STL is about to start rioting.

schuylaar said:

in florida, we've gone to "smart"..no one skulking around..read right from truck OR source..nice when it goes off you don't have to wait 24 to get back they can do everything from the office.

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They can do a whole lot more than that. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/07/security_vulner.html

They can even ID your type of light you're using in your grow. These don't just measure watts they measure in real time, amperage.

Red1966 said:

And then you will need to replace it. What's the usable lifespan of that stuff?

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30 years, except the batteries get about 5.

J0hnnY♣Ch1mp0 said:

sorry it took so long to respond to all these i needed to go check on my businesses and i only have a moment.

usable life span is 30 if i remember correctly with a warranty for the life span.
i believe there is 60 panels

@No drama, your right. i didnt mean for it to come out as 10mil of watt hours.haha my bad. understand i just jumped on doing this so im trying to answer to the best of my ability.

some of these comments are making me wonder if my investment is going to crash.
what do you mean by the downfall are the batteries? does it end up using more than it should running at night? idk what you mean

ok g2g. ill check back later

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You have to replace the batteries every 5 years to stay at peak efficiency, I run a 24volt system so I have four 6v batteries in series with 2 banks of them to give me a total capacity of 1860 Amp Hours at 24 Volts. So that is about 4,000 amp hours once converted into sinewave AC. Or about 600 KWH. Which will run the house for more than 10 days on battery power alone if we conserve energy, far far longer if we only use the freezer and a couple of lights and do all the cooking on a grill and heat with the wood stove.

Each Battery costs about $1500.00 and weighs about 130 Kilos. I put them on a concrete pad in a big metal box that is vented and about 12 feet deep in the ground with a sump pump and drainage. I have to use a cherry picker to exchange the bad ones with the new ones, otherwise you could put a small RV style system in your house so its easier to get to. I have to check the water level every month and monitor the discharge cycles. It's a pain in the ass.

I get a check from the power company every 3 months, it still going to take 23 years to pay for itself, half way there.

Seems like Michael Brown isnt the Gentle giant everyone was claming

NoDrama said:

You mean 10,000 Watt hours or 10KWH I think. the way you have it written is that you will be making 10 MILLION watt hours of power, which is way more than a $20,000 investment.

I have had a PV array for over 12 years now. They are great, the batteries are the only downfall.

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I have a 6.75KW setup. Since about mid-March?, I've produced over 4,000KWh. Right now I'm producing 5KW. My peak 'record' so far is 6.1KW, and something like 59KWh in 1 day. Clear skies 350 days a year make a difference. =)

Generally speaking, they pay for themselves in less than 10 years.

As a rule of thumb, you don't want to produce more than you consume. The buyback rate for me is less than 3 cents, which means you won't make your money back selling the power company your electricity. You 'make' money by not paying their greedy asses.

ChesusRice said:

Seems like Michael Brown isnt the Gentle giant everyone was claming

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Bordering on racist here, Cheesy.

He could of been obumbers kid....

Glaucoma said:

I have a 6.75KW setup. Since about mid-March?, I've produced over 4,000KWh. Right now I'm producing 5KW. My peak 'record' so far is 6.1KW, and something like 59KWh in 1 day. Clear skies 350 days a year make a difference. =)

Generally speaking, they pay for themselves in less than 10 years.

As a rule of thumb, you don't want to produce more than you consume. The buyback rate for me is less than 3 cents, which means you won't make your money back selling the power company your electricity. You 'make' money by not paying their greedy asses.

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When you calculate that they pay you back in 10 years are you calculating only the purchase price minus the "government subsidy?"

Maintenance costs of my setup is around $3300 a year and probably 40 hours of my time. 33,000 Watts here.

NoDrama said:

When you calculate that they pay you back in 10 years are you calculating only the purchase price minus the "government subsidy?"

Maintenance costs of my setup is around $3300 a year and probably 40 hours of my time. 33,000 Watts here.

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That's $275 a month. I don't use that much electricity, Seems awful high. I'm not seeing any benefit there.

So we've been kind of dancing around the issue and I've not seen it addressed.

These solar panels are expensive, but they cut your electric bill.

Will you ever recapture your investment in reduced power bills?

