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Anonymous
Going off the grid is pointless and overly expensive. Any extra energy you produce during the day gets credited to your account, and used up by night, so in effect it serves the same purpose as "holding the energy in so it's possible to use it at night." Unless of course you live off of the grid, which I highly doubt.
There is a ton of overhead cost associated with installing solar panels. You're looking at 235W for one solar panel, at roughly $1000 per panel. And you're going to need an inverter. Those run like $1 per kW for just the inverter. Solar panels produce DC and your house uses AC. The smallest system I've installed was a 14 panel system on some run-down shack of a property, and that cost them over $20k. Not sure what kind of rebates you can get from your state, but a lot of the rebates have expired already.
It would be a waste of time to just buy 1 panel. You'd still have to get an inverter, set up a single string to that inverter, dc/ac disconnects, connect to the grid, get it approved by county, ETC. ETC. ETC. WAY too much overhead cost for anything less than a 2000 Watt system, which by itself would cost like $15k.
For now, just go with the same shit people have been spouting for years.. (hold off on the dryer, turn off lights when you're not in that room, use low-energy CFL bulbs, etc.) The technology will slowly get better and cheaper, and other technologies will get introduced to compete. Now is not the time unless you have a lot of money to spare.
Hope that helped.
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