How Was 2021 Solar?

[Agent]

Another day with temps in the single digits - Just sitting in front of the Blazeking and enjoying a beer after seeing that my three year old DIY solar install is putting out 96% of it's nominal power. It's a good time to reflect on my past year of operation and see how everyone elses is fairing.

What I've got - 8 kw worth of Mission Solar panels split across two older SMA Sunnyboys on a groundmount installation in WI.



My utility net meters on a monthly basis, so no using summer generation to offset winter usage here. Only ended up paying for power (over the meter charge) three times.
Generated 10,721 KwHr total, with 1,762 KwHr sold back at wholesale rates of $0.032/KwHr. The remaining 8,959 KwHr of generation offset usage at $0.11/KwHr.
So my $6k system saves another $1000+ this year. Can't beat those numbers with a stick.

 

[stoveliker]

7.2 kW system, half facing East, half facing West (and being in a valley). Snow in February... (Need a 38 ft pole to get it off. Not going to happen.)
100 kWh less than 2020. Still added 1500 kWh to the net metering bank that does not expire.

 

[ABMax24]

My little 3kw system did pretty good, 2021 was year 3 for this system and the best yet. Added central AC in June so my average 15% surplus is now a small deficit. We don't have net metering here, my generation is settled monthly.

My solar installer still shakes his head at us in disbelief, we are to this day the smallest system he has installed to achieve net-zero (well not net-zero anymore). A measly 3MWh a year is all we require.

 

[sloeffle]

My solar installer still shakes his head at us in disbelief, we are to this day the smallest system he has installed to achieve net-zero (well not net-zero anymore). A measly 3MWh a year is all we require.

Those are some pretty impressive consumption numbers @ABMax24. Are you using CNG or propane for hot water, cooking, and heating ? Do you have a super insulated house ?

During the late spring and early fall I'll to see my consumption <1,000kWh for the month. Winter is usually highest due to heating demands. My house is all electric though.

 

[ABMax24]

Those are some pretty impressive consumption numbers @ABMax24. Are you using CNG or propane for hot water, cooking, and heating ? Do you have a super insulated house ?

During the late spring and early fall I'll to see my consumption <1,000kWh for the month. Winter is usually highest due to heating demands. My house is all electric though.

All heating is done with natural gas (besides my wood stove); furnace, hot water, stove, dryer, bbq, garage heater. My house was built in 2014, it's nothing spectacular for insulation, R22 2x6 walls and R50 blown in fiberglass in the attic, the basement walls are insulated to R-12, but the basement slab is not, although I'm working on finishing the basement and hope to have that insulated for next winter.

My Dec 13 to Jan 13 gas usage was 8GJ (the highest I've seen since installing my stove in Oct of 2018 due to the cold temps) or the equivalent of 2200kwh, add to that just over half a cord of wood and it's easy to see my energy consumption is not so low overall. I've just steered away from electric heat wherever possible because it is on average 5 times the cost of NG in my area.

 

[sloeffle]

All heating is done with natural gas (besides my wood stove); furnace, hot water, stove, dryer, bbq, garage heater. My house was built in 2014, it's nothing spectacular for insulation, R22 2x6 walls and R50 blown in fiberglass in the attic, the basement walls are insulated to R-12, but the basement slab is not, although I'm working on finishing the basement and hope to have that insulated for next winter.

My Dec 13 to Jan 13 gas usage was 8GJ (the highest I've seen since installing my stove in Oct of 2018 due to the cold temps) or the equivalent of 2200kwh, add to that just over half a cord of wood and it's easy to see my energy consumption is not so low overall. I've just steered away from electric heat wherever possible because it is on average 5 times the cost of NG in my area.

Even adding the 2200kWh to your electric usage over the span of a year, that really isn't that bad IMHO. I'd take it. Personally, I need to do more sleuthing to see if I can lower my usage any more. No CNG in my area. I got rid of propane years ago because the price can be so volatile.