Hybrid cars aren't a good deal because that option is significantly more expensive than the difference in the cost of fuel used between the hybrid and the regular.

At least that's how it was a couple of years ago when I was car shopping.

NoDrama said:

When you calculate that they pay you back in 10 years are you calculating only the purchase price minus the "government subsidy?"

Maintenance costs of my setup is around $3300 a year and probably 40 hours of my time. 33,000 Watts here.

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Honestly, I didn't do the calculation myself.. it was part of the sales pitch based on my previous years usage. I was actually told about 6-8 years. The math they showed me also factored in average utility hikes and panel degradation over time. Concerning panel degradation, they actually de-rated it compared to the manufacturers data.

Your running costs/maintenance are due to batteries, right? I'm tied to the grid so that's not an expense/issue for me. All I should ever really have to do is rinse off the panels after a dust storm.

Now, there are minimum charges from my power company even if I don't buy any power from them, but it's like 18 bucks/mo.

33KW is your total array size? That's fucking massive!

Funny how the family is all pissed that they released that he was involved in a strong arm just before he was shot, like it justifies the shooting....
Right, they arent mad because this tanked the "he was a nice kid" story. Regardless of whether he has a record it doenst make him a model citizen, shit I have done some stupid illegal stuff just was never stupid enough to get caught. So I have a clean record to does that mean I have never broken the law? Nope just didnt get caught lol

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I547 using Rollitup mobile app

I guess our little thread hijack is sort of appropriate here.

Sorry bout that. But not really. =)

The nice thing is that it is so off topic that I can easily tell what a post is pretaining too so I havent read much of the side convo going on.

Saw the surveillance photos and thought I would check back on the progression of this thread, carry on it doesnt bother me any lol.

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desert dude said:

Bordering on racist here, Cheesy.

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Nope. Kid strong arm robbed a store. And a cop isn't going to try and pull you into a car thru his window

Glaucoma said:

Honestly, I didn't do the calculation myself.. it was part of the sales pitch based on my previous years usage. I was actually told about 6-8 years. The math they showed me also factored in average utility hikes and panel degradation over time. Concerning panel degradation, they actually de-rated it compared to the manufacturers data.

Your running costs/maintenance are due to batteries, right? I'm tied to the grid so that's not an expense/issue for me. All I should ever really have to do is rinse off the panels after a dust storm.

Now, there are minimum charges from my power company even if I don't buy any power from them, but it's like 18 bucks/mo.

33KW is your total array size? That's fucking massive!

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I'm tied to the grid, net metering, its the only way to get paid back. The panels don't degrade much over 30 years, 20% at the most and the actual panels themselves hardy degrade, its the support materials that degrade under 30 years of UVA/B exposure.
Most of my cost is the batteries, but I have had to replace a couple of panels over the years, mostly due to my error, like leaving roofing material on top of the barn, only to have the wind roll it off into one of my arrays, breaking 3 panels and a sun mover.

So the kid wasn't an angel. From the store video he was a thug. Doesn't make any difference. The cop was wrong to gun him down when he had his hands up. On a side note, they arrested 25 looters. None of them were local residents. People came in from out of town to take advantage of the disorder. Saw one guy with a single rim. What you going to do with ONE rim?....lol.....

Red1966 said:

So the kid wasn't an angel. From the store video he was a thug. Doesn't make any difference. The cop was wrong to gun him down when he had his hands up. On a side note, they arrested 25 looters. None of them were local residents. People came in from out of town to take advantage of the disorder. Saw one guy with a single rim. What you going to do with ONE rim?....lol.....

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Sell it for scrap

Red1966 said:

So the kid wasn't an angel. From the store video he was a thug. Doesn't make any difference. The cop was wrong to gun him down when he had his hands up. On a side note, they arrested 25 looters. None of them were local residents. People came in from out of town to take advantage of the disorder. Saw one guy with a single rim. What you going to do with ONE rim?....lol.....

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Maybe he was looking for a matching spare, they don't come standard anymore.

Ra$p0tin said:

Maybe he was looking for a matching spare, they don't come standard anymore.

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Maybe he just grabbed the first shiny thing he saw.