Working on Solar for TX - Initial Quotes coming in

[inetdog]

For one person, a ROI of less than 5 years a 25 net profit of $35,000 might be the "Winner". For others, a 10 year ROI with lower long term positive cash flow might be a ok. I had a quote that would have got my ROI down below 4 years but opted for the Sunpower panels for other reasons. What's a "good investment" for you?

For the technically minded, ROI (Return On Investment) is expressed in percent (annually). What you are talking about is the payback period. And most who casually do that calculation use the total savings over those years against the actual cost rather than taking time and alternative return rates into account.

I am sure that for Dereck, as for most of us, a "good investment" is the best possible use of my money given the rate of return and the risk involved. If you want to add in bonus points for saving the earth or being socially responsible, you are certainly free to do that.
One of the beauties of the investment market is that everyone is free to use their own numbers to decide how to spend their own money.

[Ian S]

For the technically minded, ROI (Return On Investment) is expressed in percent (annually). What you are talking about is the payback period. And most who casually do that calculation use the total savings over those years against the actual cost rather than taking time and alternative return rates into account.

I am sure that for Dereck, as for most of us, a "good investment" is the best possible use of my money given the rate of return and the risk involved. If you want to add in bonus points for saving the earth or being socially responsible, you are certainly free to do that.
One of the beauties of the investment market is that everyone is free to use their own numbers to decide how to spend their own money.

You're right of course but the payback period is a simpler calculation and not a bad rule of thumb. An investment in solar has additional advantages that include a return that is in essence tax free. Also, it's very likely that over a ten or twenty year timeframe, energy costs even in Texas are going to increase which will make any investment in solar an even better deal.

[mm01]

For the technically minded, ROI (Return On Investment) is expressed in percent (annually). What you are talking about is the payback period. And most who casually do that calculation use the total savings over those years against the actual cost rather than taking time and alternative return rates into account.

I am sure that for Dereck, as for most of us, a "good investment" is the best possible use of my money given the rate of return and the risk involved. If you want to add in bonus points for saving the earth or being socially responsible, you are certainly free to do that.
One of the beauties of the investment market is that everyone is free to use their own numbers to decide how to spend their own money.

Sorry - Thanks for the catch. I was reading up on my ROTH today, getting all my terms mixed up... one of those days

[Sunking]

Well if you invest say $10,000 into say a mutual fund, left it there for 10 years, then when you cash out you receive $10,000. What was the ROI?

[Lomag]

*yawn* could this thread be closed already?

[Rdjntx]

Sorry I am late to the party but thought I would weigh in on a few points

But only due to the incentives. You guys wouldn't believe it is a smart move to do the system if the incentive was not there. Even with federal 30% only, it is still a long ROI. The local incentive is hard to pass up but it seems over sized for what the system does. Maybe the DoE gave them a grant which they take a cut of and then pass on some of it to system owners? I doubt Texas electric prices will rise much in the next five years. Grid suppliers are getting bid down on generation prices into 2017..

there is no question that if the incentives weren't there it would be a horrendously DUMB investment. I don't know if the DoE is giving companies a grant or not but I kind of doubt it. ONCOREs money pot ebbs and flows as the year goes along and they reallocate money from one solar pot (business) to another (residential) depending on demand and then refresh the pot at the beginning of the fiscal year.

with the OPs rebates and the Rebates I got it would reall be a little silly to NOT do it.
[QUOTE=bonaire;79060]

Well, duh! Of course you have to consider the incentive. But the original conventional wisdom was a blanket claim that residential solar doesn't pay in Texas. It clearly does at least in some parts.

indeed. Austin / Round Rock where I am in another place it pays to do it and because of the incentive. My system costs 37K 25K in rebated (20K from ONCOR and 5k from the installer) less the federal rebate of roughly 4 grand or so and cost out of my pocket is just over 8K. system should pay for itself in 4-5 years. and the way things are going and the way *I* calculate it it may be less than 4 years time will tell

I do work for them and that is not what their executive management is say or what is posted on their Web Site. You are taking one heck of a risk. There is no Law or Regulation to force CPS to do anything. There is no shortage of energy in TX. It would be a very foolish business decision for a electric utility to pay Net Metering if not dragged kicking and screaming by mandated law. They can buy all the cheap 4-cent Kwh from any generation plan tin TX. Why would they want to pay you retail when they can buy wholesale?

I am not sure about this. My system has been installed just shy of a year (late july 12 installed) for the first 8 months or so I was with TXU. the plan I was on said I was paying 9 cents a KwH and I was on net metering, yet every month I still had a 60 dollar bill. that came from the distribution charge for what I used at night and various fees and taxes.

Someone suggested Green Mountain Energy and I did some looking into their program and sent them a couple of bills and asked them to tell me what my bill would have been if I changed to their program. they would have paid me for those months. I did some other checking around and went with them. Their deal is I pay 10.7 cents per KwH and they pay me 10.7 cents per KwH for the first 900KwH I over produce. after than they pay 5.35 for the remainder. Between april and may I had a 25.00 credit with that my july bill was 2.00 they project my next months bill to be around 70 bucks because of the temprature historically is a fair amount higher in July and August.

I just checked for my most recent billing period. From May 9 through June 8, my solar production totaled 1314 kWh. During the exact same time period, the amount I fed back into the grid was 450 kWh. That's barely over 1/3 of my production not anywhere near "most." You need to demonstrate with actual numbers that the situation someone like me and my house would face in San Antonio would be radically different in % of production fed back to the grid.

I am putting about half of my production back on the grid.

