Renewable energy passed another milestone in the US

[woodgeek]

For years I've been supposing that more BEV's plugged into the grid each night will provide higher base load for our nukes to throttle up. Perhaps that will go toward (non-solar) renewables now, even better. There's, what... 100 million cars in the USA, average age 11 years? Seems we could be a decade away from half of them being EV's, which if smartly managed for overnight charging, could really bring down our peak to average grid load ratio. That's before even discussing selling capacity back to the grid, simply managing charging times and rates across a large fleet by incentivizing off-peak usage.

What's your perspective on this?

Google says there are more like 275M light vehicles in the US, not 100M.

Currently, most projections are for EVs to reach 50% light vehicle penetration for new sales in the US around 2028. But the age of vehicles being as you said about a decade, it will take another decade plus for half of the vehicle fleet to be EVs... more like 2040, under an optimistic scenario.

Comparing that time course to the current decarbonization of the US power grid... EVs show up to the party a decade too late, and their used batteries show up two decades too late. We can expect the CO2 emissions from the grid to fall by 50% from 2005 levels in the early 2030s (and still be dropping fast). While EVs will drop fleet emissions by vehicles by 50% in the early 2040s. The grid also started switching a decade sooner than the EV rollout, so that makes sense.

The helpful thing about EVs for decarbonization is that they will drive down the prices of ALL storage batteries. Storage isn't really a big problem (i.e. to avoid large amounts of curtailment) until renewable energy reaches about 20% of the energy supply... so its just becoming an issue nowadays in CA (solar) and TX (solar and wind) and the prairie states (wind). So that means that mass adoption of EVs (while still only ~10% of sales) is leading to massive investment in battery plants and mining operations, which will spin out the cheap batteries for renewable storage that we will need to get to higher renewable penetration in 8-10 years.

IOW, everything is going just according to the long term decarbonization Master Plans I got from AOC and Soros.

(except banning hamburgers)

You are asking about better nuke utilization and vehicle to grid (V2G) and or vehicle to load V2L....

I dunno. In 1978 many imagined that by 2023 we would all be living in passive solar homes with trombe walls and giant boxes of rocks in the basement (or earthships), to drive our heating oil consumption down by 50% in the winter. How did that pan out? It didn't bc it was too complicated, and doesn't work in most places, and it impossible ($$$) to retrofit into existing construction.

Similarly, many places won't have a big problem with seasonal renewable storage (like the West, which has great solar and wind in the winter, and the South for solar). I think the Northeast, which is kinda boned for renewables in the winter, will go pretty big for offshore wind and heat pumps in new construction. I think New England (and the northern tier of US states) will just bring up the rear on most of this green stuff (while Boston folks will make a big show of not being behind). They'll be running gas plants and nat gas equipment in their homes longer than the rest of the country does, and lag EV adoption a good bit too. Just like how they are all still rocking heating oil (aka liquid coal) up there and spending $0.33/kWh for electricity and driving low mpg non-hybrid Subies.

Bottom line is that the Northeast looks a lot more like the EU in terms of population density, infrastructure, income and climate than the rest of the country does. And it shows now. So if the EU does a lot of V2G or V2L (or air to water heat pumps) the NorthEast will probably get into it too. The EU/UK are already big into offshore wind, while New England lags due to our nutty maritime flag laws and the Kennedys. While the rest of the country will just go for a much simpler and cheaper utility-based renewable system, on a shorter timeline, following the lead of California or Texas (which are basically doing the same things).

 

[woodgeek]

I see. It was as clear as mud to me.....

It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
--Upton Sinclair

 

[Garbanzo62]

Ratepayers will love renewables, they are cheaper to operate. Obviously the answer is to overbuild the renewables infrastructure, much like has been done with FF. Combined with storage (several options, not just batteries) there's no good reason all of our energy couldn't come from renewables and nuclear. The only reason things aren't 100% renewables is that sun and wind cannot be monopolized. There's just so much profit in FF, it will be hard to dethrone the kings.

I'm sure if you ask a rate payer in CA who deals with rolling blackouts you will get a different opinion. Additionally, the amount of real estate needed to have the level of renewables to power the entire country is enormous. It is not really feasible to have everything from renewables.. And now they are talking about demolishing 4 dams out west to help with the salmon population. So there goes your hydro

 

[woodgeek]

The problem with Wind and Solar is that they cannot be counted on to deliver the needed megawatts at any given time. Sure on a sunny windy day you can generate a lot, but on dark windless days that generated amount can drop significantly. You need to have a generation facility that you can count on as the Grid needs to meet peak demand. And you don't just flip a switch and fire up a coal or gas fired plant. Unless we expand nuclear, there is no way to offline all fossil fuel plants. Rate payers are not going to want to Pay to cover the cost of a gas fired plant that does not generate enough revenue to pay for itself. If you are going to have them you need to burn enough to generate enough to cover its operation and build cost.

