Is that true? I was looking at $4/kw (all in) 5 years ago. Not in CA, but that should come close to a 25% difference. It was mid-tier panels, but a high quality inverter.
Yes, but did that include federal and state subsidies? With Fed tax incentives (as most people quote) on a 5kw installation in CA it's $15-20k depending on who and where. So that would be in the $3-4 range... a lot of that is labor (almost half) so other parts of the country are lower. Rural places tend to be higher though.
My real point was that labor price variations can easily be larger than the total actual panel cost.
Wow,Solar prices in the USA are pretty high. I live in India where solar is under 1.2USD/watt installed. This is for a good module and very good inverter.
I have seen quotations for under a dollar a watt using cheaper components
If labor was free, and you didn't need a permit or certified equipment to attach to the roof and utility lines, and there were no taxes, then that's close to what you would pay. $0.60 cells and
$0.40 string inverter $0.20 cheap brackets.
For very large commercial/utility installations it falls close to that ($1.40 including land and transformers).
Curious, what is the need for a 5kW array? Do they typically only produce at 5-10% of peak? Or do the relatively low panel prices mean that if you are going to build 1kW, you might as well build 5?
I just went outside and checked my utility company smart meter... the whole house isnt even using 100W right now (though thats on the low side, I'd think).
Lighting/laptops/phones take a tiny amount of energy. For example, a phone battery nowadays (e.g. iPhone 6) is about 10 watthours with say 5 hours of screen-on-time. Disregarding it's on doing background stuff all the other hours, it approximately uses just 2 watt on average.
But the very first microwave (oven) I looked up on Bestbuy used 1500 watt, and if you've got something cooking for 40 minutes in there you're easily using 1 kWh, or about three months of iPhone use.
> Curious, what is the need for a 5kW array? Do they typically only produce at 5-10% of peak?
As for peak production, well yes-ish. The average peak solar hours in the US is about 4 per day, Europe is probably at 3, in Texas it's probably 5. That means a 5kW array will produce about 25 kWh a day, or 750 a month in Texas, saving about $85 a month / 1k a year in electricity purchase at 11.5c a kWh. So yeah, on average a panel in the US produces at roughly 15% or so of peak. (±4 peak hours per day).
That will change as soon as your fridge/washer-drier/TV much less hairdrier, AC, or stove turn on (it's peaky so net neetering really helps). Typical 3 person SFH uses ~1.5kw average or 1000kWh/mo ($110/mo at CA rates).
Well installed solar at US lattitudes in a very sunny area generally gives you something like 25-30% of peak as an average (it's not up half the day and averages less than 45deg over the day ignoring clouds).
Wow! Sounds like a good deal. You could do it for components without installation costs, but even utilities can barely get that today in California on 100MW builds.