[Sunking]

I am not sure about this. My system has been installed just shy of a year (late july 12 installed) for the first 8 months or so I was with TXU. the plan I was on said I was paying 9 cents a KwH and I was on net metering, yet every month I still had a 60 dollar bill. that came from the distribution charge for what I used at night and various fees and taxes.

What are you not sure about? It is a fact TX does not have mandated NET METERING laws except in Austin area. Investor owned utilities are a business, and no business is going to sell a product for the same amount they buy it for. You go bankrupt if you did that. In Austin or any state where they mandate NET METERING the regulators allow the utilities to jack the rates up on everyone to make up for the losses incurred with Net Metering.

[BrandonWWS]

Just installed this last week a 10.5kw SMA 5000-TL-US system near Austin. I charged 28k, turn-key to do it on a 12/12 pitch roof. Ran Suniva 265 panels and hooked the emergency backup circuits up to commercial UPS units... Pretty much the same system besides the pv modules and this one was larger at 10.5kw...

At 34k for an 8kw array..... You installer must be driving something real nice.....

Why don't I ever find clients willing to pay 4$+ per watt?
BreeZee

[mm01]

Just installed this last week a 10.5kw SMA 5000-TL-US system near Austin. I charged 28k, turn-key to do it on a 12/12 pitch roof. Ran Suniva 265 panels and hooked the emergency backup circuits up to commercial UPS units... Pretty much the same system besides the pv modules and this one was larger at 10.5kw...

At 34k for an 8kw array..... You installer must be driving something real nice.....

Why don't I ever find clients willing to pay 4$+ per watt?
BreeZee

My contract was for Sunpower X21 335 BLK panels. Slightly different pricing than Suniva. Your Suniva price is very competitive. What were the full specs on that pkg? I have friends who might be interested

Maybe my understanding of your UPS is wrong but wouldn't you want them connected to grid power so they're charged when it goes down? The backup circuits on the TL-US are not active until manually switched over.

[BrandonWWS]

My contract was for Sunpower X21 335 BLK panels. Slightly different pricing than Suniva. Your Suniva price is very competitive. What were the full specs on that pkg? I have friends who might be interested

Maybe my understanding of your UPS is wrong but wouldn't you want them connected to grid power so they're charged when it goes down? The backup circuits on the TL-US are not active until manually switched over.

Hi mm01

The SunPower modules really are nice! Glad you were able to afford them from the get-go! Using Suniva/TrinaSmart/Sharp for sure keeps us competitive in the space and so does being a small outfit.

Yea, so, the client is doing just what you mentioned in that the UPS units are topped off from the regular plug in the garage then if needed, he plugs them into the backup circuits.. The client has messed around with the circuit some and claims that if the UPS is drained at night, it takes half the day to top back off on emergency mode but I do not remember any of the specs to the units we bought surplus for the job.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea, just wish to have had time on that job to actually mess around with the backup and UPS combo.......... Next time we get the chance to do a custom backup I will make the time to tinker around with it and bring back to you all a more detailed report.

Will shoot you a PM with our company contact info and the rest. We service CenTex.

[russ]

Hi mm01Will shoot you a PM with our company contact info and the rest. We service CenTex.

Brandon - Finish with the advertising and customer relations - that is not allowed.

The UPS as backup has been described many times in the forum as pretty stupid - a UPS is supposed to provide power for a few minutes while an alternate power source is brought on line. The batteries are not designed to function as longer term backup power.

[BrandonWWS]

Brandon - Finish with the advertising and customer relations - that is not allowed.

The UPS as backup has been described many times in the forum as pretty stupid - a UPS is supposed to provide power for a few minutes while an alternate power source is brought on line. The batteries are not designed to function as longer term backup power.

My bad.....................

Emailed you back Russ. Let me know if it makes more since now. Some more detail: the telecoms UPS with 100+lbs worth of batteries inside of the cases does work for this application and provides more than a few minutes of power.. Its not like I went to Frys and bought their biggest UPS units man..

Batteries are batteries are batteries, just follow the long standing rules and they will work just fine. if I was able to keep my old 500 tenant data networks running all through sometimes 8 hour outages during houston storms on UPS simply by OVERSIZING them to keep battery capacity up and affording to do all this from buying surplus then why not do the same for RE in small backup to fill a clients wishes to find a creative solution to get some night time juice when SHTF?

Commercial UPS units are a far cry from the one sitting next to your computation machine at this moment

I kept my networks running for years just fine with no standby genset.. We had not the space nor secure facility to install standby power so over sized UPS units were the answer for us and to my knowledge, the company that took over the infrastructure my pops and I built up and they use it just the same, with no probs. Ill check out what the others are talking about for this application, I do not think your response is apples to apples..

BreeZee

[inetdog]

Brandon - Finish with the advertising and customer relations - that is not allowed.

The UPS as backup has been described many times in the forum as pretty stupid - a UPS is supposed to provide power for a few minutes while an alternate power source is brought on line. The batteries are not designed to function as longer term backup power.

The Bangalore subsidiary of a company I worked for used a UPS which was on standby full time (but not online, in that there was an ATS involved) and at night they routinely transferred from POCO to a generator in a trailer in the parking lot.

They undersized the UPS output and oversized the battery bank though. Although the batteries were good for 2 hours at the connected load the UPS tripped out on overtemperature after only 20 minutes.

The system was "maintained" by the night security guard.

[Sunking]

Batteries are batteries are batteries, just follow the long standing rules and they will work just fine.

Hogwash, you do not know what you are talking about.

[russ]

Batteries are batteries are batteries, just follow the long standing rules and they will work just fine.

Brandon - You have no idea of what you chatter. Maybe you were some type of administrator involved with systems in the past but definitely not the engineer.

You want to flog UPS as a back up power source - do so on your own forum. It will not be done here.

Russ