Solar Panels for the home - school me - why isn't everyone doing it?

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Getintouch98

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Right now, according to a friend of mine, Texas is 100% subsidy for installing a solar electric system with batteries. You pay for it, Texas will write you a check reimbursing you.
If that is true that’s a great incentive. Wonder if that is only for home instillation or if they would do it for ground racks as well. I’m more interested in that. But Oklahoma doesn’t have it so no need wondering I guess.
 

tynyphil

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What’s wrong with the well water?
Super hard and the salinity tests borderline unhealthy to consume. Supposedly common for that area of the county I found out after drilling the only way to fix it is with a reverse osmosis filter system so we bring in water for consumption for now. Distilling will work too so I have a small still too.
 
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dennishoddy

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Sounds like my total off grid cabin. Solar provides what electricity we need. Up scale outhouse is not bad at all. Had a well drilled but the water is barely potable if at all. Have a rain catchment system that we prefer to use for most all water needs except consumption. Have a reverse osmosis water filter stored away if we need to drink it. Unlimited supply of tin foil hats.
Love your setup! I'd live like that in a heartbeat in the mountains.
If the well water is sketchy, get a UV-C sanitation system to clean up the well water issues if it's related to whatever is causing it to be undrinkable, a filter to separate the sediment and an RV softwater that will do the entire cabin. We use one in our RV and it's great. Not expensive either.
Look up RV portable soft water tanks. Hooks up with a garden hose, and the larger one that weighs about 20 lbs will produce about 350 gallons of soft water, depending on the hardness. It could be more or less, in your case with what you said, it could be less, but uses 2 lb of any table salt and about 30 minutes to recharge.
We RV with friends that had an off grid cabin near Angle Fire in New Mexico. They absolutely loved it.
Used an indoor toilet with a black tank outside. They would treat it, and use a macerator to discharge the waste into a semi-septic system. He couldn't exactly describe how it operated it, but he said it was the standard for living off grid, installed by a company that does it for a living.
 
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tynyphil

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Love your setup! I'd live like that in a heartbeat in the mountains.
If the well water is sketchy, get a UV-C sanitation system to clean up the well water issues if it's related to whatever is causing it to be undrinkable, a filter to separate the sediment.
We RV with friends that had an off grid cabin near Angle Fire in New Mexico. They absolutely loved it.
Used an indoor toilet with a black tank outside. They would treat it, and use a macerator to discharge the waste into a semi-septic system. He couldn't exactly describe how it operated it, but he said it was the standard for living off grid, installed by a company that does it for a living.
I have a composting toilet inside but in the 3 years it’s been there it’s never been used. The outhouse is not offensive at all the way I constructed it. Well water issue is high salinity not bacteria
 

JR777

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Everyone is doing it, in states where they penalize you for not doing, and reward you if you do do it. In california, you almost can't afford not to.

In states like Oklahoma where energy is extremely cheap to begin with and there aren't really any incentives to speak of, best case scenario you're paying your electric bill 20 years into the future.

Which isn't such a great deal because we're on the cusp of several game changing technologies that will dramatically reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of solar. Thin film panels that will be cheaper and more efficient than current commercially available roof panels, solid state batteries that will last virtually forever, and molten metal batteries that will make a distributed grid possible (and potentially eliminate the need for home batteries to begin with). There's a very real possibility that the cost to go solar could be cut in half over the next few years. It would be a shame to get on the hook for a 20 year system when there's no immediate incentive to do so, and then have something come out five years from now that would be half the price.
 

dennishoddy

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Everyone is doing it, in states where they penalize you for not doing, and reward you if you do do it. In california, you almost can't afford not to.

In states like Oklahoma where energy is extremely cheap to begin with and there aren't really any incentives to speak of, best case scenario you're paying your electric bill 20 years into the future.

Which isn't such a great deal because we're on the cusp of several game changing technologies that will dramatically reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of solar. Thin film panels that will be cheaper and more efficient than current commercially available roof panels, solid state batteries that will last virtually forever, and molten metal batteries that will make a distributed grid possible (and potentially eliminate the need for home batteries to begin with). There's a very real possibility that the cost to go solar could be cut in half over the next few years. It would be a shame to get on the hook for a 20 year system when there's no immediate incentive to do so, and then have something come out five years from now that would be half the price.
Some of the best information eva!
Are the solar folks dumping their product because of the new tech coming?
Hydrogen cells?
 

BobbyV

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The YouTube channel Ambition Strikes has a pretty good series of videos on the setup they have. They are 100% off grid. It was going to cost them $40k to have purchase power ran to their property so the solar solution made sense.

The system seems to be scaleable. In that you could add panels or battery capacity as you could afford it.

Their setup is really nice. Not having access to a power drop anywhere on your property might be one of the only reasons to go with solar.
 

yukonjack

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Sounds like my total off grid cabin. Solar provides what electricity we need. Up scale outhouse is not bad at all. Had a well drilled but the water is barely potable if at all. Have a rain catchment system that we prefer to use for most all water needs except consumption. Have a reverse osmosis water filter stored away if we need to drink it. Unlimited supply of tin foil hats.
We used rainwater exclusively in Ketchikan. Even for consumption. The difference being we got an average of 162 inches of annual rainfall so the water never set in the tank and stagnated.
 

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