5 Years with Solar Panels - Is It Still Worth It?

Do you want solar for your house? If you have solar, what are the things you wish you had known beforehand? For 65% off with HelloFresh PLUS free shipping, use code MATTFERRELL65 at bit.ly/3D53QkS! If you liked this video, check out: Wow! I Didn’t Know A Prebuilt House Could Do This https://youtu.be/y3NVDqH39CE?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7FwYRnWkpCSkAeFOzrgh5h

About 11 years ago, I had a grid-connected array of free-standing solar panels installed behind my barn. (I realize most homeowners do not have the space for this.) It produces about 90% of the power I need on the farm. The panels are angled for maximum sun exposure during the summer in Michigan; during the winter, we manually tilt them vertically for 3 reasons: 1) the lower angle of the sun during winter 2) to avoid snow sticking to them 3) to take advantage of "snow bounce" (the light reflected off the snow on the ground). I've been completely pleased with their performance; my annual electric bills are in the low hundreds of dollars instead of thousands. I can run my whole house A/C while still sending excess power to the grid on hot days! I love having green power!

I did a DIY solar last year and ended up spending about $30k for 11 kW including 15 kWh of battery storage. My takeaways were: 1) Buy all the panels you think you might want at once, or accept that you'll end up with a mix of different panels that may not be mechanically or electrically identical. Panels change enough that it's extremely hard to find panels that were readily available 2+ years ago. 2) Get 20%+ more panel capacity than inverter capacity. The inverters have the same limit regardless of time of day or weather, but panels spend most of their time below peak capacity. 3) "Sun hours" is a very useful metric for system-sizing. In my climate, we get about 4.5 "sun hours" per day, or 4.5 x 11 = 49.5 kWh/day averaged over the year. 4) Use an off-the-shelf racking system. I designed & built my own ground mount system, and I definitely wouldn't do it again. 5) Battery backup is AWESOME for quality of life during outages.

Another thing to consider is structural integrity of your roof. I lived in a housing area for a few years that had some years prior attempted to put panels on most if not all of the properties. Apparently, the extra weight of the panels plus several inches of snowfall was enough to collapse some of the roofs.

Great video thanks. My wife and I live in Epsom just south of London England and we have had solar panels for 12 years which we are delighted with. Snow isn't our problem but I wish I had known about bird problems. Pigeons nest under the panels leaving a lot of mess on the pannels, around the house and making a lot of noise early in the morning. We had to have a bird control company clean the panels put up fences around each panel which solved the issue. Like your snow fences I wish I had known about this problem when they were installed.

I have a friend who worked at a radio astronomy observatory for decades. They had this "standardized" intelligence test for their interns. When the "big" (26m) dish would fill up with snow, the procedure was to tilt it down, and hit it repeatedly with a whacking stick, and it would come avalanching down. The "test"? If the student stood behind the dish while whacking it, they passed the test. Several students failed this test...

Bought 40 acres and a completely off-grid cabin in April 2019. We installed 16-300w panels, a couple Renogy 100A charge controllers, 2-4000w magnum inverters and 4-300ah LiFePO4 batteries. Live out here year round in Upstate NY. Best decision we ever made!

I am having my 10Kvh system being installed as I watch this video, it was a timely recommendation and I was interested in what issues you encountered. I laughed when you mentioned one of the issues is snow since I won’t have to worry about that as I live in Australia. Overall good video and makes me more confident that I made the right decision with my own system.

I had panels on my house from 2008 through the house sale in 2021. Paid nothing for power for 13 years, made a little bit of money from net metering, and when I sold the house the buyer admitted that the panels were a big reason they were interested. And as a bonus, the panels are an improvement that helped reduce my capital gains to nothing on the house. Absolutely worth it for me.

We're in Austin,Texas and got solar and 2 powerwalls a few months ago. We had gone through winter storm uri a couple years ago and didn't have any power for several days where we live. This time during winter ice storm mara we kept our power on the whole time (it was out in our neighborhood for several days) having TV, Lights, and Kitchen appliances all working. We have a fireplace that we kept the house warm with so we didn't use the AC/Furnace. So I'm super happy with our solar!

I was looking for things to make life more complicated. This seems like the type of thing I am looking for.

