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Am I wrong or is this article 3 years old?
true! i updated the title
its still costing me 30k AUD to put in a decent solar and battery system, i mean prices have come down but they are still well beyond what is affordable by the avg person.
and battery system
That's the catch. The generation isn't the expensive part. The storage is.
That's the thing, without the Battery it's not cost effective, we'll pay more for the system then it would recover. Our peak usage is at night when the sun is not there.
wouldn’t most people’s peak usage be in the afternoon when the air conditioner is running?
Not with us, after 4pm is our peak usage sun won't be up for much longer
I paid $5k recently without the battery - it's not just affordable, it's cheaper than drawing power from the grid. Pay off on the upfront investment will be about 7 years and it has an expected life of 30+ years (we paid extra for long lasting panels).
Battery prices will come down - in the mean time it's still better to just get that power from the grid.
Must be nice
I'm curious what sized system you are putting in that costs that much.
An 8kw solar system usually costs a bit over $8k and at least in many areas seems to have a ROI of a bit over 6 years at most and often much less.
6.2kwh solar panels 14kwh battery
that battery is way too big for the energy produced by the solar array
Yet the battery could produce more savings than the solar.
Electricity prices can vary by time of day, as demand varies. Charge it at cheap-o-clock, use it at normal times, you make savings.
It can produce more savings sure in terms of electricity costs, but when including capital, solar is presently much more cost effective. In my area some 6.8kw panels have a four year ROI.
This is entirely regional though. The further you are from the equator, the more seasonal variation there is in sunlight levels, and heating/cooling loads. Around here our solar production is minimized during the season when our energy needs are maximized. We also don’t have variable rate billing, though we only get partial credit for excess generation, so battery storage will never pay for itself until something changes.
95% of what we generate during the goes to the battery and once fully charged we can go days without needing to recharge it
and then your solar panels are doing anything for you in days. you seem to have been offered a very bad deal. I suggest you find other company to analyse your case
Nope that's literally the only way you can make solar viable here. We get no credits or anything for the excess power we generate and we use hardly any power during the day. So literally any excess power the panels generate goes to waste. And if we go to a smaller unit the money we save is negligible again
Sweet! Those panels I paid so dearly for are worth next to nothing!
your own fault. get a nuclear reactor next time d'uh...
Don't you hate it when you have another control by the atomic agency just because you had a little meltdown in the garden. All that because the neighbours complained that their grass became fluorescent to the cops. Silly scared people!
Ok, but hear me out, we can make atoms go boooooom so what about that???