Solar Panel Install 10 Months Later - is it worth it?

[Music] Mark here, my wife Tara, and welcome to the 10acre Woods. Tara's got her little wagon. I love my wagon. This is her uh crazy bins wagon. The crazy bins wagon. So, she takes it in uh and does her uh her shopping on dollar days. We're going to head out and do the feeding, but first I want to go over the solar panels. So, we installed the solar panels a 10 I think it's a 10.58 kowatt. Uh we installed those last October, turned them on. Uh we've been monitoring them. So, um a lot of you had asked about the solar panels. Are they worth it? How much do they cost? What do they produce? What's the impact? Um so, I'm going to go over all of that. So, this is our solar array. We chose to put it on the ground because of course we have 10 acres here. Uh and our shingles on the roof are now 16 years old and we're kind of playing with the idea of replacing them uh this year maybe or next year. So of course you put panels on there, you got to remove them. If you're in the city, well then really you don't have the room to do it. So, if you're looking at that, I would first look at your shingles. So, this is a 10.56 kowatt uh theoretical. Now, when I say theoretical, um it is 8 kW to the panel. So, you're going to have some conversion from DC to AC. There's going to be some loss in the line. So if you are looking at solar then think of that as well. You're going to have some loss. Uh now we put this in last October and I do have some data here uh which you guys have kind of asked for and uh I've been waiting this long to get a good uh sense of where I'm at. So this is kind of a a halfyear. We'll call it a sixmonth uh because I've got data for the six months of the year. Uh so if you want the technical information, I'll put all the information down in the um description of all the equipment. Uh the inverters are called Hoy Miles is the company and the solar panels are QC cell. Uh they are actually what are they? They're Q peak duo uh solar panels. So they're 480 watts. Again, this is all theoretical. Uh there's 22 of them. Uh 480 watts, which comes to the 10.56. So, what is interesting is my sister, who lives in Calgary, lives in the city, also installed solar panels, and we both installed what's called an Emporia Energy system. So, I did go over that in another video. uh that system actually gets hooked up to your panel. Uh you can buy it online or you can go into Home Depot sells them. If you're looking at solar, there's going to be there's a lot of variance there. There is how much do you pay for your power? Here in Manitoba, we pay uh 9.8 cents per kilowatt hour, I believe it is. Uh my sister in Calgary pays 8 and a half I think it is. But then she has a co-op system and you can switch your power over to buying and selling through the co-op system which is 30 cents per kilowatt hour. Uh but of course you're buying it at 30 cents and you're selling it at 30 cents. So apparently you can switch back and forth. So check in your area for what there is available for power companies. Here in Manitoba, we just have Manitoba Hydro. Uh that's it. So I'm kind of stuck with that. So I've got numbers here and I'll throw these charts up here on the screen. And you can see the green is what I've sent out to grid. The orange is what I've brought in from grid. And the blue is uh used from my solar production. Now the next chart here you can see is quite different. I've only got a couple months. This is my sister's information. Uh but you can see her green is really high compared to what she uses. So keeping in mind in the city she has natural gas. Out here in the country we have electric. So, we're also a farm versus a house in this city. So, we have a a pond pump that runs at 750 watts. So, that is 75 kilowatt per hour. So, that pump uh uses if you run the calculation uh it uses about six I think it's 16 kilowatt 7 and around 16 kilowatts of power per day. So, it costs, you could say, around $16 a day just to run that. Of course, my sister lives in the city, doesn't have any of those things. She doesn't have air conditioning. Um, so that is probably the bottom end you would look at. Uh, mine is for residential, small farm is at the higher end, right? live in the country, use electric heat, have um a pond pump and a fountain and and all these things. We have air conditioning, so ours is at the higher end. Now, what is the buyback, right? How long will it take you to pay for the system? So, I just spent the last two hours on my on the phone with my sister uh getting information and just doing some chatting. We haven't talked in a while. Uh, and so she has a 4.51 kilowatt, so a little less than half my 10.56. Uh, my buyback