me I get 1:1 net metering and even my $7/mo member fee is included. So I haven't had a bill since last March ($40) and still have $450 in credits, so I expect to not have a bill again,, unless their policy changes.
If you think that's a lot, we can pay over 60¢/kWh in California. I'm on Time of Use, and my cheapest rate is 32¢/kWh. This is why I have solar and battery storage.
My rate in Maine is 31¢ per kWh, as well.
My parents recently decided to add solar to their home and have just started the process of getting quotes, this has given me some tools and good questions to make sure get asked during the process. Thanks for putting this out there.
My geothermal unit gave out after 11 years. This ended up costing me many, many thousands more than natural gas. How much of your estimate is based on a longer life for the unit?
Pretty much all of it. I’m sorry you had that issue but the overwhelming majority of people I know who have geothermal units and the 2 guys in my church who install and work on them all say they are expected to last 25-50 years depending on your brand and who you have instal it. I have met one lady who had one fail at year 9 and it was due to a power grid failure during a freak ice storm. I hope you had more success after that one failed you. I’m so sorry.
@@jimdob6528 we have used those quite long time in Finland and Sweden. Typical lifespan 15-20 years.
@@jimdob6528 I wonder is she and the original commenter could have their system insured.
Allways morgage your investment in 10 years.
Matt, with the fact being that a very, very tiny percentage of Americans actually stay in a home, such that it is truly a “forever” home.
May I please ask for your thoughts,
regarding just the financial aspects of your build, (not the environmental)
1) If the unthinkable should happen, and you need to sell, for any reason, in how many years, can you reasonably expect, to recoup all the costs for such a highly specialized system & house ? I ask because, it is likely a house with very much higher than typical, upfront costs for that sort of square footage.
2) Also, how do you figure in your more complex systems’ maintenance costs, compared to your states homes with more typical
on-grid situations…heat, a/c, hot water, electric, and /or natural gas systems, maintenance costs ?
3) Do you now consider, because of time, money, and effort spent, moving is simply no longer an option,
since the cost savings seem to come to you in year 10 or after ?
What is the cost of insuring the panels against weather damage?
Nothing extra. It's covered by my standard home owners insurance. Your mileage will vary there depending on where you live.
@@UndecidedMF Insurance isn't free, so you neighbors are paying more so you can pay less. Same for the tax credits. Your neighbors might not be smart enough to know this but you should be.
@@johnotken7388
Most houses in my neighborhood have solar, and most of their systems are much larger than mine. That's because I did my own design and did not have an installer upsell me.
@@johnotken7388 please explain how his neighbors are paying for his insurance? If there were higher costs for his house in the event of problems, wouldn't the ins company charge him more for that extra potential repair costs?
Love to see this type of analysis being done. From someone who has lived with a Climate Master geothermal HVAC for over a decade now, you need to account for the increased cost for maintenance and repairs vs air source. In my experience, maintenance and repairs cost about 3x to 4x vs air source strictly because there aren't as many qualified contractors in my area creating higher demand for the few contractors that will work on a geo system.
$10k/yr for Heating is insane 14:57 What is happening here? I can't follow the numbers
I am paying 1000usd a year for heating including morgage for heating system. I am an engineer living in Stockholm. My house is big, 165square meters.
I can't begin to explain how complex this topic is and how well you covered it. I've been going over the same exact tradeoffs for my new house to make sure I was making a good decision. I landed on doing a ton of solar (40 kw) that I will install myself but I have 12 month 1:1 net metering at 17 cents/kwh. I also went with lower efficiency heat pump system and less insulation because the solar is going to have a way better payback. And to add to it, my 40kw system will be able to share power with my parents house on our bill, so it's double the return on investment. Similar ~50% selling rate to the power company after I go over 100% usage and an extra 3-4 cent/kwh for the PA solar credits. And once long range electric cars are cheap enough, I may cut my gasoline bill by charging my own electric car to save another $10/day.
