I'm up here on my roof just getting absolutely roasted by the sun. But for once,
I don't really mind. Why? Because I have these solar panels here,
just soaking it up and turning it into beautiful energy that I can use to feed
back into the grid and hopefully run at least a net zero,
if not a net positive energy production home here at the Epic Homestead.
So today's video on the Homesteading channel will be mostly a follow-up to the
initial planning video that I did with my friend Ben Sullins way back
earlier on in 2020.
What I'm looking at is 14 panels here up on this roof.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about the economics later on in the video,
but I've only been running it for about four days so I don't have a ton to share
with you yet on that. I can give you some projections,
but we will do a follow-up video in about a month.
And then I'll talk about everything. Anyways, 14 panels - three here,
three in the back, eight right there.
Initially they were going to be 330 watt Panasonic panels.
It turns out that I got upgraded to 340 watt because of the
positioning of the microinverters, which are below each panel.
They are what convert the DC to AC and actually enable me to feed that energy
back into the grid.
Something about the way that they were configured on my particular roof meant we
had to actually use a larger panel. So I got 140 extra watts,
totaling out to a 4.76 kilowatt system. Very pleased about that,
and actually quite pleased working with West Coast Air,
Heating and Solar who's the company that I used.
So their info is going to be in the description. And if you mention my name,
I believe that they will help you out with a little bit of a discount.
Just Kevin Espiritu or Epic Gardening, they will know who that is. Anyways,
let's talk about this system first, just a little bit down below. So I lied.
I have one more thing to talk about up here and that would be just the overall
placement of the panels and the positioning of the panels.
So this again is a flat roof. It's sloping backwards this way. And west,
due west is probably about that way.
So these are pointing slightly to the south, maybe like 15 degrees,
but primarily west.
And the reason why they're so slanted like this is because the roof is slanting
actually away from that direction.
So we had to get some pretty tall stanchions to kind of angle them at the
optimal position to soak up as much sun,
both over the winter and over the summer. This is the winter right now,
and we're still getting good production, which I'll talk about in a second.
But the real benefit here is the trees that used to be on this side of the
property, they all got cut down.
You guys remember they got mulched directly into my yard.
I have some amazing wood chip mulch directly from the property and that freed up
a lot of space.
Because what would have happened is the sun would have been shaded out to about
here probably until noon, I would say, every single day.
So we would have had to cram all the panels onto this north side of the roof,
which wouldn't have been ideal. It would have been hard to extend.
So now what we have is a system where I have 14 panels and we're only taking up
about, I would say, two-thirds of the roof.
So I could probably put another seven here and have eventually 21 panels,
which if I need to extend the power, then that's absolutely fantastic.
But that's enough up here. Let's go downstairs and check out the meter.
So we're back down here on solid ground. We have our meter,
we have our electrical panel, and then we have this extra piece of equipment.
It's from Enphase. It is I believe called the Envoy. It's one of their,
I think it's their combiner. But basically again,
we have the microinverters up on those panels.
This is a two-way communication system.
So it'll talk to the microinverters and it'll talk to me.
So it'll get data from them or send data to them.
And it will actually then aggregate that and pull that to me on my phone or on
my desktop. So this is a fantastic product. It came with the install.
It's going to be a really good way for me to quantify how much I'm producing
throughout the year. And then also I'll check in with my SDG&E data,
my San Diego Gas & Electric meter, and see how much I'm actually consuming.
So that's that.
There's probably a lot more interesting things to say about that.
I'm just not really that savvy as far as solar technology goes.
And so you can do your own research on this.
This came with the install that West Coast provided. Honestly, they were very,
very savvy. They knew the panels,
they knew the system and they just were very matter of fact and very business
professional about it, which I personally really enjoy.
That's the way my brain works. But on this meter, what our meters will do,
I have net metering now. So it's going to net out what I end up using.
And it'll either apply a debit or a credit to the account and I pay on a yearly
basis now. There are some really cool features on this I want to show you. Okay.
So what we have here are, it's just a rotating screen.
But the real interesting thing, first of all, that's DEL,
so that's delivered and that's received.
So you can see that they've received 44 kilowatt hours so far.
It looks like I'm using up about that much right now.
But the interesting thing to look at are these two blocks with the arrow
pointing to the right.
That means right now I am using more energy than I'm consuming.
It's getting late in the day and the arrow is pointing towards the right,
which means I am sucking out more energy FROM the grid that I'm contributing
back TO the grid. Now, most of the time in the morning,
or when I'm using my energy in a lower level,
I'm not running any appliances or something, this is going the opposite way.
So the two blocks will be going this way and then the arrow will be on the left
side. That means that, of course, I am producing more than I am consuming.
So what happens here is it won't show you the net amount.
So you can see I delivered 226 kilowatts in this cycle and they've received 44.
Again, I've only been running it for four days. So the net,
you have to do the net yourself. I'm net plus 190.
So I've taken 190 more kilowatts than I've used.
But what I want to do now is show you the Enphase app and you can see exactly
what I've produced every day.
So here we are on the Enphase app,
and you can see I have produced 16.3 kilowatt hours today,
January 11th, 2021.
