Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here If you want to learn about Solar...
Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here
If you want to learn about Solar Panels, to advise you before buying or to build your own Solar Panel: Click Here
welcome back to projects with everyday dave today we're going to look at the difference between paying someone to install a solar system for you and doing it yourself i'm going to break down the numbers for installing this solar array all the details all the hidden costs stick around to the end and we'll compare the diy cost to a quoted cost you'll be able to see the amount of time it takes to pay it off for each and compare which one makes the most sense for you so stick around let's do the numbers okay let's quickly look at the specifications for my system i have a 9.4 kilowatt solar array it is made of 25 375 watt panels and i installed it with a screw type system into the ground and then put together the racking system to hold the panels i have a 7.6 kilowatt inverter slash ev charger i have an ev charging port here that allows me to charge a vehicle directly from dc power if i would like to which saves on some efficiency so let's look at the numbers the breakdown cost i'm going to show you five things one is the solar panel kit cost the racking system cost the cost of the additional wiring and then the permits and fees then i'm going to show you a summary and comparison between my uh diy install and a professional quoted install so let's look at the numbers first of all the solar panel kit breakdown i have 25 mission solar 375 watt panels at 255 dollars a piece that comes to 6 375 next i had 25 solar edge p 400 power optimizers there's one for each panel they look like this and they're 79 apiece which is nearly 2 000 for the optimizers then the ev charger inverter dc ac inverter 7.6 kilowatt was 1875 dollars it is a little bit more expensive because of the ev charging capability but i figure with the way electric cars are going i might need it at some point then there's several miscellaneous components a package of stickers there's like 30 stickers that go all over the place strain relief a universal unlocking tool for disconnecting the plugs and a grounding bar it also came with the ac disconnect which makes sure you can disconnect power directly from the grid if you need to do that and then they also included the electrical engineering diagram that i used to get my permit and tells me exactly how everything needs to be wired as well as the size of wiring that's required to achieve uh the specifications so all together that's 10 649 for the solar panel kit that i ordered from unbound solar then the racking system i ordered from ready rack and with shipping it was 1987. but i had to make a adapter for my post hole digger in order to drive those screws into the ground and that cost me fifty dollars also the racking was really only designed for 24 panels and i added a 25th panel hanging off the end here so i had to buy some extra bracing to hold that up so it wouldn't sag or be a problem in the wind as well as some additional nuts and miscellaneous hardware then i had underlayment i used armor lay which was a fantastic fabric i also put on gravel so with the underlay and the gravel and some fuel to spread it out that added several hundred dollars to the cost which to me is worth it because i don't want to have to be mowing and weeding under the array all the time so the total cost for the racking system came to two thousand five hundred and eight dollars next let's look at the wiring breakdown in order to run power from the array to the building and connect it to the uh the grid i had to buy a number of components i have the spool of 315 feet of number six solid copper wire that was 189 i have two spools of 500 feet of 10 gauge wire which i just cut in half since my run is less than 250 feet that way i could have two home runs uh those spools were 80 bucks a piece then i needed a hundred feet of pv connector cable which connected my solar panels all are which connected my solar panel strings together at the array and that was 45 dollars and then i needed a pv connector tool to crimp on the connectors and then a combiner box to combine everything at the array and then some miscellaneous electric parts that i don't show in the picture there then i needed conduit that i would bury in the ground conduit elbows connectors miscellaneous parts that was 140 for the conduit and 15 for fittings and another 45 for miscellaneous fittings and hardware then i had to rent a trencher to run that through that was 155 dollar rental as well as some fuel in order to run that although i did also use it to run a few other trenches around my property to make use of that rental time i had a 40 amp breaker that i put in my breaker panel at the meter and i had to purchase some wire to run from the inverter to the disconnect and then from the disconnect to the panel so that was another fifty dollars for the wire and fourteen dollars for the breaker all told the extra wiring and materials was just under a thousand at and twenty seven dollars so let's look at uh briefly permits and fees i had a zoning permit for a hundred dollars a permit application for twenty five forty dollars for a building fee seventy one dollars for electrical inspection and a hundred dollars for the uh electrical company engineering fee so the total there was 336 dollars for all the fees and bids so when i combine all of the costs of the fees and permits with all of the other costs that brings my system total to fourteen thousand four hundred and twenty dollars when i installed my system there was a thirty percent tax rebate so that gave me four thousand three hundred twenty six dollars off so my total system cost came to ten thousand ninety four dollars and my yearly production is just under fifteen hundred dollars so my payoff is expected to be about six point eight years now if i didn't have the federal tax rebate my payoff would be 9.7 years which is still well within the 25 year warranty of the materials but 6.8 years certainly makes it much more appealing now i did get a number of quotes my highest quote was 34 000 and my lowest negotiated quote was 21 765 which is exactly this system that i installed except it doesn't include the fabric and gravel and the fuel to install that so i added those to it to make the make it an apples to apples comparison to what i did so that professional install would be twenty two thousand two hundred four dollars with a six thousand six hundred sixty one dollar tax rebate the total cost for the professional install will be 15 543. now with the 1488 dollar production that would come to 10.4 years to pay off or almost 15 years if there were no tax rebate so pretty significant difference 6.8 versus 10.4 to have it installed or do it myself now i also ran those numbers for the current tax rebate which is 26 percent just so you can compare it at a 26 tax rebate my cost would have been 10 671 to install it myself which would increase the payoff period slightly from 6.8 years to 7.2 years and for the professional install it would bump it up to 11 years for the payoff now just to review the diy install was ten thousand ninety four dollars the quote install was fifteen thousand five hundred forty three so what i determined is i could save five thousand almost five thousand five hundred dollars to do it myself which it seemed worth it for the amount of labor it took to do it myself plus the payback going from 6.8 to 10 years is a significant difference and if i was going to take this risk i didn't want to wait 10 years to get it paid off for the 5 000 savings and the 3-year improvement and pay-off time i decided it was worth it for me to do it myself and finally i i think you can do it too i put links in the description and on the screen here so that you can see my step-by-step process of how to install your solar array i also included links for planning your solar array so you can determine how big it needs to be whether it should be on a roof or on the ground what's best for you if you have any questions please leave them in the comments i'll do my best to answer them for you and if you're looking for more content please like and subscribe and i will try and continue to provide some valuable content for you so enjoy your solar install ...
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