I have seen some Nissan Leaf's that are just a few years old. They are the older version with only about 100 miles of range. They are selling for less than $6000. At that price it could be tempting to get one as a spare car for errands and local trips.
I looked at one of these last week or so with exactly that idea. Car looked like new. Only had 13k miles on it. Battery was so used it wouldn't go 10 miles if that according to the owner. $8500 for a new battery. You won't be able to give that car away. Only good for parts now. They wanted $3k for it. Who in their right mind would buy that and put the same battery in it. It seems they didn't hold up well to either high heat or low cold weather (the old ones). That early adopter got their butt handed to them with that car. Total loss on what was a $33k car new in 2011 IIRC.
DIY is ~$0.75/w. Pro Install typically runs ~$2.50-$4 depending on location and install. Over the warrantied 20 year life of the system $0.75/w comes out to ~$0.023/kWh if you're in an area with average solar exposure. So a DIY system can pay for itself in ~4 years depending on your cost of electricity.
I had a quote for solar a few weeks back. Including some soft calculations about selling surplus back to Duke Power, I still came away with around a 15 year payback. With just the two of us at home and a newer hvac system, the salesman said that our electric usage was one of the lowest he's ever seen.
Your electric bills are $21/mo?
Ah... your NET savings. How long ago was your quote? Prices are falling ~10%/yr. Last I heard installs are running ~$2.50/w in the Austin area. Unless you have bad shade that's a ~10 year payback after the tax credit. So your net savings over ~20 years should be ~$13k if electric rates stay flat over 2 decades... what are the odds of that?
~99%; I think one element of solar PV that most people don't appreciate is how incredibly simple it is. We've been making solar panels for >50 years and they've gotten better and better. They're incredibly simple to begin with. We're on the 4th generation of inverter depending on what counts as a generation. It's very rare to have any problems and even more rare to have a failure. Aside from components that were defective (2 panels and 2 inverters) on arrival I've never seen a failed panel or inverter.
??? Where have you seen 58% degradation in a test? It wasn't NREL. 1) Panels are warrantied to have >80% of nameplate after 25 years 2) Tests show an average degradation rate of ~0.5%/yr which equals 90% nameplate after 20 years.
Because they lag 1-2 years behind. The 2018 report needs at minimum the full data from 2017. They may even be using data from 2016. That's also a national average so obviously averaging the cost of solar in Seattle is not going to accurately predict the cost of solar in TX. If you want to know the cost of solar for you call a local installer and get a quote. I know that in my area the LCOE of solar PV is ~$80/MWh before any subsidies.
Cool. Don't pay >$3/w. Lotta crooks out there. My neighbor paid $5.50/w ~2 years ago before I knew them. Feel super bad... they got ripped off. My last project was $2.47/w but that's mostly because it was 22.77kW.
WOW. That is a killer deal. ~$2.50/w is really the price to beat these days. ~$3/w isn't too bad for smaller systems <10kW; You'll be enjoying those powerwalls if you take a hit from a hurricane.
If I could find a deal like this I might even change over. The AC really makes it take a hit it shows on the Tesla page. 1 day with AC and 4 days without.
Sun Electronics usually has the best prices but their customer service sucks so you need to be patient. I've seen panels dip as low as ~$0.30/w.
Yes it was Solar City, but Tesla has recently purchased them when I started my process, so they were changing to Tesla.
I do, but I still like my TDI. The Model 3 is still out of my range ATM. Plus when I add options it definitely is more than I want to pay right now. I have two girls, so prefer a bigger car. We plan to have 1 or 2 more, so maybe a model Y will be in my future when I can afford one more comfortably. Model X way out of my range.
My sales rep gave me a discount. It was supposed to be $63,300, but he dropped it to $53,XXX. It came out to just over $37k after all was said and done.