More or less. By the time we get to high solar and wind penetration (not the current 14% energy) there won't be any coal plants left. The UK shut down their last plant a couple years ago (which is mind-blowing to me with their King Coal history). We should get there around 2030 plus or minus.

Gas plants CAN be designed to throttle quickly, and are currently being used that way to keep the lights on. And gas is not going anywhere, since it is a low-cost byproduct of our current style of oil extraction (and the gas cut increases as the deposit gets exhausted of oil), and oil demand in the US is locked in to at least 2040. So basically free nat gas until then, anywhere with a pipeline.

Renewables don't go down when a random puffy cloud pops up, unpredictably from minute to minute. Renewable production over a grid scale is quite predictable a day ahead via something called weather forecasting. I have a friend who actually works for a grid control company. So a mix of nat gas plants that can be throttled up with a days notice, and a few that can be switched on faster than that (and which can charge more per kWh) takes care of the problem.

This is the CURRENT system.

And ofc battery storage will (as it becomes cheaper) gradually displace these gas plants, coming for the fast peakers first. This process has already started in California and Aus (which is going solar big time, as you might guess).

While this is all happening, legacy nukes will keep cranking out baseload power and charging whatever the market will bear, esp at night. Until storage gets very cheap (i.e. not yet) they will make enough money to keep going. Perhaps for a long time. But no one in the business thinks building new plants pencils out, bc FUTURE cheap storage will arrive before a new nuke can amortize its construction cost.

 

[yooperdave]

It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
--Upton Sinclair

Thanks, another member with something nice to say. Have fun at the "cool kids table" 🤣

 

[yooperdave]

Because hydro and geothermal, biomass, etc. have always been classified as renewable. We just now have the fast growing inputs from wind and solar

Yup, got it now. 👍

 

[woodgeek]

Thanks, another member with something nice to say. Have fun at the "cool kids table" 🤣

Oh, I think you definitely belong at the cool kids table. 😎

Both 'sides' cook the numbers. The AP article IS misleadingly written. A minor/unimportant tick upwards has to be billed as some sort of freaking historic milestone, and then a confusing and clickbaity headline has to be slapped on it. Gotta newsify a very slow, gradual and boring process somehow.

Your minor confusion was engineered by those azzhats.

The renewable folks also like to talk about 'capacity' rather than 'energy' installed. Renewables lead installations by 'capacity'. But if the gas plant runs 70% of the time, and the solar farm runs at 20%, then the gas installed this year will make more energy than the solar plants will. So low capacity factor (up time) becomes a virtue in the stat.

The fossil folks, on their side, love to talk about primary energy (which is basically input BTUs), rather than output kWh. So if the coal plant is 20% efficient, and the solar farm is 90% efficient and they deliver the same energy (kWh) over the course of a year, the coal plant needs about 5X more primary energy. So that hypothetical grid which is 50:50 coal:solar... the coal guys will say its 80% primary energy from coal. So their inefficiency becomes a virtue in the stat, boosting their primary energy score.

So I just like to talk about delivered energy, and cost per kWh of delivered energy, rather than primary energy, or fractional capacity, or $/W capacity. All of the latter are spin and BS to normal folks, unless you are engineering a project where they matter.

ETA: 5000th post! Only took me 15 years.

 

[GrumpyDad]

I'm not sure what "effectively off grid" means.

I would have loved to put in a storage battery when I had my array installed, but the price is prohibitive. It would have more than doubled the price for a 4-day backup (at 10 kwh/day). Even at our high electric prices, the ROI on my "investment" is 15-20 years (and no, I don't think of it as an investment in the $$ sense of the word).

Still, a 4-day battery back up wouldn't have gotten me thru some of the times the panels have been covered by snow and/or heavy cloud cover during winter. In no part of January, did I have a day of production that covered my usage. From January 20 until March 1 (2023), the array produced 2 days worth of energy total.

However, during summer, I expect the array to produce more than I use. And it will balance out over the long run. I will produce as much as I use over a year. I think that is what "effectively off grid" is alluding to. But, in my mind, that isn't the same thing so is a bit disingenuous.

