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Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 3
New Member
What would be the best state to live in to have solar panels to power your house. Also how much would it roughly cost you to have your house run completely on solar panels and wind mills.

Joined: Apr 2002
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I guess any state with open space & a warm climate. We have PV installs here in NJ (resi) that do a real good job at reducing the POCO $$$, but none that I am aware of that are 100% POCO independent.

A recent comm job provided a 40% POCO reduction in billing a two climate controlled whses, one straight refrig, other refrig & freezer.

Wind turbines consist of only 1 resi install in plan review that the EC has withdrawn from the job. (400 watt unit)



John
Joined: Jul 2004
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I would guess Arizona probably has the most sun day to day. Florida and Texas are farther south but they have more weather. In SW Florida they told me to plan on about 6 hours a day at the rated power to get my average production.

Before the rebates you are going to be paying $7-8 a watt for solar PV installed, based on my shopping.
To do your whole house you also would need a lot of south facing roof. That is a grid tied system. You will still be running off the utility at night but hopefully you ran the meter backward enough during the day to break even. "Selling" the utility power is a losing proposition. You want to break even at best because they won't pay you the full retail cost for what they buy.


Greg Fretwell
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 787
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Originally Posted by theelectricman
What would be the best state to live in to have solar panels to power your house. Also how much would it roughly cost you to have your house run completely on solar panels and wind mills.


Depends on what you need for a house? For a small, well insulated bachelor pigpen structure, it would be possible. If you want air conditioning, electric stove, electric dryer, lots of lights, lots of TV, cable, internet, etc. it will get into the hundreds of thousands easily. If you want to go completely off grid, then you also need to have suitable power storage.

It is not easy to beat the price and reliability of of the power company.


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