- Offsetting your personal electrical consumption. By displacing a portion your electric power with the array, you may be impacted less by future rate changes. Under this scenario, it’s important to size the system to match your electrical needs without oversizing the system.
- Managing future electrical costs. If electricity costs are a substantial element of your monthly costs (e.g. livestock farming), you may be considering a solar energy system as a hedge against unknown future costs. By purchasing a solar energy system to supply a portion of your own electrical power needs, you will incur an upfront cost; but you become somewhat immune to the unknown potential electrical rate changes (which may go up or down) over the life of the system.
- Creating a new revenue stream. If this is your goal, it’s critical that you visit with us to understand what your bill will look like after the array is connected to the grid. In addition, you’ll want to understand how the array may impact your usage rate and monthly service charge and how you’ll be compensated for excess generation.
- Going off the grid. Under this scenario, designing your solar array will require prudent sizing with energy storage to provide electricity when the solar array is not generating power. Additionally, you will need to become an active manager of your energy consumption to balance your power needs with the capabilities of the solar array and energy storage device. Adding an energy storage device will significantly increase the cost of the solar system. Most commonly, solar arrays are connected to the grid so that the member-owner can use the grid to supplement times when the array isn’t producing enough to match energy needs or to export excess power.
- Being an environmental steward. You may want to enhance your commitment to the environment by generating your electricity with a renewable energy source rather than relying on co-op power that may be partially generated with fossil fuels.
- Providing a backup power source. A solar array alone cannot serve as a reliable backup power source as it sits idle when the sun is not shining and generates at reduced levels during cloudy and non-peak (early morning and overnight) periods. The addition of energy storage to your solar array may provide a limited backup source of power.
Find more information on this topic and other important considerations in a new solar guide that Iowa’s electric cooperatives developed in collaboration with the Iowa Energy Center. Download the full guide here. As always, ECI REC is available to answer your questions.