Incremental solar?

enphase_solar

Solar has always been a bit daunting; even with rebates, tax credits, and the like, a full-blown 2kW install on my house was still over US$10,000 out of my pocket.  And 2kW is a “small” installation by most standards.

But what if you could ease into that cost?

I’m intrigued by the enphase energy microinverters – with their setup, you have one DC inverter for each panel, which gives some neat features like per-panel performance maximization and monitoring.

However, one thing I didn’t think about is that this also, in theory, would let people ease into solar, because it makes the cost per watt more linear.  A ~200W panel + inverter would come in at around $1k for parts, before any rebates or incentives.  Depending on credits available in your area, this could come out to $700 or less.  And adding another panel + inverter next year should be quite do-able, because the panels don’t have to be matched when using the enphase inverters.

I guess I’m not the only one who’s thought of this; there are online kits in the $1k range here, here, here

It’d probably only be feasible for do-it-yourselfers; having a contractor come out to climb on the roof for 1 panel is likely not worthwhile.  But I think I could fit 3 on my garage… One other thing I’m not sure about is if you can apply for the federal tax credit more than once … But this is intriguing.  $700 isn’t cheap, but the way things are looking, it’s a much, much better investment for us all than another flat panel TV – and people are happy to fork out $700 for those!

On update: I see that I’m not the only one who likes the idea of starting out small; this page has a similar take on it, with a bit more on the numbers.

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