I think this level of thinking and math is in the top 1% of people who look into energy savings. You can do simple or even complex payoff calculations, but this really looks at it from the big picture.
It can't save me thousands on my energy bills when my energy bills run about $900 a year for a 1700 square foot house.
Lots of insulation and LED bulbs will do that for you.
And running my house at 77 or 78° in the summer but low humidity or 68 to 70° in the winter but with low humidity lower the single largest cost which is air conditioning cost.
Depends a lot on where you live. In my area the "public" utility can charge $.65 kWh which for my modest house would be $7800 or so a year.
Thanks for sharing. That's precisely why I said it's a very individual calculation if it works or not. In your case, it really doesn't sound like solar makes sense.
@@16jocko okay I can't even conceive of a 65 cent per kilowatt hour rate.
Even Europe doesn't charge rates that high as far as I know.
In my state the rates are about 15 cents per kilowatt hour. Why are your rates so expensive?
@@16jocko65 cent!? Even in the Uk at the worst of the Russian gas crisis it got to half of that, since dropped back down a lot.
@macmcleod1188 I'm in Australia and I'm currently paying around 60c per kWh... it's insane!
Appreciate your caveats for people's particular circumstances. Lattitude alone makes a huge difference for consideration of your options. We're at 36 degrees south (NZ) and our mix of solar 6 kw and battery 30kwh LFP works off-grid.
Wow...I'm having a 30KW system with batteries installed in Feb'2025, the UK price for everything inc. installation will be just over 30K GBP. We already have 3.5KW which we got over 10 years ago when the Feed In Tariff first appeared in the UK.
Just had a GivEnergy battery system installed on my house in the UK. Best thing ever! Just need more solar now.
And with the various tariffs from octopus its a no brainer.
@@DarrenPoulson Looking forward to it, I am also with Octopus, I have a Tesla Model 3 long range model and I'm 55 next year so looking forward to not worrying about rising electricity costs.
@@SimonPlatten Yeah. I'm 50 next year and working on getting all bills as low as possible. New windows, doors, etc. anything to make the house more efficient.
@@DarrenPoulson , 55 in Feb, our house has been a long term project, a few years ago we got off oil and had Air Source Heat pump installed, its been brilliant. We have done everything we were supposed to do, except it seems there is always someone trying to pull the rug from under us. Pensions are a huge disappointment.
@@DarrenPoulson I wish we had companies like Octopus and Ripple here in Denmark
As someone who grew up in Eastern Idaho, I am used to houses all having basements due to the deeper water pipes and energy efficiency in the cold weather. For this reason, I was curious when I had seen your house build that was all above ground.
This video answered my question: it's to age in place!
0:23 I'm pretty sure that solar is all sunshine and rainbows lol
NH Electric Co-op currently charges $0.16746/kWh. Additionally, they charge a non-negotiable fee of $34.66 to be a member. Fun fact: Our PUC approved of a $0.007270/kWh line item (System Benefit Charge) figured into that total cost, which is in fact the amount paying customers are charged to subsidize certain other customers. Notwithstanding, even if the Co-op payed a 1-to-1 return on electricity returned into the grid, we will never pay less than $34.66. We have a nuclear power plant (Northeast Utilities) which sells the electricity (in part) out of state, while we purchase (in part) power from Hydro Quebec through Northeast Utilities. Somehow, I get the impression that going solar will simply drive most of us into debt while freeing up more electricity for NU and its stockholders to profit even more from by selling elsewhere (CT in particular). So much corruption in energy, honestly.
Hearing how much energy US houses uses is so eye-opening. Compared the the uk these numbers are huge. Clearly heating and air con needs are different, but for energy efficent homes you could still run a small street in uk on this amount of power!
i think you have to add in cool air conditioning .this is a big thing in usa. I bet that sucks down the leccy during summer.
It's been nearly 20 years since I lived in America, I remember paying $100 a month for gas in the winter when the heating was on. Then we had a month of low utility bills. Then summer hit and it was $100 a month on electricity for the AC. In Europe, I just have to pay for heating in the winter. Summers where I live are fine with no AC, nothing like the summers in OK.