calculation is roughly about 15 years it's going to take to buy it back or to pay it off. The panels do have a 25 year life expectancy, although they do drop from 100% down to about 80% efficiency over that time period. Uh my sisters will likely be around the same. Her buyback is about 10 years. So the the big reason there for the difference is I have a ground array and of course the installation of this and support system and piles that get driven in. There's some more costing there. Uh if you have it on your roof then there's a little less costing. They'll put uh rails on and they'll install the panels to those rails. But the con of that is what I mentioned before is your shingles. So, when you have to replace your shingles, of course, your solar panels are going to have to all come off and then get reinstalled. So, keep that in mind. Uh, so that's kind of an update there on um the the two different scales of, you know, where do you fit in that? Do you live in the city? Do you have natural gas? Do you heat with electric? There's a lot of factors there. Now, I do have another chart here that I pulled from uh my Manitoba Hydro app and it shows this year to last year on what I've used. So on this you can actually see there the green line is last year's usage and the blue line is the current year. So this is information about what I have pulled from the grid. So, of course, the line for this year, the blue line, is lower because I haven't had the need to pull that much from the grid. So, it kind of gives you an idea there. I'm not going to be a net zero home unless I put a couple more of these solar arrays out. And even then, it's going to be really tough because winters here in Manitoba, we're quite north. uh we don't get a lot of sun, so you would have to have quite a bit of power backed up in a battery bank. And if you're thinking about battery banks, they can be quite expensive for a larger battery bank to be able to sustain through a Manitoba winter, and it's just not really worth it. The buyback on it is going to be so far out, I'm just not even going to look at that. However, I did think about putting in um maybe a heat pump system which can lower that cost of my electric furnace. Uh you can install a boiler system if you have lots of wood. We have done wood burning years ago. We've kind of got to the point where we're like, nah, we're we're kind of done with the wood burning part of it. Uh but you can cut down your cost significantly by looking at your heating systems. Um, so that's that section there. The other information is, and again, I'll put all this down in the comments or in the description, sorry. Um, the technical information on that, and with a battery bank, you can get away with a little bit of battery backup. So, what I did is I went and I bought a anchor uh power bank. So, it is a two I think it's a 2 kilowatt power bank. Uh, so it will hold as much power. You know, if you have a power outage, and that was the biggest thing. Power outage, we've had them. We don't have them very often. Do you get a generator? If we have a generator, then you'd have to have gas in it or or drain it each time. And when you get a power outage, you and there's a bunch of factors in there. So, when I saw this anchor system, uh, I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to have some battery backup. And they actually do have whole home battery backup systems. So again, you know, however much battery backup you want, you're going to have to pay, you know, so much for that. It's going to be it's going to be an investment for sure. But you could be off-rid, especially if you're in a warmer, more southern climate, uh, and use these battery backups as your, uh, buffer, uh, during times where you don't really have as much sun. So, that's it. Um, if you have any questions at all, please leave them down in the comments section. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Uh, now it's time to get to the feeding of the animals. Well, good morning, Pepper. I like him. So, Pepper came in last weekend, so he's been kind of hanging out here in the barn, checking things out. Uh, very friendly. And of course, Tank Jr., they've been talking to each other on either side of the uh the fence, the netting eggs. Morning egg haul. Uh not as big as the afternoon or evening egg haul. So something that uh went on yesterday. So it's been an extremely hot Labor Day weekend so far. Uh yesterday was well it was it registered at about 30° C. The humidex was way above that probably 38 39 which would be over 100° F. And today we're supposed to get the same thing. We got the same thing on Friday. So, Friday, Saturday, and today, Sunday, holiday Monday, uh, rainy it's supposed