 

[ABMax24]

Even adding the 2200kWh to your electric usage over the span of a year, that really isn't that bad IMHO. I'd take it. Personally, I need to do more sleuthing to see if I can lower my usage any more. No CNG in my area. I got rid of propane years ago because the price can be so volatile.

That 2200kwh equivalent is over the course of a month.

In 2021 I used 39.5GJ of gas, for an equivalent of 10,900 kwh.

Natural gas has went up considerably here too, but is still the cheapest of all commercial fuels. Electric has also went up proportionally with natural gas as most of our electricity is generated from natural gas.

 

[Agent]

As a rural household we have a propane tank, but I've still been moving stuff to electric over the years. We recently switched our gas stove/oven over to electric (induction is the bees-knees). The last household appliances on propane are the dryer (already used sparingly), the main furnace (pretty much disused backup to the woodstove), and a 12k BTU vent-free heater for the far side of the house. I filled my 500 gallon tank in summer of 2020, and am still sitting at 45% remaining today. That also includes use of the 8KW generator, grill, and smoker that taps into the tank.

As much as I want to switch to an all-electric household and bump up my capacity, I love redundancy and would need to keep propane around one way or another.

 

[Rob711]

I got rid of the natural gas hot water heater in June. Now 80 gallons heat pump hybrid.

 

[begreen]

We generated just a skosh more this year than the year before. Our consumption was up, mainly due to running the AC for a week and the heatpump switching over to resistance heat for a week in December. We normally have not run the heatpump in the summer, but last year we had some record breaking heat. The max output of our solar system is 4.5kW.

 

[Former Farmer]

Average year. Produced just over 13Mwh.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

last years production was down a little.. 17.61 last year as compared to 17.83 meg the year before. Over all.. im super happy. Right now is a great time to be basically utility free. I couldn't imagine paying for gas, oil, electric, water and sewer with the prices today.. The cost of diesel is going through the roof.. I paid 150 bucks at the pump the other day and didn't fill my pickup all the way up..

 

[Solarguy3500]

15.39 MWh generated in 2021 and that was even with an inverter failure and the system being offline for a week in March. Usage was 11,599 kWh. I don't have a full year previous to compare it to because the system was installed in early 2020 and got the utility approval to operate in late April of that year.

Net metering at almost full retail value and credits don't expire, so I've got a good bank of credit built up right now.

DC nameplate rating is 15.2 kW on a Solaredge 10 kW inverter. Panels are (38) LG 72 cell 400W modules on east and west facing garage roof, but the tilt angle is only 15° so it works well.

 

[webfish]

My first full year with my 11.5 system. Installed July 2020.

 

[clancey]

That sure saved you a lot of money but for the last three months it looks like you might have to have another type of heat source because it is so much more colder and less sun but still excellent. clancey

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@webfish, your production bell curve looks textbook perfect, so to speak. It really caught my attention because it reflects strikingly how different solar production is at different latitudes. We are located about 29 degrees north.

We had a 14.375 kW system installed in October 2020, so 2021 was also our first full year. It was actually a slightly anomalous weather year with less sunshine than average, but there was also less heat in the summer, though I don’t know if it was enough less really to help solar production. We’ve got plenty of sunshine in the summer months but suffer a heat penalty then, too. Last February was abnormally cloudy. This February has already surpassed last year’s production. All in all, even in an anomalous year, we are very happy to be producing this much energy in what would otherwise be unused (and pretty barren) space on our land.

 

[Brian26]

2021 was a great year for production and March and April of last year I had some really stand out production.

I have a 5.4 kw system that was installed in June 2016. I reached my return on investment in 5 years here in Connecticut as we have some of the highest electric rates in the country. There was just a huge rate increase in January due to natural gas prices where the total cost delivered is like .27 kwh now! It was definitely a sound investment for me as my panels are producing almost $2k a year now in electricity.