For comparison, I had 42 Sunpower SPR225-BLK panels installed about 15 years ago, they are pretty worn-out by now. Total price was $75,000 before credits, total capacity was 9450 watts, very similar to yours. After 15 years the power is down substantially due to deterioration of the substrate, which was expected. 2021 generation was 16,620 kWh which covered exactly 1/2 of our total usage, which was ~32,000kWh. Being part of SRP means about $70 per month in fees and taxes. My panels are small compared to the new form-factor where you get ~400 watts per panel, efficiency is pretty similar. At least when new. I suspect our panels wear out faster in Phoenix than they would in New England.

Hi Matt. I remember watching your pv install vid before I took the plunge and got panels on my roof in the UK in Aug 19. As you may know, the energy market here has been a bit of a roller coaster over the last couple of years. Initially I was signed up to a utility supplier who paid a very nice rate for my spare kwhs. In fact, in 2020 (when the weather was admittedly fantastic) I didn't pay a penny in utilities (gas or electricity) for six months. Then in 2021 it all went a bit pear-shaped. The market convulsed and many suppliers, including mine, went bust. I became a British Gas customer for over a year and the rate they were buying kwhs was so small, it wasn't worth doing. There are more eco-friendly suppliers out there and in Feb this year I was able to swap to Octopus. Cheaper rates, nicer company all round to deal with. EXCEPT when it came to selling my kwhs. I first asked them about it in April and, having gone through a tedious signing up process discovered that here in the UK we have two types of system installation certificate. Well, guess what? The one that I have is not the one they recognise. So back to the drawing board. I am now signed up with a different supplier and am currently waiting on final approval from our national grid (takes up to 8 weeks, I gather). However the payments start from when I applied, so I shouldn't have lost too much of the main generating season. Next stop is to swap over the supply of gas and electric (tomorrow's admin task) so that I'm not buying from one supplier and selling to another. Also have a battery issue to resolve but that's another story.

My wife and I had a small 1kw system installed for our off grid cottage in Ontario 20 years ago. Amazingly, we just replaced our original battery bank last summer. The system has performed flawlessly. 120 watt panels in 2002 were $799 each!!!!

I'm in Ottawa Canada and I have a 10kw array. The installer neglected to install the snow rail and the first winter we had a fairly large accumulation slide off. It shook the house. I went out to look at what had happened and was surprised to see it had dumped the snow out far enough to smash my neighbours air conditioning unit in to the ground. Thankfully the installer covered the repairs and installed the rail. No avalanches since.

Nice video Matt. My advice would be to make sure your installer/provider is someone who has installed many years and all kinds of system designs. Example, your inverters are not desired because they create too many points of failure. Every extra part and extra connection is a point of potential failure. There are pros and cons of all decisions and choices. Nice video, good information Matt.

We have a 14' x 70' ground mounted panel system in our large back yard. This avoided all of the roof-mounted issues. We also have a geothermal heat pump system for heating and cooling. Our utility bills with this combination are minuscule, and the home is totally carbon free. We have been comfortable year-round and very happy with the systems.

We had 22 solar panels installed (380 Watt) and a 10 KW battery. Here in Denmark we pay a high rate for transport between 5 PM and 9 PM. But low cost at night. So here at winter time we charge the battery at night and discharge between 5 and 9. That save us a lot. We have a 9 KW heating pump to warm up the house and 2 EV's. All electric now and I am pretty exited how much we save. The system is 1 month only but we can see now it is a great investment. Thank U for all your fantastic videos!!

The rising energy costs is such a big one. My husband did load calculations and realized our hvac unit isn't properly sized for our house. Plus we have a cheap, inefficient system to begin with.. So our electric bill has always been high. Now with our power company raising rates our electric bills are extremely high for a 1400 square foot homes. We're talking about working in building our "forever home" and I'm definitely looking into airtight home designs, passive solar, and solar panels.

This house has been off-grid for the last 15 years with no grid-tie. Just went from the old Outback to a new SolArk combo inverter with lithium batteries last week and it's running amazingly! 3P config Discover AES 48V 130Ah batts with 5kW PV input. Cost $32k It would have cost $45k to bring in grid power, and then we'd be paying an electric bill. I installed it all myself. The SolArk wiring was a breeze!!! Touch screen controls, all the settings are labelled intuitively. Manual is easy to follow. Also has a ton of options for sell-back and scheduling and peak shaving for AC coupled users. I'm not affiliated with them at all, just a very happy customer.