I've officially gone solar

Yup, today the installer (California Solar Electric Company) is finishing up the installation on my rooftop: twelve 345w SunPower panels, which is about the amount of electricity I use yearly.

Why did I pull the trigger now, instead of waiting until viable battery systems become available so I can be completely independent of the grid? Well, several reasons:

1. The 30% federal tax rebate will end in a few years and it may not be renewed, considering solar is now cheaper than any other form of electricity in many parts of the country. 
2. I'm not confident Der Gropenfuror and his spine-challenged GOP shitbirds won't end the rebate sooner. 
3. The cost of electricity from the utility (PG&E, in my case) keeps climbing (an average of at least 5% per year). 
4. PG&E increases the price of energy on the 15 highest-demand (read hottest) summer days between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m....which means the price for electricity quadruples when you need it most. 
5. A fully independent system would require the additional cost of an expensive battery. 
6. I would need to have a much larger solar system to cover my single most energy-using day of the year (and hope there's no solar eclipse), rather than just cover the average energy usage over the entire year. 
7. I received bids from four well-rated solar installation companies, and one of them wanted my business enough to give me a 10% discount (more than the cost of one solar panel). 
8. If I ever sell this place, the solar system should add more value than I spent.

Point #6 deserves some further detail. The program is called Net Metering, and the best way to look at how it works is to think of the grid as a giant battery. During the day, when electricity demand is highest, I sell my excess power to the grid at an expensive rate (say 40 cents per kwh). At night, when my system isn't generating any power but energy demand is low, I buy electricity from PG&E for a low rate (say 14 cents per kwh). At the end of the year, the total is tallied up, and if I used more electricity than I produced, I pay PG&E a little. And if I produced more electricity than I used, PG&E pays me a little. This is called "True-Up," for some reason.

One might think it would be advantageous for home solar systems to produce as much power as possible so you get paid a lot of money at the end of the year. However, PG&E only pays 3 cents per kwh for any energy it buys from the True-Up...which means that if you bought a large system that generates more power than you use on average, it'll take much longer to recoup the cost of the panels that generate that extra energy. Thus, ideally the True-Up is 0 cents. That's hard to calculate exactly, of course, but it's generally better to err on the conservative use side, since it's more cost effective to owe PG&E a little money than to have them owe you.

The system should pay for itself within six or seven years (less time if PG&E keeps jacking its rates). After that I should have at least 15 years of free electricity (although I anticipate continuing improvements in solar technology, and will be able to add them to the system as desired). And when viable batteries become available, they will be easy enough to integrate into the existing system.

So that's why I did it. You may want to consider it for your own neck of the woods. The more electricity you use, the more cost effective it is to switch.

Cheers,
Derek