Hello Reddit,
My wife and I are looking at adding solar to our home. Our main goals are (in order) to have a source of power during blackouts/brownouts, to reduce or eliminate our power bills, and to insulate ourselves against probably future increases to fossil fuel costs. We live in Texas, and after the grid disasters our state had last year my wife in particular wants to make sure that we’d still have power even if the grid went down.
Our average usage for the past year was 1,283 KWH, with a peak of 2,683 and a low of 681. Our local utility does not buy back excess solar power, although they do discount power for solar customers. We have very good sun hours in our area. We’ve gotten a couple of solar quotes, and so far the best one is as follows:
$49,980 (cash price): $33,980 for panels, $16,000 for batteries
$12,994 tax rebate
11.1 kW system
30 panels (Silfab370)
Enphase IQ 8+ inverter
Estimated Production: 17,269
Estimated Consumption: 16,678
10 kW + 3.1 kW Enphase battery backup
Does anything about that seem out of whack? We’ve gotten one other quote, but the price was higher, materials weren’t as high quality, and the company seemed less secure (well-reviewed, but probably less likely to still be around in 25 years). Is there anything else I should be considering? I know batteries are super expensive, but given that our top priority is energy security during grid failures they seem worth it (though I’m open to being convinced otherwise).
Thanks in advance for any advice!
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John Ravenporton is a writer for many popular online publications. John is now our chief editor at DailyTechFeed. John specializes in Crypto, Software, Computer and Tech related articles.