Welcome to solar. I found the Jan20 to March 1 producing 2 days of energy extremely funny. My one buddy knows I was in solar R&D and is a big impulse buy kind of person. The big happy puppy dog is what he resembles. He was so proud to tell me that he went with a company that knocked on his door to sell him a roof full of solar panels. Zero maintenance agreement, zero staff in our county much less our state, no license to operate in the county. SMH. "what...they just work". "off the grid".
Sigh.
I hate bursting peoples bubbles.

If people are properly educated and the right expectations are set, then they will love solar. Most will love solar. For some it's the belief they are making a difference with the climate. Great, if you believe that...well, good for you, enjoy! For many it will be a bit of sticking it to the big guy, controlling your own destiny, maybe not being off grid but definitely much more independent. Others, may want an off grid solution and battery bank. But as you noticed, there will be very lean times.

I have a very small battery bank that took me three days during a winter ice storm. I got a little lower on my batteries than I would like to, but aside from not using a hair dryer or the electric stove,...we did whatever we normally do. Ran the refrigerator, tv, lights (ok we were more cautious about keeping extra lights off in rooms that we werent in). Fireplace kept us warm, but not warm enough. That's one of the major reasons I actually got a stove.

My water is all gravity spring fed.

During the summer your array should serve you well. Assuming you dont have a ton of issues or a flimsy install using long wire runs with thin wires. You should see some good production. My cheapy panels made it through a marble sized hail storm fine. I have zero water intrusion after 3 years, and my efficiency is darn near close to what it was new.

 

[GrumpyDad]

Oh, I think you definitely belong at the cool kids table.

Both 'sides' cook the numbers. The AP article IS misleadingly written. A minor/unimportant tick upwards has to be billed as some sort of historic milestone, and then a confusing and clickbaity headline has to be slapped on it. Gotta newsify a very slow, gradual and boring process somehow.

Your mild confusion was engineered by those azzhats.

The renewable folks also like to talk about 'capacity' rather than 'energy' installed. Renewables lead installations by 'capacity'. But if the gas plant runs 70% of the time, and the solar farm runs at 20%, then the gas installed this year will make more energy than the solar plants will. So low capacity factor (up time) becomes a virtue in the stat.

The fossil folks, on their side, love to talk about primary energy (which is basically input), rather than output. So if the coal plant is 20% efficient, and the solar farm is 90% efficient and they deliver the same energy over the course of a year, the coal plant has about 5X more primary energy. So that grid which is 50:50 coal:solar... the coal guys will say its 80% primary energy from coal. So their inefficiency becomes virtue in the stat, boosting their primary energy score.

So I just like to talk about delivered energy, and cost per kWh of delivered energy, rather than primary energy, or fractional capacity, or $/W capacity. All of the latter are spin and BS to normal folks, unless you are engineering a project where they matter.

Solar is ~18% efficiency. At least, that's what you can bank on to start then it goes down from there over time depending on the circumstances of the install.

 

[woodgeek]

Solar is ~18% efficiency. At least, that's what you can bank on to start then it goes down from there over time depending on the circumstances of the install.

Very true. But when computing primary energy, the wasted fossil BTUs going in ARE counted, and the wasted photons going into PV are NOT.

 

[GrumpyDad]

Very true. But when computing primary energy, the wasted fossil BTUs going in ARE counted, and the wasted photons going into PV are NOT.

oh ahah I see what you are saying. Well history has proven that data can and will be manipulated by ALL people at all times to prove their point whatever reason they have to have a point that must be proven.

 

[EbS-P]

Since I live in an area that is fed by 100% renewable with surplus to spare that cannot be sent over the grid due to circuit limitations, it is possible. We do not have any large solar farms but several run of the river hydro plants, a 100 MW nameplate wind farm, a 14 MW wind farm and a 75 MW biomass boiler with typically 30 days of fuel on the pad. If the grid issue could be fixed, there is another 160 MW of wind power ready to be installed. There are also a couple of older out of service 20 MW biomass plants that cant compete due to the grid limitation.

