Any advice on Home Solar?

[Jo]

I have just remembered one issue with panels: Feral Pigeons (Rock Doves) like nesting beneath the panels and have been known to damage the high voltage cables as they scramble around underneath.

We only get Big Fat Wood Pigeons round here. Their idea of a nest is two twigs balanced on a branch fork in a tree.  No self respecting Wood pigeon would bother with the effort of making a real nest 

Jo

[Mike R]

Timely discussion, I just looked into this here in Ottawa, ON, Canada and there are other considerations that apply so you need to do your homework on your particular city, state/county/province, supplier,  or country. 
In my case, similar to the UK there is a max that you can reasonably /cost effectively feed back to the grid - 10KW (no max time limit).  Over that requires special engineered (read $$$$$) analysis. 
They also pretty much did away with the biggest incentives. Now the best you can do is effectively reduce your total consumption to 0KWh by generating all day and using that credit at night or during low solar generating time.  The biggest catch is that you are still connected to the grid and about half my electricity bill is made up of "delivery" charges that will still be applicable.  So that really stretches out the payback period.
The above scenario is typically called a grid-tie system and has no batteries.  You can add batteries, but as you've already reduced your consumption to 0KWh it doesn't have any payback, just backup power availability (a definite consideration for some locations outside the city).
Also, to Jo's point - some system designs require "squirrel guards" and others don't.  An additional cost and installation effort.

[Art K]

Kim,
I'm in Madison Wisconsin. My wife and I added solar in January 2023 after selling my parents house. In 2022 there were incentives to add solar that were supposed to go down as of the end of the year. In reality the 26% went up to 30% returned. They also had a contractor replace the roof. The shingles were on the 20 year point of a 25 year lifespan but the ridge shingles were bad. this cost was added into the system cost because it was done at the same time. Our system was more expensive due to the components being made in the US. That wasn't necessarily why we chose it. Most solar installers here were extremely busy and only 2 paid enough attention to us to give us an estimate, or return our call. We chose the one that said they could do the job by December 31st.
Our house has a hip roof so our 9.6 kW system is split up 6 panels east facing, 6 west facing and the remaining 12 south. They tried to build a system that met our power usage. the local power company MG&E pays us for what we don't use and add the rest to the grid. It's nice in the summer when production is at the peak we build up a positive on our bill which helps offset the natural gas heating bill in the winter. We considered getting a battery backup BUT it was an extra $20,000 and we figured they would get cheaper and better at a later date.
Enough for now my eyes are rebelling, telling me to stop looking at a screen!
Art

[Art K]

Kim,
Just thought I''d let you my most recent Madison Gas & Electric bill was 72 cents! That covers heat and water heater.
Art

[Kim]

Wow!  That's pretty impressive!

Do you not have to pay a fixed fee to be connected to the grid?  I've heard the grid fee around here is something like $12-13.  So 72 cents seems amazingly low!

Kim

[Art K]

As the summer goes on I build up a surplus where MG&E owes me. Power generation goes down in the winter, especially when it snows. Heating bill in the winter can be 300 or more but we don't generally get a full one till December. I would have to look at the details to see about grid connection fees ect.
Art

[Kim]

Ah, so you actually get to sell power back to the power company?  That's nice.

Out here, we have "net metering," where you can make more power than you use, or use more power than you make in any given month.  But at the end of the year, they total it all up, and if you used more than you made in total, you pay for that part, and they'll credit or debit your account by that amount. But if you made more power than you used in the year, you get no money back.  And you have to pay a grid connect fee every month.  Basically, you can only offset your electricity usage over the year; you can't make money on power generation as a residential customer.  My understanding is that this is because the power company can't count on your power, nor does it come when they necessarily need it.  So it kinda makes sense to me.

Kim