Pete Hahnloser

I’m in that in-between use where it’s a tool van. So I have acreage for solar on the roof and 1200W. I negotiated a remarkably reasonable rate with myself for the install.

With the hell I continue to go through having made spectacularly bad choices in building out my solar, I get the trepidation. But my starting point was the grid being unreliable. If yours isn’t, great! That’s not the case everywhere, and freezing for a week changed my mind about the utility of being on-grid when I can have far more control for less money.

“Better than what I’ve been getting” is a low bar, but adequate for investigating other options. I’ve not correctly balanced everything yet. Still, I don’t just lose power because of weather hundreds of miles away, just my own inadequacy at research.

We agree for the most part … people unaware of how an off-grid DC setup operates fixate on the parts least likely to fail (that was me, as well, when I first started looking into things). MPPT, fuse panels and various step converters should be the anticipated replacements. They’re inexpensive compared to wholesale PV and LFP upgrades.

To be clear, I’m only wanting to clarify because I already live off solar. As such, I find it important to provide the correct information about expected panel longevity in general … getting into the weeds about things like panel type and brand tend to make people’s eyes glaze over while already skeptics, which doesn’t sell a lot of people on the virtues.

The important takeaway is, yes, this is mature tech that continues to evolve. There’s going to be loss each year, as there will be with LFP, so both can de viewed as depreciating assets when ignoring the cost savings accrued over time; however, price trends with both technologies suggest (thus far) that picking up an extra 25% of capacity in 20 years is not only doable but will actually lower the lifetime kWh cost of the system.

The real ongoing cost by then is going to be a few inverters.

They don’t drop from 100% to 80% year 26. It’s a gradual but accelerating slide, with 80% still warranted at the end of the timeframe.

That doesn’t make PV a bad investment; overselling it puts people in the sceptic camp, though, which is what we’re seeing in this thread.

Do you expect a fridge to work in six years? Seems you’re applying an unreasonable standard to solar in a vacuum.

That is an oddly specific tariff rate. Something like 66.67% would make sense going down to basis points, but what are those two figures hanging out past 55?