Use of solar panels with electric baseboard?

Question

Has anyone got a solar system (grid tie in / net metering) that the home is heated with electric baseboard?

I want to reduce the amount of oil heat that is used in my home. $4000 per season in oil is getting outrageous.

(I am hoping that someone steps up with a lower cost bio-diesel for heating oil in the future . . . . . .)

( I.E The greedy ones in Washington. Families are freezing to death)

I am thinking of putting a system in that "runs the meter backwards" during the summer to hopefully "break even" during the winter.

Any thoughts.

I have also thought about geo-thermal also.. or a small cylinder style windmill

Answer 1

The major hype has inflated the fuel over Global Warming. It is the best excuse to charge  3 prices for their product .The solar sells are very expensive to get that amount of power.

Answer 2

A Solar system that would provide $4000 per year of electrical power is practically impossible for even a fairly well off family. The average cost of power in the US is about $.10 per kw-hr. Lets say your winter season is 5 months long, then you need to produce about 260 Kilowatt-hrs/day, or 260,000 Watts. One $400 panel may produce 50 watts per hour for about 6-7 hour a day, or 350 watts/day. 260000/350 equals 5200 Panels needed. That would cost over Two Million Dollars in panels alone. Lets say my assumptions are way off and cut every cost in half, you still could not justify it.

People do not understand Solar Systems. They are a wonderful invention, but can not normally be used for any heating or air conditioning. Even a fairly expensive system (30000-40000) will only provide an average home basic lighting, a smaller refrigerator, etc., without some supplemental power.

Answer 3

Electricity is a great idea, I would recomend DC heaters, you can get them in baseboard or infloor heaters for underneath laminate etc. If you use DC then you can use battery packs to store energy from the sun/wind for when you need it. Also $4000 is alot I don't know how big your house is but you probably could use better insulation and a new high efficiency furnce.

Answer 4

Electric baseboard heating is a desperation measure when you can't do something else; it requires three times as much electricity to run these as it would to run a heat pump.  A photovoltaic power system costs about $10 per watt to install, and can produce a maximum of two kilowatt hours per year per installed watt of capacity -- worth about 25 cents.  So, unless you can get a fat subsidy (which, sometimes, you can), solar electric power is a bad deal.  Recommendation: if you have grid power, install either a heat pump or a system that can use gas (propane or natural, as available) or pump heat.

Answer 5

GABY your math is a little off.

260,000 / 350 is 743 panels.

So using your math here's the logic.

In a Iowa cold winter I'm using 6700 or 233 kWh per day

233,000 per month or $261.00

They have 200 watt panels now.

200 * 7hr of sun light = 1400 watts per day per panel

233,000 / 1400 = 166 panels @ $800.00 ($4 per watt) = $132,800

$132,800 / 261 = 42 years to pay for themselves.

If they did a fair deal at $2 per watt

66,400 / 261 = 21 years pay back

In Spring Summer and Fall I average 1400 kWh at $130 electricity per month so lets say I just worried about 9 months non winter average of 47 kWh per day.



47,000 / 1400 = 34 panels = 27,200 (@ $4 per Watt) / $130.00 = 17.5 years payback. 20 years for 9 month seasons. because you still got to get help in the winter from the electric company.  They charge

All electric discount plan.

.07 for 1st 1000 kWh and

.03 for every kWh after that.

At a fair deal of $2 a watt panels it's

47,000 / 1400 = 34 panels = 13,600 (@ $2 per Watt) / $130.00 = 9 years payback. 10.5 years for 9 month cheap

seasons. because you still got to get help in the winter from the electric company.



Panels are suppose to last 25 years

Still not a great investment but if that's your dream it may be dueable someday when they offer a fair deal at $2 a watt.

I think that 30 panels would fit on my house  and my back roof faces south.

If the hours of sun light change per day the math will change.

But there will also be cloudy days.

Answer 6

Electricity is the most inefficient type of heating and solar panels are the most expensive way to generate electricity. A $50,000 solar installation, including panels, inverter and other stuff you would need, would probably only make $500 worth of electricity a year. You can probably save that much with simpler things like better insulation, a more energy efficient heating system and maybe better management of your energy use. Like programmable thermostats to lower the heat automatically when it isn't needed.