2025 EV Tacoma thread.

It's quite area dependent. Using numbers from dry and sunny places and extrapolating them nationwide makes no sense. https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/ is a good starting point - it shows a 17 year payback for my house in the pacific northwest, but only 10 years for my in-laws in CA.

 

Make them standardized. Right now it wouldn’t work because it is a free for all, as battery tech improves it might be plausible.

We have a bunch of hydro here, however if the drought continues, supposedly the West is experiencing the worse one in 1200 years, it won’t be viable.

 

Some power > no power, to be sure. I mean my panels in the shed are getting nothing for power today (or the rest of the weekd) though.

 

I'd love it on my home, but I also only get sun for half the year.

 

Oh brother I hear you, I hear you. My solar installer was smarmy as hell. But, I ran the numbers myself and it made sense from the dollars and cents perspective. My monthly bill before solar was around $125 - $150 after solar $8 - $10. After rebates and incentives my final cost for a 10 panel system was $10K ish. $125/month times 8 years is $12K. I'm calling it a 7/8 year payback to be on the conservative side.

 

Must be pretty damn good panels if they are getting power in the shed! lol!

 

After my previous post l went hunting for those quotes, digging through all the horsecrap numbers there was a final cash price of $28,600 which would unfortunately be a 19 year break even.

 

Here in Idaho supposedly we get 76% of our power from renewables, that’s good enough for me. Plus toss on poor ROI makes solar unappealing. Why put it on my roof, when the utility company already has it? Their plan is to have 100% renewable by 2045.

 

It's never been a 7 year paypack. It's always been around 20 - right when they're ready to be replaced.
Think about it. $30k for a 10kW (peak) array? How many power bills would it take you to pay $30k? You're not using solar at your peak load (5-7pm) so most gets wasted anyway. Sure you can downsize but now you're buying from the utility again. There's a sweet spot for everyone, dependent on region and personal use, but the result is the same. It's a scam unless you're buying direct and installing yourself.

I did a whole iterative analysis for my 1500sqft home in Mesa, AZ complete with average solar irradiation data, historic power usage, and utility surplus buy-back. My best-case scenario priced with used panels locally and DIY install payback period was 3.84 years with a 7kW array @ $4,040, cash, no rebate allowed.
Extrapolating that to a $25k install quote I got (8.5kW at $22.5k more common), at the maximum that would fit on my roof at 12kW (lower = longer pay-back) was 19 years.
Plus nobody buying a home wants to take on your solar mortgage.

 

Laughs in Colstrip

 

$28K after rebates and your monthly bill is $125? Something ain't right with that quote. I'm probably wrong and there's something about your circumstance that makes $28K the right number. But, this isn't the right place for solar panel discussions, too many haters and not enough who know what's really going on. I read reddit.com/r/solarenergy/ and people are always asking questions about quotes. I'm not trying to sell you on solar, it's just not feasible for some situations and pocket books.

 

Over-promise, Under-deliver™

 

$28,652, it says system size is 26 panels 9.88kw, l also don't qualify for any subsidies.

 

Seems like "refer friends & earn rewards" should more accurately read "refer friends & make them enemies".

 

There are a lot of variables, but why 26 panels for a $125 monthly bill? My similar electric bill is offset by a 10 panel system. And assuming this is your primary residence there is a federal credit available. I don't have much nice to say about the salesman that sold me my system, but he made the point that you don't want to install more capacity than you need. The goal is just to get your power bill to as close to zero as possible without a bunch of power going back to the utility company. I told him I was thinking about buying an EV and he said if you want to expand the system do it when you need it. As much as I don't like the guy I think his advice was good.

 

Right 9.88KW is the size of the system and is supposed to be sized accordingly to my use as it says it should supply 99%. Also have 2 other quotes for similar sizes and prices, guess it also goes by available sun in your area. Dont make enough money in order to benefit from a tax credit, would be more useful if it came off the front end.

 

Of course they do. Here in FL, at least in Miami-Dade, gas stations and supermarkets have back-up generators. Fueled by....

 

...the tears of our enemies.

 

We don’t dispose of the mined materials in the batteries. Those are sent off for recycling. Not to say the recycling part is environmentally friendly.

The hard part is going to be responding to vehicle fires and the emergency response team needed to ensure the batteries don’t have a thermal runaway situation.

Once the vehicle is manufactured, you can fuel the system using alternative fuels such as local solar. It is a huge infrastructure change but if we do it slowly we can reduce the dependency on oil. I am not an environmentalist even though I play an enforcer in real life.

I don’t need my EV to do 0-60 in 3 seconds either. Right now the mainstream EVs are all luxury high performance vehicles.

Give me a smaller electric engine that matches a mainstream gas vehicle I am happy.