We’ve received a lot of great feedback from users and some common questions so I thought I’d try to answer them here.
Utility Rates: What else can I say except that utility rates are a pain in the butt. Naturally we added rates closest to use: PG&E, SoCalEdison, and SanDiego G&E. Will will be adding others. In the meantime we’ll be adding a “rate hierarchy” that starts from the most general, (state average) to the most specific (actually utility rate for zip). So if we don’t have a utility rate yet, you’ll at least get state average comparisons. But, and this will help a lot, we’ll also be including a fill-in box if you happen to know your rates so you can just enter it and we’ll remember it for you. Look for this rate update in the next week.
Tags: features, solar, startup, utility rates
August 15, 2008 at 11:17 pm |
This site is a great idea. Thanks for your effort. Have you done some drawings over existing systems to see how their energy output and financials compare to your calculations?
August 15, 2008 at 11:35 pm |
Yes we have. It wasn’t an exhaustive comparison and some of it depends on the discounts a solar installer is offering of course, but on average we were right in line.
August 18, 2008 at 5:17 am |
For my site, the cost before rebates, etc was almost $9 per installed watt. It would be interesting to see how much of that is cost of the actual array, cost of other items, and labor.
The main reason is that several companies are making announcements about having installed array costs drop to close to $1 – $2 per watt within just a few years, if you can believe them.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see the sensitivity to actual array costs in the total.