I looked in to doing a PV installation on my house about two years ago. I live in California in the Santa Clara county and for most of the year there is plenty of sun. The cost of putting up enough panels to power the whole house was around 17K. At the time I figured the system would pay for itself in about 15 years.
The problem for me was that the basic system most solar companies sell is still connected to the power grid and your payback is based on selling your excess back to the power company. During the day you supply the grid and you use the power grid as your night time battery. I wanted to be totally off the power grid because frankly I don't trust PG&E to pay me for my electricity (some folks in my area with these system have had that problem) and I don't want to be subject to their power problems. With system I was looking at if the PG&E power goes out your system goes dark too to protect itself.
When I asked about at total off grid solution, the company I was talking with kind of choked a little and said they could set up a battery system for me and added about 10K to the price for the batteries and the extra gear needed to manage the batteries - and asked which part of the garage I was going to give up to house all of it. The other problem is that the batteries had a much shorter life span (5-10 years as I recall) and would have to be replaced much more often than the solar panels on the roof. I was told that the panels have a 25 year life span. Very quickly the economics didn't work out as I would end up paying more for solar power then I would buying from the power company. I still may do a solar installation at some point but I have decided to wait another year or so to see if the technology improves.
I am not sure about the environmental impact of disposing of batteries. I guess they could be recycled to some extent but it would be problem. The bigger question is which is worse for the environment - dealing with the dead batteries my installation would generate or burning the fossil fuel to generate the power for my house. I just don't know.
I would really like to see more efficient solar cells but we also need better storage systems. I was kind of hoping that fuel cell technology might help out there but don't know enough about it to say.
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I looked in to doing a PV installation on my house about two years ago. I live in California in the Santa Clara county and for most of the year there is plenty of sun. The cost of putting up enough panels to power the whole house was around 17K. At the time I figured the system would pay for itself in about 15 years. The problem for me was that the basic system most solar companies sell is still connected to the power grid and your payback is based on selling your excess back to the power company. During the day you supply the grid and you use the power grid as your night time battery. I wanted to be totally off the power grid because frankly I don't trust PG&E to pay me for my electricity (some folks in my area with these system have had that problem) and I don't want to be subject to their power problems. With system I was looking at if the PG&E power goes out your system goes dark too to protect itself. When I asked about at total off grid solution, the company I was talking with kind of choked a little and said they could set up a battery system for me and added about 10K to the price for the batteries and the extra gear needed to manage the batteries - and asked which part of the garage I was going to give up to house all of it. The other problem is that the batteries had a much shorter life span (5-10 years as I recall) and would have to be replaced much more often than the solar panels on the roof. I was told that the panels have a 25 year life span. Very quickly the economics didn't work out as I would end up paying more for solar power then I would buying from the power company. I still may do a solar installation at some point but I have decided to wait another year or so to see if the technology improves. I am not sure about the environmental impact of disposing of batteries. I guess they could be recycled to some extent but it would be problem. The bigger question is which is worse for the environment - dealing with the dead batteries my installation would generate or burning the fossil fuel to generate the power for my house. I just don't know. I would really like to see more efficient solar cells but we also need better storage systems. I was kind of hoping that fuel cell technology might help out there but don't know enough about it to say.