Much as I am not a fanboy of Elon Musk, definitely not a "teslarati", he recently posted and I tend to agree that a big chunk of the US residential housing can effectively be off grid with solar panels and home storage. I dont think it is that simple as not everyone has an ideal roof or property exposure for solar but its a lot more possible now than 10 years ago. It is interesting as one of my prior employers held many of the patents on distributed microgrids and was part of one of the first microgrids in an industrial park in Waitsfield VT in 2003. It was crude and was fed by mostly fossil CHP systems but I do not think anyone would have thought that the technology would be so advanced 20 years later. https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2004/03/northern-power-systems-receives-doe-grant-30494/

IMO the missing link in most of the US is the lack of real time of use pricing down to the consumer level. With the exception of a few areas, consumers pay a flat fee for power no matter what the actual grid costs are. That is a two edged sword, the sellers of power have sign long term contracts to guarantee the power is there no matter what so they end up having to buy a hedge contracts to cover the possible high costs of power in the worst case scenario. That means there is big markup over grid power most of the time. On the other hand when grid power is expensive, the consumer has no incentive to reduce usage. Up until large deployment of storage, the amount of spinning generation had to equal the demand, if there was a short term imbalance, additional generation had to be added at a high cost. By adding more storage into the system, short term imbalances can be covered by storage. If real time pricing got down to the consumer level the consumer could elect to use less power when the prices are high and delay some use until later. They could also have home storage or a battery to grid connection to their EV to sell power back to the grid.

Time of use billing or just an end user carbon tax. We surely won’t change our behavior fast enough on our own as an averaged country.

 

[woodgeek]

Time of use billing or just an end user carbon tax. We surely won’t change our behavior fast enough on our own as an averaged country.

Fast enough? Change our behavior? What?

 

[EbS-P]

Fast enough? Change our behavior? What?

To keep under 1.5 C target. That’s out the window I think. In general the US is over consumptive. Number of acquaintances that set their thermostats 80 in the winter and 70 in the summer is a lot. Pool heaters and now chillers are really common here.

 

[woodgeek]

To keep under 1.5 C target. That’s out the window I think. In general the US is over consumptive. Number of acquaintances that set their thermostats 80 in the winter and 70 in the summer is a lot. Pool heaters and now chillers are really common here.

Ah, the 1.5 target (for 2100) was gone some time ago in my reading. And 2.0°C is looking unlikely even if we decarbonized the grid AND light transportation globally, if the world adopts a US dietary pattern.

I think its hard to generalize from anecdata from our neighbors. Mine are all well-off folks driving Land Rovers to their summer rental homes. But my neighborhood is unusual, as may be yours. The 'culture' of the US (specifically re consumption) can change about 2-3x between now and 2100. What were attitudes like 80 years ago, in 1943, compared to today?

 

[yooperdave]

oh ahah I see what you are saying. Well history has proven that data can and will be manipulated by ALL people at all times to prove their point whatever reason they have to have a point that must be proven.

Right. And at that point, it isn't called news. It's called propaganda!

 

[SpaceBus]

I'm sure if you ask a rate payer in CA who deals with rolling blackouts you will get a different opinion. Additionally, the amount of real estate needed to have the level of renewables to power the entire country is enormous. It is not really feasible to have everything from renewables.. And now they are talking about demolishing 4 dams out west to help with the salmon population. So there goes your hydro

CA was famous for rolling blackouts before renewables were even being discussed by regular people. As the planet gets warmer you will see more energy use in the summer, greatly taxing the grids in places that don't use energy to heat in the winter. AC loads are tiny compared to heating, so you aren't seeing this further north. CA is having blackouts because people insist on living in the desert.

 

[peakbagger]

If New England got real with Hydro Quebec (and NB Power) and signed a deal for new hydro capacity rather than relabeled fossil, the two systems have gigawatts of potential power that could feed New England. The problem is that it would make the region dependent on power supplies hundreds of miles away from the demand and fairly vulnerable to disruption. The Churchill Falls hydro project in Labrador, is 5.5 gigawatts, that is a bigger output than 5 new AP 1000 reactors.

 

[Ashful]

I think its hard to generalize from anecdata from our neighbors. Mine are all well-off folks driving Land Rovers to their summer rental homes.

Your neighbors rent out their summer homes? How goche!

 

[bogieb]

Welcome to solar. I found the Jan20 to March 1 producing 2 days of energy extremely funny. My one buddy knows I was in solar R&D and is a big impulse buy kind of person. The big happy puppy dog is what he resembles. He was so proud to tell me that he went with a company that knocked on his door to sell him a roof full of solar panels. Zero maintenance agreement, zero staff in our county much less our state, no license to operate in the county. SMH. "what...they just work". "off the grid".
Sigh.
I hate bursting peoples bubbles.

