PV Gap

Barry Said:

Solar Power My House?

We Answered:

Your usage is already very conservative - good! This is in the range of what you can reasonably power with a standalone system, but if it were me, I would not bother trying to go off-grid - too many hassles with keeping the batteries maintained. If you go grid-tied, you can still claim you generate 100% of the kWh you use. This is basically what we do.

I see also that you don't seem to be particularly concerned about the finances. This is good, too, because at your modest power draw, it takes a long time for a photovoltaic system to pay back. Ironically, it's the really heavy electric users (that pay expensive tiered rates) that have a quick payback from solar.

And I echo: the solar water heater should be first, it pays back much faster.

Here's a link to what we did. Go to the bottom of the page, it links to a home video documentary. photovoltaic.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/roderick/so…