I have a 2200 sq ft house, with 200 amp service and a subpanel for garage/shop of 60amp. How many batteries and panels would it take to become solar? How much would it cost? I live in NE Texas very hot 9 months/year. Very windy January to June. Very stormy October through May. How much would it cost to be able to flip a switch when electric goes out and have full electricity in my house? And to be set up to sell electricity unused back to lamar electric coop.?
The amount of your system is hard to say without fully knowing the size you are trying to build and what offset you would like to accomplish. A general rule if you are getting a good deal would be $4-$6 per watt. So if it is a 5kw system you can exoect to pay $20k to $24K. Anything less you want to check the quality of the panel and make sure they are not using lesser quality materials. I am based in California so I do not know what your local incentives are, but out here there is a 30% tax credit which matches your taxable income $ for $.
Hope this helps
P.S. It is never a good idea to build a system with the hope to sell it back to a utility company. If you are getting money back it means you spent too much up front. My goal is always to get as close to $0 at the end of the year for my customers. This is the quickest payback.
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How many Kwh do you use per year?
If you were to shop for a system in today’s market, you should expect to pay between $3.00-$3.50 per watt
It should cost 4.5$ per watt - 6 per watt
The cost of your solar system will depend on the size of your solar system. A general rule of thumb and an industry standard, is pricing the system based on the DC (direct current) size of the system. In order to size the solar system appropriately, the homeowner must provide or help provide the annual KWH (kilowatt hour) consumption for the home. The annual KWH consumption is typically recorded by your utility company. This process is used for a typical grid tied solar system. A homeowner can expect to pay anywhere from $3.00 to $6.00 a watt depending on the contractor, size of the system, the solar equipment used and the type of installation (roof mounted or mounted).
Most grid tied solar systems here on the mainland don’t have a battery backup integrated into the system. One thing to keep in mind is that a grid tied solar system will not operate when the grid is down. The grid tied inverters require ac grid power to operate. In order to size an off grid or even grid tied battery bank properly, the load demands must be acquired. Proper engineering is an absolute must to maintain battery life expectancy and load demand when the grid is down. Battery backup is expensive and typically not worth the investment. You can expect to almost double the price of your grid tied system when adding battery backup.
The quotes showing $3.50/watt seem high to me. I have been installing 10kw systems for around $23,000.00, maybe less. 3.50 per watt would mean $35,000.00 from my competitors, which I think is pretty high. I still make decent money at my rates. The average 3 bedroom home (using gas heat) will use about 10,800 KWH per year in the Bellevue, WA area. A 10kW system in Texas with negligible shade should produce about that. If your usage is average, 10KW should do it for you. So, that’s thirty four 29O watt panels. I recommend the solar edge 7.6 kw inverter with StorEdge and optimizers, a critical loads panel, and a few other components. So, battery backup will run you $3500.00 more plus the battery. I suggest the 14kwh Tesla Powerwall, which will cost about $5500.00. you could go with the smaller Tesla battery for $3500, but if you want to run all day on battery backup, 14kwh should last you 24 hours. On a sunny day, you will fully recharge and can go indefinitely off grid. On dark cloudy days, you might recharge as little as 2kwh. On light cloud days, you could get 8-12 kwh of recharge during the day. In a Seattle suburb, I have a south facing installation that produced 8300 kwh from February through December of this year. 9.3 kw with SolarEdge inverter. I imagine Texas would annihilate those numbers.