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I'm not in NE, so forgive me if this is obvious, but high electricity prices might make solar attractive to you. (Unrelated to the heat-pump question.) I'm in
by bruce511 3y ago
I'm not in NE, so forgive me if this is obvious, but high electricity prices might make solar attractive to you. (Unrelated to the heat-pump question.)
I'm in a similar high-priced environment, but we get a fair amount of sun. I'm getting around a 16% return on capital based on electricity usage reduction.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoNew England just doesn't have a lot of light. The time to return on investment is commendurately longer. And in the winter it's much worse. NREL has solar availability maps. Alas the scale sucks; there's great monthly average views, but all done with the same yearly average scale, so during the summer everything is the same full-red potential (>5.75 kWh/m^2/d) and during the winter everything is (mostly) the same low potential (<4kWh/m^2/d). Still, one can kind of read some pattern from fall/spring & see how a lot of NE looks a lot like, say, Seattle (<<4 average). https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html
- colechristensen 3y agoSolar is so cheap it usually still makes sense financially even in areas without a lot of sun, but less so. Lots of cold places in northern latitudes have short winter days that are overcast more often than not yielding only a little solar energy for a big chunk of the year.
- david422 3y agoI use solar, but using heat pumps and an electric car uses maybe 3x more electricity than my roof can produce.
- newZWhoDis 3y agoHigher efficiency panels + vertical panels would help. Most houses have decent south-facing walls. Ground mount is also an option in many places.
- k12sosse 3y agoLive underground and convert your whole yard to arrays of panels!
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago6.7kW ground mount here in NM, still can't heat my home in winter in this climate (would need 21kW with my Mitsubishi hyper-heat units). We have relatively OK passive solar contributions too.
- newZWhoDis 3y ago6.7kw is tiny. The smallest install I’ve personally seen is 15kw.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoPretty standard size for New Mexico. I have numerous neighbors with 6-12kW systems.
- cde-v 3y ago20kW ground mount array in NH produces twice as much as we need for our 4 heat pumps heating 3000 sqft. Went into the last two winters expecting to deplete our summer credits with the power company but we have only used about 1/6th of it. Definitely doable.