If people are properly educated and the right expectations are set, then they will love solar. Most will love solar. For some it's the belief they are making a difference with the climate. Great, if you believe that...well, good for you, enjoy! For many it will be a bit of sticking it to the big guy, controlling your own destiny, maybe not being off grid but definitely much more independent. Others, may want an off grid solution and battery bank. But as you noticed, there will be very lean times.

I have a very small battery bank that took me three days during a winter ice storm. I got a little lower on my batteries than I would like to, but aside from not using a hair dryer or the electric stove,...we did whatever we normally do. Ran the refrigerator, tv, lights (ok we were more cautious about keeping extra lights off in rooms that we werent in). Fireplace kept us warm, but not warm enough. That's one of the major reasons I actually got a stove.

My water is all gravity spring fed.

During the summer your array should serve you well. Assuming you dont have a ton of issues or a flimsy install using long wire runs with thin wires. You should see some good production. My cheapy panels made it through a marble sized hail storm fine. I have zero water intrusion after 3 years, and my efficiency is darn near close to what it was new.

I would never buy a big-ticket item from a door-to-door salesman (magazines, yeah, sure, driveways and solar arrays - nope). I used a highly thought of local company that has been around for 20 years, whose office is less than 30 miles from me and my contract has a 20 year workmanship guarantee. Products used are the big name, 25 year warranty products. And, no holes in my roof for install since I have a standing seam roof.

Expectation setting is huge for satisfaction. I kicked to the curb another company, that installed the same brand materials, that was giving me winter production numbers that I thought were hogwash (I would have been severely disappointed if I had become their customer). There is only one thing I've been disappointed with, those suckers do not shed the snow like a metal roof - or at least not in my case. Nothing a roof rake can't help with, but I have't raked my roof in 13 years and it suckes having to start now.

Being WFH is also huge for me - I can set my electrical usage for big users (clothes drier) during production time, instead of at low/zero production hours.

 

[peakbagger]

I designed and installed all three of my systems and reconfigured one of them over the years. That included a 2 KW roof system that I installed solo including getting the panels up to the second story roof solo.

The local electricians are clueless about solar, I needed an electrician to sign off on one of the systems to get it SREC qualified and made him a deal where I showed him how to design a system and where to look up the details in the code book.

With a bit of planning its not that hard to install solar if someone is comfortable on a roof. If they can reshingle a roof they can probably install solar panels although getting the panel up requires a bit of thinking an waiting for calm day. Once the panels are picked out, the racking companies have automated tools on their websites that do a complete design and generate a materials list. The biggest challenge is to locate the roof rafters under the roof.

 

[begreen]

oh ahah I see what you are saying. Well history has proven that data can and will be manipulated by ALL people at all times to prove their point whatever reason they have to have a point that must be proven.

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
― Mark Twain

 

[bogieb]

Welcome to solar. I found the Jan20 to March 1 producing 2 days of energy extremely funny. My one buddy knows I was in solar R&D and is a big impulse buy kind of person. The big happy puppy dog is what he resembles. He was so proud to tell me that he went with a company that knocked on his door to sell him a roof full of solar panels. Zero maintenance agreement, zero staff in our county much less our state, no license to operate in the county. SMH. "what...they just work". "off the grid".
Sigh.
I hate bursting peoples bubbles.

If people are properly educated and the right expectations are set, then they will love solar. Most will love solar. For some it's the belief they are making a difference with the climate. Great, if you believe that...well, good for you, enjoy! For many it will be a bit of sticking it to the big guy, controlling your own destiny, maybe not being off grid but definitely much more independent. Others, may want an off grid solution and battery bank. But as you noticed, there will be very lean times.

I have a very small battery bank that took me three days during a winter ice storm. I got a little lower on my batteries than I would like to, but aside from not using a hair dryer or the electric stove,...we did whatever we normally do. Ran the refrigerator, tv, lights (ok we were more cautious about keeping extra lights off in rooms that we werent in). Fireplace kept us warm, but not warm enough. That's one of the major reasons I actually got a stove.

My water is all gravity spring fed.

During the summer your array should serve you well. Assuming you dont have a ton of issues or a flimsy install using long wire runs with thin wires. You should see some good production. My cheapy panels made it through a marble sized hail storm fine. I have zero water intrusion after 3 years, and my efficiency is darn near close to what it was new.