@@BAZvonRichthofenIt's also a big thing in Japan, where the earthquake-proof houses and small blocks (I live in a notoriously-naff Leopalace, if somebody in Britain was asked to live in something so small, they'd be running to the ECHR) have almost no insulation.
Decadent, wasteful, first-world "air conditioners" and efficient, green, planet-saving "heat pumps" are THE SAME THING. in spring and early autumn my electric bill is about ¥1200, in the height of summer my AC gets a lot of use and the bill can be ¥6000, an increase, but not a vast amount. Mind you I have a new air conditioner, the first winter I used two 1000w space heaters a lot, because my old one's heat mode was really weak, and got the bill to just over ¥10,000. One spring, on the other hand, I was really careful and got it down to ¥980 for April or May!
My wife and I do fine in America with just a 5 KW solar system. Most American heat or cool their entire McMansion all the time. We just heat or cool the room we are in.
I literally started watching this video while eating supper just before windstorm. I paused the video because the wind blew over a neighbor's fence. And then the power went out for most of the city. We didn't immediately notice. That was 3 hours ago, I'm the only one in sight with working lights.
We're running a Sol-Ark + HomeGrid + a whole bunch of solar panels. But we only have one panel that runs off the battery. It's the "important stuff" panel for the fridges + HVAC + internet... plus one TV. This is our first major outage since the install and it's working quite well. I'm honestly still setting up the all of the automation and monitoring for the Span panel, but knowing that we can still operate for a while has been great.
We don't have enough to power our whole home with the grid down. Though that's actually an issue with local regulations more than one of desire to operate this way. Honestly, there's probably a fun video on the things we underwent getting this all set up. I wish I could plug in my EV as an extra charging source, but the local regulations won't allow it.
But as we electrify and diversify more of the grid. I think home like this are an essential blueprint for the future. Thanks for sharing everything you're doing.
Local regulations prevent a whole house capable system? Sounds like the utulity company wrote the rules.
Solar Designer here: those panels facing west will produce more energy if they are facing South. Your logic of capturing evening sun is solid, until you apply the Math. You always want as many panels facing south as possible especially with a battery system.
Yep, agreed. I did max out my southern facing roof space. Those west facing panels were thrown in because it didn't dramatically jack the cost up at that point and still gives us extra power. Looking at my production today, my southern panels generated 1.4kWh each and the west generated 1.1kWh each.
And morningcsnd evening power are crucial unless like Matt you spend tons on an overbuilt system. Late in the day is the crunch time. As the other panels start to make less, your usage goes way up. Morning and evening pridiction are key for just adequate dystems especially.
solar designer? you know the good thing about facing south. at the end of the day when you get home you use the most. and where is the sun? now much of a designer. because if it faced south. you need to increase battery size, now count up energy lost in putting it in then out of the batteries. do the math buddy. don't you understand the 2 times people use the most. morning and evening. and if it wasn't wasted in the charging system you increase useability by 10% a day. and for those people still has a grid tie. when do they buy the most from the company. mornings when their batteries are dead. they have to buy until the sun hits mid day. if they had a few facing east. they would produce more faster instead of having to buy. now go back to what night school you boss sent you to. I AM NOT A DESIGNER. i just stop and thought about it.
@@probablynotabigtoe9407 I disagree, west is a good idea. Most people use most electricity in the evening and solar panels are a lot cheaper than batteries. Panels facing east are also a good idea.
@ and I just did it. Get up in the morning with low power and look at those south facing panels you wish were facing east. Day after day, living it. And as you crank up the loads in late afternoon on low batteies, it's the same feeling, month after month, year after year.
8:15 I can't imagine paying $0.31/kWh for electricity!! I'm unhappy with 9.79¢ (Canadian), although that number is roughly double due to other fees, it's still significantly lower than your rates.
one way of doing the accounting (philosophically) is that the first kwh cost you $61,000, the second kwh cost you „only“ $30,500!
the good news is that your cost per kwh will likely only go down if you do the accounting this way and that should put a smile on everyone‘s face 😊!
with 16 mwh in your first year, your cost per kwh is already down to $3.81 - which is a „huge“ improvement of your cost per kwh!
