Solar power for my house?

G e n e r a c told me it would be difficult to hook my house to a generator since my gas line and electric were on opposite sides of the house. Has anyone here had any experience with solar panels installed on your roof or in your yard? I would have to have a company install the solar panels for me. Is there a standby system if the solar hook up fails? I really don’t care about making my money back over time, I’m just tired of being without power. We have a Yeti lithium power station that we hooked up our router to the last time the power went out so we did have WiFi, but no heat. I do recommend the Yeti lithium battery power station because you can have it your house and its easy to use. Thanks for any ideas.

I have no answer for your solar question.
I am wondering about a decorative gas stove or fireplace. I have that at my house and they don’t need power to operate. You can always have heat then. Also you can put them on a thermostat and if the power goes out, why you are away, they would kick in and keep pipes from freezing. Most of them are from 70 to 85 percent efficient. They rate them just like a furnace.

https://moxiesolar.com/ might be worth a phone call – they are very well respected

how long are you typically without power? You could always do a permanently installed gas or diesel generator instead of natural gas

Why would it be difficult to put a generator in your house because the gas and electric are on opposite ends of the house???

Guess I’m confused what that gas had to go with electric?? No electricity your furnace don’t run either??

Any chance you could post a sketch of your house, with the gas and breaker box locations? My Generac is almost 60′ from my gas meter, the installer simply ran a 1″ gas line from the meter to the genset. Obviously, the unit needs to be closer to the panel, just to keep the wiring under control.

As far as solar, if you decide to go that route, look at battery-storage systems with an inverter. But, it gets expensive in a hurry.

HRG

Also, back to the generator, resist the temptation to do a “whole” house unit. I identified 11 critical circuits that I wanted powered-up, and sized the unit accordingly. Bigger gensets mean more $$$, larger gas supply line, etc, etc.

I think that fella is feeding you a line of crap…
Run wires or a gas line, easy work.

mark-bruzek wrote:

I think that fella is feeding you a line of crap…
Run wires or a gas line, easy work.

This.

mark-bruzek wrote:

I think that fella is feeding you a line of crap…
Run wires or a gas line, easy work.

I agree with Mark.

Thanks for all of your helpful ideas! The guy had put in a generator for our next door neighbor. My neighbor said he did a good job. However, after he came out and scoped things out, he never called me back! I tried to reach him by phone and by email, but no reply. So, I agree with Mark-Bruzek too. We are without power around 6 hours to 24 to a few days. I like mxskeeter’s idea of a decorative stove. With solar though, I’ve heard I pay little to nothing for electric since I’d be getting it from the solar panels. I’ll have to check out that link BackwaterICE suggested.

As mentioned above get a different installer, I would stay with LP or natural gas as gas or diesel sitting for very long periods just asks for issues. With a whole house setup the generator will start roughly once a month to do a self check, that is the way I would go. Solar dealing with batteries and the extra cost that goes with it to me is not worth it.

Sorry, not trying to hijack the thread…
Have you looked into Generac’s PWR cell batteries? Looks like a simple solution with easy plug and play expansion as needed. No need to deal with any maintenance on a generator. I’d bet that the Lithium batteries will continue to come down in price. Looks like the batteries will go 10 years or better.

Things to consider with solar…

No matter what they tell you, they do get covered with snow in MN.
Will your roof need replacing soon? Those panels will need to come down before then.

I haven’t found anyone that is part of a solar farm or has bought panels that say it’s a “go to” energy source yet. But I haven’t been looking in the last year either.