Solar Panel

Rhino

How viable is it for the homer consumer?

I run a lot of computers (hobby/work) and spend about $100 a month on electrical. I'm looking to upgrade my "server farm", but will probably double that. Can solar offset some of this?

How much we looking at for a small setup? How is the yearly maintenance? Are they a pain to up keep? What do you do in winter when they get all snowed/iced up?

Hirocon

Where do you live (what lattitude)? How many sunny days do you get each year?

Cauld

I would guess the more pertinent question is, "How large are the government subsidies for solar in your area?".

Buttcleft

Its pretty much always viable, and more dependant upon government subsidies or how long you are willing to wait for them to pay for themselves in savings.

L|ama

You can go completely off the grid without a huuuuge amount of effort if you get a wind turbine too and a big bank of batteries, especially if you use a solar water heater too since a lot of your power goes into water heating.

Casual

While solar panels are getting cheaper all the time they are still really expensive. Basically if you have the cash to spend on it and are doing it to be green then go ahead. If you are thinking it will save you money be aware it will take a large up front investment and would take years for the savings to pay it back.

tl;dr: Solar panels are for wealthy eco minded people not for those wanting to save on bills.

PracticalProblemSolver

Rhino wrote: »

How viable is it for the homer consumer?

I run a lot of computers (hobby/work) and spend about $100 a month on electrical. I'm looking to upgrade my "server farm", but will probably double that. Can solar offset some of this?

How much we looking at for a small setup? How is the yearly maintenance? Are they a pain to up keep? What do you do in winter when they get all snowed/iced up?

Typical grid tie in(no batteries) starts at around ten grand for around a 1kw system, locally there's a ton of incentives that bring that down to around four grand though. A tiny system like that is only going to save you a few dollars a month, break even point is around 15-20 years.

Maintenance is minimal, this year there was a muddy snow storm due to a fire, you'd want to wash them down after something like that but that's pretty much just hosing them off once in the spring. In the winter you pay for electricity, solar radiance sucks in the winter anyway.