Thanks for sharing Matt.
Mind blowing what your installation and energy costs were.
My electric costs here in MO average about $0.08/kwh in the winter and $.11/kwh in the summer. I have focused on insulation, efficient heat pump, heat pump dryer and pushing electric use to match TOU billing. I could never payout a system like yours with our energy bill averaging $130 per month.
I paid $16,000 (net after the tax credit) for a 5kW system 5 years ago. Average savings per year on my electricity bill have been $530. So, it will take over 30 years just to get my money back. If I put that same $16,000 into a conservative investment, it would have produced a return of roughly $1,200 per year. My net loss by “investing” in solar comes out to $3,500 to date ($19,500 if you include the initial 16k). After 30 years, my total loss to my net worth will be $37,000. (That amount is much greater if you reinvest dividends from a 16k investment.). Bottom line: solar is a terrible investment. Unless a $37,000 hit to your retirement fund is no big deal, don’t put your money into a solar system.
This is along the lines of what I was going to mention. 50k up front put into conservative market vehicles over 15-20 years is going to compound much higher than the savings will be. Solar is sadly almost completely dead. Now some will say that an offgrid situation for when we are living in Mad Max times justifies it but probably the only house with lights on is going to be a target for a raid. However I think that when I price out everything in components, especially when mounting in the yard vs the nightmare on the roof with the leak potential, then it can work out if you have some know how or have a friend assist. Getting everything on marketplace or black friday specials could make it all work, but certainly not with a contractor.
Ours is looking more like 12 years (Australia based), Our last bill was -20$. Perhaps investing it would have come out better, but energy costs are on the rise, we have blackout protection for when there are storms or line maintenance, and I can thrash our high draw devices like AC/dryer all the time without thinking about it, it allows us to increase consumption without paying more. This was with one of the larger solar providers that charge a premium too, as I want them to still be around if I need to make use of the 20yr warranty.
@@luke5957 Prior to interest rates on the higher end going up, someone could technically finance the solar system and it would make sense. The banks however now bake in a higher rate than normal to cover the risk of the solar installer going out of business before the permits/installs are even completed, as that was also becoming an issue.
Most home have hot+cold mixture water faucets. These unknowingly cause you to use heated water even when you don't need for example in summer. Hence adding a solar water heater which you can disconnect off during freeze could be an excellent addition to take some water heating load off the electrical system. The geothermal system is also excellent option to keep the water warmer then usual.
As another MA resident; I can't help but chuckle at all this because I am in a very old home with single pipe steam; and am personally really amazed at how much I have been able to improve it with just some rather minor upgrades. I setup home assistant, deployed temp/humidity sensors, and got a thermostat that I could control... and wow the heat in this house is working better than it ever has in my lifetime and eliminated overshoot.
if americans just invert 1000 in insultation. they would recover that money in less than 2 years. then make money off it for LIFE> add it up. 500 a year for for 50 years of your life.
@@diegojines-us9pc No idea what you are saying but; "Americans" are a diverse group that live in several different climate zones. We don't all have the same issues. A home from the south would not be fun to live in up in the north where I am.
@@carpdog42 now its cheap to build a home down south compared to the north. because of heating needs, but people down south only thinks that. that dont consider that insulation will reduced their cooling.
example. one early spring in san Antonio i listen to the media asking out to help the poor to pay heating bills. it got down to the 40's. but imagine what their cooling bills was all year because they had no insulation.
I'd love to have solar with battery, because here in Oklahoma we have storms where the power can be out for days if not longer. But my 2023 electric usage was 4696 kwh for a total of $885. My 2024 looks like it will be less. Being 75 and retired, even a small system would probably not payoff in my lifetime. A friend had a system installed and he saw a huge jump in his homeowner's insurance.