to be, but you can never go by what the um, yeah, you can never go by what the uh, the forecasters say. I don't know. They they seem to be more wrong than right nowadays. I remember years ago, you know, you could rely on the weather. And I don't know if it's the the the weather people or if it's just the weather. I I don't know. All right. So, Terra's getting some apples together for the animals. She'll get some grains. Uh and then uh Oh, you got cherries, right? And then we'll give that all to the animals. So, uh yesterday you had a petting farm in St. Malow, Manitoba, which is uh very friendly town. An hour about an hour an hour a bit right around right around that uh south of us. Beautiful. Like I mean even St. Pierre when you drive through up to St. Mallow, it's very uh like if you get an Airb Airbnb up there or something like it's a very fun field town like uh both St. Pierre and St. Ming like a tourist little nice little shops along the way and people are very friendly. It was a street bash and uh we had no problems with wasps until because we were drinking water, right? But then somebody came around with a bin of like iced teas and Gatorade and stuff. So we're like, "Oh, well, we'll have an iced tea." And all of a sudden, wasps showed up like we're like, "Guzzle the iced tea, get rid of it, back to water." And they all disappeared. Like it was it was Yeah, it's wasp season and it is fly season. So, you can see Terra's got her fly traps here. We've got them God, I need new ones. stationed around the farm. Um I went actually yesterday and uh treated the ponies with the horse spray. Uh I I looked in there and I saw that they were just kept on their head back and forth and twitching. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to go and and give them a little relief. So I was collecting um acorns from the trees out there. And I was uh befriending them before the spray or and I would I anticipated that was going to happen. So I would give them some and then I would kind of walk alongside of them and slowly uh spray. And it's the sound Yes. of the spray bottle that gets them and startles them. Uh Meadow actually wasn't so bad. She was a little jumpy, but she she loves the smell of it. Does she? Yeah. So, um Yeah. So, Terra was at the farm yesterday. She took her best friend Jerry. Yes. And they hung out. Jerry's a city girl. Jerry's a city girl, but she's she's pretty good. She She's not afraid. She tackled Tuck. Tuck tried to get in through the the far gate and she she tried to grab grab him and it was funny. It was funny. But she does. She She'll do it. And then yesterday, Tiana, Marlene, and I um took on there were 70 people uh that came out. It was a um indigenous group that went forage s a sage class. They're from uh northwestern Ontario, Fort Francis, Ontario. I'm not sure where this sage class was. I'm thinking it's 302. There's a there there is an indigenous uh learning center there. So So then they came out here and they had a barbecue. They spent uh about 3 hours uh out here and it was 70 of them. Just over 70 you did. And um yeah, they really enjoyed it. Of course, you always have some of the kids. Oh, there's always some of the troublemakers that want to pick up a stick and run around the yard with the animals. And of course, we don't allow that. So, but everything went well. Um so, it all went good. Everybody had a great time. That's why I left Tiana and Marlene here, cuz they're not afraid to tell the kids. dropped his dick and they left a little early. So, uh it was 3:00 they were supposed to leave. They actually Oh, is it? Yeah, they were actually out by4 to 2. There was They were all gone. So, so that was nice. So, they were in and out, did their business, and then headed back to where they came. Let's see. Almost forgot. We got cherries that also go to the animals. Uh, so these are donated to us. They're past their prime. Uh, so we got a bunch in. These ones are frozen and pitted. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't feed we don't feed anything to our animals that we would not put in our own mouth. Yeah. So we go through and we sort them because some of them do have some growth on them and we throw those out and um and then we we pit them which is quite the uh quite the challenge. Yes. And then all the bad ones we um yeah we put out in our future orchard and we're going to see what happens there with uh with growth. So we've got these frozen ones, no pits. Uh we've got some that aren't frozen that are going in with the chickens. They do have pits. Woo. Uh but of course um there's no concern with the chickens and the pits. It's the animal pits and they just can't eat too many. Yeah. So can already feel the