 

[peakbagger]

In keeping with the KISS approach, I do not have darn bit of data collection on my three arrays except for a total production analog meter for SREC sales which I have to record and report every month and a utility net meter that the utility reports. I do on rare occasions look at the local metering on two of the arrays to see if they are outputting what I expect. My small microinverter array has a miscalibrated analog ammeter on the output and 4 flashing orange LEDs if they are putting out power.

My biggest issue is snow on one of my arrays, some winters its gets sealed over with snow and some winters it does not. I have a roof rake but the array is on roof of a two story house so its difficult to do a great job and if the snow freezes up hard, the rake will not touch it. I carry a surplus year to year so when I get my monthly bill I just look to see where I am on the surplus.

 

[Max W]

My biggest issue is snow on one of my arrays, some winters its gets sealed over with snow and some winters it does not. I have a roof rake but the array is on roof of a two story house so its difficult to do a great job and if the snow freezes up hard, the rake will not touch it. I carry a surplus year to year so when I get my monthly bill I just look to see where I am on the surplus.

Ten or fifteen years ago a Maine guy came up with a different way to remove snow from a roof that is pretty slick and can work well even when the snow has an ice coating. I never saw it marketed but I made similar one and with one change I think it could work well for solar panels. I removed the plastic rake from the roof rake frame and replaced it with a little wider piece of flatbar with the ends bent up 90 degrees. As this long based U is pushed up the roof under the snow it cuts a swath. What makes this work is the 12 ft, or however long, strip made from poly tarp width of the flatbar and attached to it. As the piece goes up and the snow is undercut it can’t grip the poly and it slides down the poly covered swath. This simple rig worked amazingly well on the 10/12 roof of my last house but doesn’t need a steep pitch. Replace the steel with a thick enough piece of plastic and it should work on panels. Two stories is a reach for anything but it would beat a rake.

 

[Potluck_Crew]

Here is our production data for the last several years. 2020 the Data Logger was offline so I had to exclude from the data gathering. Thus far Jan and Feb 2022 have been awesome. We purchased this house in July, 2021. North Central Massachusetts

 

[Potluck_Crew]

2021 was a great year for production and March and April of last year I had some really stand out production.

I have a 5.4 kw system that was installed in June 2016. I reached my return on investment in 5 years here in Connecticut as we have some of the highest electric rates in the country. There was just a huge rate increase in January due to natural gas prices where the total cost delivered is like .27 kwh now! It was definitely a sound investment for me as my panels are producing almost $2k a year now in electricity.

View attachment 292500 View attachment 292501

Our total cost now in Gardner, MA, with all the added delivery costs is about .23 Kwh. Ouch. We moved to this town & house in July from a neighboring town with a municipal power provider. It was so much lower there (.14,) but then, solar net metering was not an option there. Wonderful you have broken even and now are profiting!

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

Some people yearn for the first signs of Spring by kidnapping a rodent out of its home and interrogating it in a language it doesn’t understand about whether it checks it’s backside or something asinine like that.

For me it’s when the sun finally gets over the trees to give a damn good solar day. Today was that day. Now having a fresh blanket of white snow, a steep roof for the snow to quickly slide off of, clear skies and temps in the 30s probably helped a bit… but it’s still a sign that Spring is coming.

 

[stoveliker]

Same here. First day over 20 kWh this year. (With a 7.2 kW system.) I've never made 55 kWh .. max is I think 37 kWh in a day.

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

Same here. First day over 20 kWh this year. (With a 7.2 kW system.) I've never made 55 kWh .. max is I think 37 kWh in a day.

View attachment 292836

I’ve got a 11kw system oriented slightly south east with close to a 45 degree roof pitch. I’m a little oversized for this time of year once we start getting sunny weather. Hoping another car charging in the garage on most days will take advantage of it better than I do now with crappy net metering rules.

 

[stoveliker]

Nice. My system is half east, half west. But I have about 2500 kWh in the bank (that does not expire for 15 or 20 years - best net metering I've heard of...). Electric car in the future for me too (not going back to the office). So smaller system, but more than adequate so far.