I just can't get these prices around my head. over $80K for panels and batteries alone? 430 bifacial panels are easily found around 60 euros in Germany and they sell like hotcakes. 40 panels (430 watts) x 60 euros = 2,400 euros (17,2 kW). $55,000 for the same amount of kilowatts? Am I missing something here? Like 20 times more expensive?
I'm only assuming but he probably has Labor in that cost. Labor is incredibly expensive in the USA.
Yep, it's the soft costs (labor) that really jack up the costs in my area, along with permitting costs that don't exist in other areas of the world. The US is really lagging behind on that front.
They're even cheaper than that.I got my 445W panels for about 53€+tax. High quanitity panels can drop to as low as 0,1€/kWp, if you're an installerand buy in bulk.
Panels are really really cheap these days. Some roofs are more expensive than solar per m2.
Well Enphase is one of the most expensive systems on the market. With my quotes for a relatively small system I had REC Panel + Enphase quotes that were almost 10K more than a similar Tesla or String Inverter. Rec panels added an extra 2000-2500 and the Enphase batteries were an extra 1000 per 5kw units also there were extra charges for whole home backup/software upgrade fee. Enphase is considered super premium.
@@UndecidedMF
I really lucked out: Almost zero labor costs because I could do it myself, and my county charged nothing for a building permit because they wanted to encourage solar. No lease because I paid cash for the equipment. No contractor costs because my county lets a homeowner do their own work, even electric as long as you can pass inspection.
Thanks!
1:54 The onscreen graphic should show kWh and MWh, not kW and MW. kW is the unit showing how much power you're generating, kW/h (kilowatt hour) is the total amount of power generated. Would be nice to update this with an annotation to keep people from mixing up these units.
my calculator told me to let everyone else go solar.
Thanks for stats sharing... helps to know where we Waterfurnace owners align.
Not too different - 1500 sqft home in southern Wisconsin plus full basement.
Waterfurnace 7 - slinky loops. Turned one year old yesterday - 1,669.68 kWh for the year.
Same water heater... with superdeheater and 598kWh for a year's worth of hot water.
Solar install starts this Friday... 16.49kW annual projected at 21,592 kWh (all angled south).
Two Powerwall 3's once they ship.
you could have also invested all the money and make probably bigger returns over that same projected savings over that time span even :P
Coincidentally we have our solar fitter on-site this morning measuring up for 13 panels and an EcoFlow PowerOcean 15kwh battery in the garage. At approx £10k uk solar prices feel cheaper at the moment. We are predicting ROI in 6 years, from a combination of solar generation, and time shifting our consumption from 25p per kWh in the day to 8.5p per kWh at night when we’ll fill up the battery for usage during the day. Great video as always. Loving your work.
Thank you and good morning.
Good morning!
I have an 1890 brick 3 floor and sub-basement row house in brooklyn. Little by little I am heading towards as net zero as I can get. I have gotten a 7.2 kwh solar canopy rooftop system, producing about 10mw a year, and insulation between the roof and top floor ceiling, mostly new windows and getting all electric appliances, the last of which is to get is a 208 ac electric dryer. I am torn between a heat pump dryer, and regulular electric vented dryer in the basement. The basement has two heat pump 50 gallon hot water tanks, one for the rental unit and one for my unit. that is great for the basement in the summer, cooler and dryer, but pretty chilly in the winter and adding a heat pump clothes dryer seems like it would make it even more cool in the winter. what do you think matt? Or use the regular electric vented dryer in winter, unto the basement, with a lint screen, to create more warmth and less dry environment. During drought that recently hit brooklyn the humidity was only 34 %, but now it is raining and the humidity is 48% in the basement. The temp outsid is 55 and in the basement 67 f. when it was 35 d outlside last week at night, the basement got down to 63 f. with the hot water heat pumps running, full blast as I had to clean one and restart the hot water system. Energy star says the heat pump dryer an LG 5502 will use about 300 kwh and the lg 4000 regular dryer will use about 600 kwh. the vent of the regular dryer will have to be kept clean, bu the lint traps of the heat pump dryer require twice as much work ith eqch use to clean. The heating system has been gas hydronic, but last