Looks like yesterday was a little bit lower by one kilowatt hour, at 15.2.
There's a cool little sort of contextualizer here.
I can power a 100 watt light bulb for two weeks.
I can power a fridge for four days.
So just off the power of generating today. Pretty cool.
Now what's really interesting to me though,
is you can look at your array on a per panel basis. So here all my panels,
you guys just saw those up on the roof,
and I can see every single panel's output for the day,
which is really kind of neat. And it allows you to troubleshoot. For example,
you can see I'm at 1.12 to 1.13 kilowatt hours on these panels up at the front.
Whereas these ones are in the 1.15 to 1.2 and the 1.18 to 1.2.
So why are these lower?
Well I've got a jacaranda tree that's probably sitting right about here
on the median.
And so if I have the city come and actually cut that down or trim it down,
not cut it down, it's a little bit unwieldy,
it will shade this a little bit later in the day.
Which means that more sun will hit it,
which means that I'll get more production.
And if I can match let's say 1.18 here,
then I'll add another 0.6,
0.6 and 0.5,
which means I'll be adding almost a fifth of a kilowatt hour per day.
So that's how you can kind of troubleshoot that little system right there.
Now you also have your energy produced over the course of a day/week/month,
whatever sort of time period you want. You can even compare day to day.
So take a look.
I can overlay January's graph from January 10th and it looks like there was a
bit more of a steep drop-off as you get to about, I don't know,
about 2:00 PM or so. Something must have happened. Some clouds must've come in,
something like that. So that's kind of handy.
There's also a currency equivalency here.
This is not super accurate because your rate is not the same all the time.
I put in a general estimate right there.
And that's roughly what I've produced just today and voila.
So the system is pretty cool.
I really like being able to see it on my phone or my desktop.
It allows me as a data person to just get a sense of how the system's performing.
Now that we've seen the actual system, we've looked at some of the data. Again,
it's all preliminary. I don't have a lot to go by yet,
but how much should I pay for the system?
How long is it gonna take to pay itself off?
Do I think it's worth it in the long run? First of all,
in San Diego we get sun just such an abundant amount of sun that it's
hard for solar to not be worth it, but you have to think about your use case.
So for me,
I ran maybe 450 kilowatt hours worth of energy
in December. And in the next pay period, I was somewhere around 600.
I was quite high because I was kind of just willy nilly doing a
maximum "don't think about energy use case" for a month to see how much I would
actually have to pay.
And it turns out that my electricity bill was about $180 or $190,
which is more than I've really ever paid.
Except for the one time that an old roommate forgot to turn the air conditioner
off and I had a $600 bill at my old place. Let's not talk about that.
That's another painful story. But it
looks like the production will cover somewhere around $160 to
$170 worth of electricity per month,
which I'm not even going to touch because I have a lot of ways that my
electricity usage is going to go way, way, way down.
But how much did the system cost? Now because of the California rebate system,
I don't have the exact numbers yet,
but I paid roughly $13,500 for this system
fully installed, all of that.
What's interesting about the rebate system is a 26% rebate if you had it turned
on in 2020, which I did.
And so what that means is 26% of the total cost of the solar,
but ALSO the part of the roof that was needed to be improved to
install the solar, gets deducted,
or you get a rebate or you get a check back for that.
And so that actually reduces the cost quite a bit.
So I'll have the full numbers once all the tax stuff gets done and that's
actually finalized. I'm really curious to see,
but even conservatively the payback period on this particular solar at my
house is somewhere in the seven to eight year range,
which is really quite quick for solar. And I'm very, very excited about that!
And actually I believe the way that the net metering works here in San Diego is
I get to earn backwards all the electricity that I've paid for already to date.
And so it'll start deleting my bills from the past and I'll earn credits on
that. Now I'm not a 100% sure because the minutiae of that is actually kind of
complex.
I need to call up the energy company and see if I'm on the right plan and all
that kind of stuff. But just in the net, number one,
to me renewable energy,
it's the right way to go even if the payback period is kind of long.
Because for me,
I want to live the way that I think I would want everyone else to live.
And that would be in a sustainable way. And certainly solar panels, yes,
they cost energy to produce and all that sort of stuff.
You really can't get away from the fact that living on earth takes energy,
but you want to take as little as you can in ways that aren't as damaging
as other ways, right?
So not just using gas for absolutely everything or just pulling straight from
the grid which will come from a coal plant or what have you. So in my opinion,
it is going to be a fantastic move!
And I also have the ability to expand the system if I build, when I build,
really intense gardening systems out here that are going to require more
electricity. Or if I run power out to the shed here or sprinkling systems,
whatever the case may be. So I know that was sort of a rough look at the solar.
It's a rough period right now. I don't have all the numbers.
So if there's something you really want to know,
I will do a full one month/six month/one year retrospective on this solar
install here at the Epic Homestead so you can see it.
So drop it in the Comments. What do you actually want to know?
I'll do all the research. I'll crunch all the numbers.
Maybe I'll have my friend Ben Sullins back to do some of that for me.
He is the data God himself. So until next time guys, good luck in the garden,
stay renewable and keep on growing.