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Wow ... that is impressive ... have you reached break even on your solar power plant investment?
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So it has been about 5.5 years now (first panels installed in November 2016) and for the last few years, my yearly power savings has been about $8,000. So that works out to about $44,000, but given that I had less panels at the start, I'd say $35,000 is probably closer to actual. Since I did all the work myself, the cost on average was about $1.25 per watt, or about $62,500 total. So I'm a little bit more than half way there on my investment. That said, if I take into account the earnings from Crypto, it has already paid off, but that's like cheating a little I think. Also, I sold some crypto back during the peak in 2017/2018 that I invested in expanding the solar plant, so my out of pocket cost was well under $62,500 to begin with.Comment
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Did your utility company give you an trouble'? I'm thinking of doing similar to you but on a much smaller scale and mine with the excess energy, but in Colorado the law and Xcel stated you couldn't install more than 120% of your previous annual usage in solar panels. A new law was passed and luckily now it's 200% of expected usage which is better.
Also, I would think crypto counts in some fashion because if not for the solar panels you likely wouldn't have mined it and have as much crypto.
Out of curiosity, if you had spent the $62,500 on various crypto at the time instead of solar panels, would you have come out more ahead?Comment
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Do you keep spare panels on hand? Or do you just plan on bypassing them upon failure especially those four in the back?Comment
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In Virginia, the max allowed size for residential is 20kW. So when I got the initial permit and did the net metering arrangement with the POCO, that was the size of my plant. Over the next year is when I added the additional capacity. Since the agreement was already in place and the inspection had been completed, I didn't have any issues with adding additional 30 kW. Even with 50 kW, I was still burning more power from the crypto mining that I had to pay a pretty high power bill every month still. Now that I'm building up a bank of kWh, that might be an issue. But I think on an annual basis, I'll just just break even. Right now I'm consuming 5,300 watts 24/7 for the mining operation plus whatever my main dwelling is using.
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I think as long as I don't build up too large of an excess bank on kWh, I'll be fine. I went to a POCO sponsored Solar power meeting a few years ago and asked what would happen if I build up a large kWh bank, and they said they would basically pay me to reset the bank if that would was to happen. And it would be at the same rate that I pay them, so about $0.12 per kWh. They did go on to say that if that was to happen several years in a row, they would send someone out to see what was going on. So I definitely plan to keep things balanced to where I don't end up in that situation.
If I had invested $62k in Crypto back in 2016, I would be retired now.
Most of my panels are using micro inverters, so when they blow, it only takes that one panel with it, not the whole string. I have two 7.2 kW string inverters that each have 3 strings of about 10 panels. Knock in wood, I have yet to loose a panel. From what I understand, panels generally don't fail. Micro inverters on the other hand.... I have had to replace about 40 micro inverters so far. Fortunately they are all under warranty for another 5+ years, so other than the hassle of replacing them, especially on the shop roof, it is not that big a deal.
If I was to do it all over again, I would have gone all string inverters since I don't have any shade issues.Comment
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