year I used various electric heataers, until january and february because someone else was staying in the house, and dI didnt want them to have to mess the electrici heats. Then in May I got some convection wall heaters by envi, and am using those now on the top two floors, and this summer installed a heat pump mini split air source system for the 1 floor. Next I will probably get an air source heat pump mini split system for the top two floors, and a ev charger, though I will have to drag it accross the sidewalk to the street, no driveway., and no car yet Energy use is probably going to be 8 to 8.5 megawatts a year, without charging an ev, or other peoples evs. I am looking for an ev charger that has an app where people can pay, but maybe it would just be better to have a portabable one, and let them pre-pay with venmo or something, since I would have to throw a mat across the cable as it transverses the sidewalk to the street. I am undecided too Tracy :)
You missed several major costs. Insurance cost increase (if coverage is available at all), property tax increase (varies state to state), replacement labor and costs of failed and damaged equipment (inverters, panels, switches, wiring, BMS, cleaning, etc.), longevity of your warranty providers (manufacturers, sellers, installers), lack of compatibility of new equipment (this is why used solar is cheap), and increase in labor from inflation. Electronics that use electrolytic capacitors have a limited life span. What happens when your Chinese panel provider goes belly up and new panels don't fit? And what bothers me most is those tax credits are paid for by the taxpayer not the government. I don't like subsidizing your solar experiment at my cost (intentionally redundant). Overall, I call your analysis incomplete with significant unknown future costs.
Additionally, your thumbnail headline stated regrets, but you provided no regrets or lack thereof in your analysis. This is deception.
While I certainly enjoy your content, and as an engineer-minded practical man I love the numbers and the time you have taken to work it all out, as a man without what to me would be unachievable financial backing to even think about the sort of project you have undertaken.... You see where I am going with this? However, I am not one of those people suffering from wealth envy. I am in Scotland, west coast - which means not desperately cold winters but long ones - I am retired on a State Pension ie, not a lot (!), but two years ago received a 100% grant for an air source heat pump, also covering insulation, in what is a fairly well thought out 'room-in-roof' house of 1980 vintage. My total electricity costs for a very cosy house all year round, and as much hot water as one man could ever use, is about £1,300 (add about 20+% for dollar numbers), compared with twice that for the coal and wood I previously burned for similar warmth and HW returns. (kWh costs here are around 25p, so about 30 cents, plus £15/$18 a month for service costs. Yes, power is pretty expensive in the UK, nationwide) Even if I had the money to fit solar and battery, I doubt I would make the cost back in my lifetime. Sadly, no such grant was going at the same time as the ASHP offer, but I jumped at it anyway. Since Scotland has plenty of wind, and hydro is evolving at pace (and two things we are not short of are wind and water!), at least my green creds are not too shabby, and the total power bill for all my usage is around a fairly affordable £1,800 pa, I doubt I will do much more to reduce my bill for electrons. But I like your content, it always makes me THINK, an attribute that seems in short supply the world over.
I stopped watching at 2:39 with your costs.....Up until now I thought you were a sharp guy. obviously I was wrong. You obviously have been scammed. Poor soul. In the UK the subsidies are gone , but the costs are on the floor. Why did you opt for gold plated panels??? You obviously have no buying nor business skills.Most of the old folks in the uk got their panels for free, with free power?
Nice work, great house, your lucky to have the resources for all that. I'll never be able to afford something like that so as I'm renovating my old farmhouse I install a plug, switch and sconce light just inside the door in every room that's hooked to a small solar array with a few batteries for backup mostly, but it can be used all the time if you want. The house is on the grid so my solar setup doesn't effect it in anyway. I'm in a small rural town so power goes out all the time in the winter and having the basic lights, a plug for charging is huge along with pulling out the camp stove for cooking makes life a little easier.
