There are solar companies out there who will tell you that when you go solar, you can crank the AC whenever you want. They will suggest that you have 40 electronic devices running all at once and buy a second fridge for the garage. They’ll even claim it doesn’t make a difference if you shut the lights off or not because your solar panels will produce more energy than you will ever need. These are all actual claims taken directly from a real solar advertisement, word for word. Could they be telling the truth?
I posted a blog a while back talking about Solar Spam. That is exactly what this is.
So can your solar panels produce more energy than you’ll ever need? The answer is yes, they hypothetically could, but naturally you will have to pay for the number of solar panels that will make that possible.
When you go solar with a legitimate solar company, your current use of electricity is taken into account. Why you ask? Because the system size you install should ideally match exactly what your energy usage will be. We use the bar graph on your utility bill to get a snapshot of your last 6–12 months of kilowatt hours, and anticipate any changes to your energy usage moving forward. From there, we add up your past electricity usage and average sun hours to determine your finished system size. This means when you go solar, the goal is to install a solar electric system that will comfortably replace your dependency on the utility company. If you wanted much more energy than that, you would have to purchase more panels and that will obviously cost more.
The sun is truly the most abundant source of energy in our entire solar system. It really does produce far more energy than we will ever need. But the technology we have in this day to effectively capture this mega star’s charge and store it for later use does have its limits like all technology. And it does cost manufacturing companies to run the machines, manually test the efficiency of every panel, and ship the materials to excited homeowners ready to be energy independent.
The next time a solar company tells you that solar panels are a license to waste energy, now you know they are selling you solar spam. Solar technology has come a long way in the last 50 years, especially over the past decade. But all power generation comes with a price. Thankfully when you go solar that price is cut dramatically and, in some cases, almost completely.
by Ged Friedman