OT: roof, 60.6kWh today!

What angle are your panels at? Is April your Max production month?

Cheers

What is 60 KWh worth in your location?

What did all the gear cost?

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Here's our roof data:

Roof is standard angle, but our house is angled 45 degrees to the west. We do well in Jun-Aug, but the sun is slightly too high; we do best in late April, early May, 62.5kWhr. Sometimes in Aug.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win

Cambridge, MA - 1kWh = $0.225USD or $13.64USD based on Dec 2018 prices.

Probably a bit more than a ten year return...

Winfield has a fun day job:

John :-#)#

I worked a couple of summers in the physics department at the University of New Orleans, repairing and designing instrumentation for them. It was a lot of fun; Mossbauer, radiation counters, microwave spectroscopy, pulse height analysis, high voltage pulse generators, some cryo stuff. I learned a lot, and got paid 85 cents per hour!

I wasn't a student there (still in high school) and they couldn't pay me if I wasn't, so they faked my registration as student number

20,000.

Physicists are typically not very good electronic designers.

Win probably has more fun and gets paid better.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Wow, never saw it quite that high, but we pay over 20 cents if we don't take care. However we select a lower-cost green-energy supplier, so we're at about 20 cents. 60 kWh (note John, lower-case k) is about $12 worth of electricity. On average we use 25 kWh. Netmetering is an important aspect.

We make 11.5 MWh in a year = $2.3k.

Closer to 5 years. $34k cost. 30% tax credit = $10k, SRECs about $2.5k/year = $12.5k in 5 years, no bills, save $11.5k in 5 years. Thereafter free electricity, plus SRECs, until they decide not to do that anymore.

The 30% Federal tax credit is still in place, about 17 states do the SREC thing. Many have netmetering. Not too late to get onboard. Is CA a friendly solar state? Not sure if good incentives are in place. But you can do it to be green, not to save money.

We push electricity into grid midday, when most used. Our stuff is used within our neighborhood, reducing grid stresses, especially in mid-summer heat waves.

Yes, a good job, but I do very good stuff. My latest development: charge-based piezo positioning, but with programmed short high-current MOSFET charge pulses. Perfect linearity, not 20% non-linearity. With 10^6 dynamic range, not possible with analog approaches.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win

Many physicists become electronics engineers, some better than others, many EEs are self-taught anyway. After I dropped out of Chemical Physics grad school at Harvard, I went back and got an EE degree. Wow, suddenly my courses had relevance, servo loops, etc.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win

.

_boston.htm

Phil Hobbs does seem to be an exception.

He started off doing a Ph.D. in chemical physics - mine was in physical che mistry which makes him marginally more of a physicist - but saw the light b efore he got all that far into it.

He may have had a more perceptive Ph.D. supervisor than I did. My colleague s were calling me "gadget-happy" by the time I finished (not least because I was a lot better at getting my gadgets to work than the relevant colleagu es, who had needed help from time to time) but my supervisor just let me ge t on with it.

My wife started making more money than I did when she hit the professorial level, so the "gets better paid" is not a slam dunk.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

So, that's 15 years' payback based solely on the bare cost / annual production, sans subsidies. Plus a little longer if we add the cost of capital. Not bad.

I take a different strategy for going green. I use about

5kWh a day, wear a coat in the winter, adapt to the heat in summer, and bicycle or walk most days instead of driving. Initial investment = zero, no subsidies, and instant(*) payback.

(*) Exception: my calves and backpack-carrying shoulders didn't start paying me back for that ten-mile weekend shopping walk until a couple of days later :-)

Cheers, James Arthur

Congratulations, now you can drive 300 km in an EV that day.

I hope you don't have the nightmare that is happening in Ontario over solar energy - the tax credit you got is of possible concern though:

These guys tend to be right-wing advocates but their report is worth reviewing:

"Let's be careful out there!"

John

With solar panels running up to 21%(+) it is getting interesting indeed!

In 'The Martian' that the efficiency of the panels on Mars was closer to

10% but he could still travel 3000+ Kilometres with careful husbandry.

John :-#)#

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