I have 2 houses and don't pay the utility cost for your home monthly. But North FLA has mild winters and summers aren't horrible. And my houses were built to be "green" and very well insulated. I have tons of sun all year long...blazing sun and both my houses backsides face east. But when I did the break even time vs the cost, because of my low bills, I will be dead long before the break even point. So, if a nice young couple buys my places after we're gone, they can consider it. But you do live in an expensive state. I have no state income tax and lower utility bills and a good heat pump and tankless hot water so even with solar being cheaper here, I can see your point.
In the summer of 2023 I had installed a 7.4kWh system (20X370W panels) and a SolArk 15 kWh inverter; with 20.48 kWh of batteries. It worked well, but I wanted more... for electricity security. So this fall I had the same company (ShineSolar) install another 13 panels X 370 watts for another 4.7 Kw (12.21 total kWh), and doubled the batteries to 40.96 kWh capacity. I run my property off the batteries, and use the grid only for backup. I am pleased thus far.
Thanks for the analysis and review of your system! I am in Southern California and my original net metering contract just ended this year. The new contract pays me .015$ per kilowatt hour that I generate, and charges me $.62 for any electricity that I use. Talk about a negative to installing solar! I recently had a contractor add 10 new panels and a Tesla 3 Powerwall so that I can become net neutral annually. It is a crime that the utilities got away with the new contract. I am so happy that all your hard work in research into this topic paid off!
i'm so glad you decided do to this and document it for us. thanks so much
Hi Matt, our Standard electric water heater failed the same month we took delivery of our Volvo C40 Recharge. I replaced the water heater with the same Rheem hybrid that you have. That was in September of 2022. We only charge our car at home. Since then our average monthly electric usage has stayed within a few kilowatt hours of the average monthly usage prior to having the electric car and hybrid water heater. We were amazed. We are in NE Florida. The water heater is in the 2 car garage and our other car is gas keeping the garage temperature no lower than 70degrees even on the cooler winter nights.
I live in Southern California, so our 5 KW system has always more than covered out electricity use. It's zeroed out about $2000 worth of electric bills since we installed it. We very rarely have outages, so a grid-tied system with no batteries has worked fine for us. I designed it and installed it myself, with no installer or lease. My only outside labor cost was for a concrete pump operator, but he just ran the pump while I directed the hose filling the forms. We got rid of a leased propane tank and converted everything to electric. We do just heat or cool the rooms we are in, so cheap space heaters and window AC works fine. Considering the tax credit we got, my payback period will be less than 6 years. We even have enough surplus electric credit we can run AC for our dogs!
I installed a 10Kw off grid system 4 years ago and it was the best decision I ever made. The system has now paid for itself. During the rainy season we have learned how to use less power so we still use 0 energy from utility. All my power is free.
One thing you *REALLY* need to consider - what if you took that initial investment and put it in the market? $88k would be $143,347 after 10 years @5% annual return. Now if you are just taking more money out of a mortgage, then maybe that's not really funds you can just throw in the market, so it's not a fair comparison, but it is something to consider.
If you think about the opportunity cost of not investing that money into the market, you can turn a 9-year breakeven to closer to a 25 year breakeven. Or maybe never? $88k in the market for 25 years with a measly 5% return would be $298k after 25 years. So you actually might never break even if you consider what else you can do with the money. Change the return to 7% and now that $88k is $477k after 25 years. You'd actually be losing quite a lot of money.
Opportunity cost is very real. Hopefully these would be loans or other funds that could not be alternatively placed into the market. Otherwise I think the financial benefit is completely moot.
Worth it. I have an 11Kw system that covered everything until I bought an EV, but I still never pay as much as I did before. I put about 50k miles on the EV every year and still pay a smaller electric bill than anytime before the solar went up.
I calculated break even at about 8 1/2 years. I'll definitely make that.
Wow, the electricity prices there are brutal. I am in BC, Canada and our tier 1 rate works out to 7.8c/kw
I have a 15.8kw grid tie, and looking at ways to advance my home's efficiency.
I am really enjoying your videos.