Well, after re-reading that, I made a huge mistake when I was typing. It was Feb 20 thru March 1 that I had two days worth of production, not Jan 20 thru March 1. That typo makes all the difference in the world . Although, it still means if I thought I was trying to be off-grid, I would have had to have some extreme battery capacity.

My electric bill for March (got the bill yesterday) was zero, with a credit of $34 and some change. February's bill was $35, so I basically earned my money back.

 

[Ashful]

My electric bill for March (got the bill yesterday) was zero, with a credit of $34 and some change. February's bill was $35, so I basically earned my money back.

That's great news! I'm sure you posted it somewhere, but to avoid a hunt:

1. Size of your array?
2. Install cost?
3. Average usage?

 

[peakbagger]

I think the best way to look at it is to nibble away at energy usage. The government has given every state a big block of money to put home energy audits in place. NH and lot of other states have had these programs in place for quite awhile. The government also has keyed a lot of incentives and credits to these energy audits. They do not look at just electricity, the look at thermal and in some case water savings. Savings are ranked by payback. Sure solar panels are flashy but there are a lot of things an average person may not recognize that is slowly draining money out of their pocket. Water leaks are obvious, you hear them and see them. A typical leak that drips every 10 seconds is equal to 350 Gallons. If you have a water bill, it adds up, if you have well and pump you burn up power (if you are lucky enough to have a rare fully gravity system, your cold water is free) If the water is warm unless you have Solar Hot Water odds are you are also heating it with power or fuel. I dont think anyone is really going to miss a water leak.

The problem is heating/cooling and electric power leaks are not as easy to visualize to the average person, they do not make noise and with exception of a cold draft that is about it unless icicles appear. An energy audit is going to make things a lot more visible using a blower door test. There will be a before and after number and usually the auditor will show the homeowner an air leak or two using a smoke stick. That makes it real to many folks. I have front door I need to replace and I have been dragging my feet as "its not that bad. No look at an IR photo of that door taken on the coldest night of this past winter. It a lot easier to visualize. The darker the blue the colder is gets with the sidelight getting down to 24.6 F.

I my case its not that much money going out of my pocket but its splits of wood that are going to have to go into the boiler to reheat the storage. BTW, that is relatively modern insulated steel faced door with adjustable lower threshold with bulb seals on all four sides with a double pane outside storm door. Its also interesting to note the blue splotches in the wall where there is obviously a gap in the insulation.

With respect to solar, I started out with solar hot water panels over 20 years ago, there is better technology now but for about 9 months a year I have free hot water heating. I have a beat up solar panel that runs a DC pump so I do not even need to run a circulator pump or controls off the grid. The other three months of the year it preheats my incoming well water and I use heat from my wood boiler at the end of storage cycle to charge it up. Its fine for me, but if I needed a lot of hot water, I would have installed a heat pump hot water heater long ago to boost winter temps. I then installed a small grid tied solar array, it wasnt very big, but it noticeably reduced my electric bill in the summer and just as importantly I learned a lot of solar basics. A few year later I picked up 1.6 KW of used solar panels and built a pole mount grid tied array. My power bills went away (except for a $13 bucks a month connection fee) in the summer as I rarely need AC. A few years later Evergreen Solar went out of business and I picked up some of their post-bankruptcy panels and reconfigured the pole mount to 2KW. The old panels were sold to a couple of folks for their off grid camps and kept a few and eventually set them up to fill a water tank for watering my garden. They are more than 20 years old and still within 10% of the original rating and I think the ones I sold are still being used . About 5 years later one of the members on Hearth and Maine's long term energy guru, Tom in Maine, bought a container of panels from a company that got out of the solar business. I bought 2 KW of panels from Tom as that was what I could easily fit on the roof. I installed them myself and after that I have never had a power bill except for the connection fee for the last 6 years. I actually run a surplus and burn it off with my minisplit for heating and rarely cooling so that means less firewood to burn and process. I sell SRECs to cover my connection fee and depending on pricing, it just about covers 12 months of connection fees. Two years ago I bought a plug in Hybrid, Rav 4, I just plug it in and do not worry about the when or how often I charge it, worst case is I run the minisplit a bit less and burn a bit more wood.

All this work has been cash, no loans, no leases. Odds are most people spend more money on annual vacations than I have on renewables.

So I didnt start out to do everything all at once, I nibbled away at it. Do the easy stuff first and for most that will get them thinking that maybe its worth doing the bigger stuff. Spread that over all homeowners and it will make a dent in power demand. With the rapid drop in electric power storage cost its going to nibble away at peak power demand.