There was a time when $8-10k seemed like a lot of money. It doesn't buy much today. My electric bill runs around $200 a month and the big three major appliances, furnace, hot water and stove are gas. It wouldn't take long to recoup dollars spent for solar panels.
The roof on my house is 3,900 square feet. About half of it which is on the back of the house faces west and south.
That was the cost for a system to charge a car.
A full system for a large house in the 2500+ SF range is ~$25k.
And you have to buy new panels every 8-10 years, which is almost half the original cost. Battery walls may last 6-8 years, some more than others.
And you can only use the battery power on certain appliances.
And you have to be connected to the grid.
And you can only run your a/c for a few hours a day, if you are lucky.
And hope you get at least 8 hours of direct sun 7 days a week.
They are not economically smart, they are wasted money to make people feel "green".
You will never recoup your money, at best you may break even, up until you have to maintain them. Some people get them to last longer than others. Depends on the weather.
I have the best solar panels on the market with battery wall. Two houses in the desert of New Mexico that get over 300 days of full sun a year.
They will never generate enough to pay for themselves, not until technology advances substantially.
If you don't have air conditioning that changes things. This should be noted.
BUT! The kicker is this, the price for electricity is going to skyrocket soon, and that is when they will be economically viable. When people are paying $500-600 a month for electricity in a 2k SF house, they will make sense.
So there is hope. Also, once every single house in the area has them, it will help provide energy to the others, it will start to balance out. That is what Cali is trying to accomplish. Force them into being used to provide energy at an increased cost. Also, remember Cali has closed down most of it's regional solar arrays because they were too expensive to repair and maintain. So they are doing the smart thing by passing all that onto the consumer. They will also be limiting the amount of energy a house can use in a day/week. This is all coming to Cali soon.
I installed mine because a client of mine wanted to use my houses for testing a new converter and battery wall. If it weren't for that, i wouldn't have bothered.
There will be a day where it's practical, maybe 20-30 years from now. And the government knows this. So they are trying to force them into use by regulation in hopes that it will expedite the advancements in technology. This is pretty common practice. They did this with the car industry and emissions.