heat out here. It's uh I think it's 20° right now, but that sun is hot. Uh, no more smoke here in Manitoba. So, haven't seen any smoke for a while. So, I think the uh I haven't checked the updates on the forest fires. Oh, Charlie. Um, but um I I did take a look at some satellite imagery uh and uh yeah, it looks like everything's kind of under control now, which is great because we had a very smoky start to the summer. Come on, Charlie. Back up. Yep. No, you're going the other way. The apple for Barry. Hi, Barry. He love the petting farm. Oh, yes. Barry went to the petting farm. No, you're not going to have your apple right now. Okay. Right. Well, all the apples went over here, Charlie. He's going to go around and he's going to He'll He'll eat all the apples first and then he'll play around with the grains. Look at Taco. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now he's moving. It's a race. Who can eat more apples? Oh, that's Nester. Good boy. Yeah. Get out. H he's a slow eater, right? Dainty. So is uh Onyx. Onyx is a little slow. So we do have uh open farm today and it's uh we're open up in just over an hour. So, we want to make sure we feed these guys, especially little piggy here, Charlie, because um when he's eating, he's not very pettable. He He's like, "Get away from me. I am eating. I got a job to do." And he'll he'll kind of grunt. So, it takes him about an hour to get through. Get Yeah, he's got some oats on him. takes him about an hour to to get through, have his breakfast, then he's good for the day. So, the other thing I've been working on, and this is something that's come up a while ago, is AMSR. I forget what it stands for, but it's an audio. It's listening to things, and uh people use it when they go to bed. They put on a tape of the of the beach, of the wind, or whatever it is. Um, even just sounds of like Tara watches. I I don't know if this is AMSR. I guess it could be. Uh, is the lawnmower guy, you know, we watch those. I've sat down and watched them. This guy's got it sped up and he's mowing this lawn of this old lady who can't go out and and maintain her yard. Uh, so he goes and and does a video on it. And really it's just him mowing the lawn at like five times speed kind of thing and you get the before and after. So, uh, some of you have mentioned, uh, it was a couple years ago or a year ago and then just more recently um, a lot of you live in the city and you don't get to hear the sounds of of the farm. So, without me talking, right? So, what I've done, I got to put this all together. I did like four four or five clips. Uh got one in the morning, kind of one midday, actually two midday, just different areas, and then one kind of in the evening. So, I'm going to put all that together. I think it's probably about 45 minutes or so. Um I want you guys to watch that. It'll probably come out midweek or something this week. Uh watch that and and see what you think and and tell me what your favorite kind of clip is. Um I have an idea on what the best is. You can hear the cars drive by on the highway, which is a reason why I kind of shied away from it. But then I live out here and I'm, you know, I'm maybe a little more picky. It's like, ah, those pesky cars driving by. You know, maybe you guys living in New York City with horns and and honking and construction. I guess it's not it's not that bad that a car drives by every couple minutes. So, uh, so anyway, watch for that. Uh, I'll likely be putting that out sometime this week. And let me know your thoughts on it. Put comments in that desri in that description in that comment section. Uh, about what your favorite kind of section is cuz I'd be interested in that. And what I can then do is do like an hour long of that particular um, scene. [Music] And hay time. Nibble for afternoon. Yeah, George is right on that. Usually brown ones are That's turbo. That's turbo. Turbo, are you losing weight? Hi, Bron Wendy. Yeah, the hay's in there. She's still pretty skittish. She loves her hay. Here you go. Go on in. All right. There's George there. [Music] Okay. Um, so what what are you trying to scare me? Is that supposed to be scary? I guess to a lot of people it is, but I know that if I walk towards you, you're just going to walk away, which is what you want to do with geese. You do not want to run away from geese cuz that's when you get those viral videos of people getting chased. Uh, okay. So, getting back to um we've got ducks that sit on eggs and a lot of it happens in this area here, the muscoi ducks. And we have a first. So, we came Oh, Tiana came in here and she uh saw this barrel. And would you look at that? Hi. You are sitting, aren't you? Hi. You can see kind of the eggs there right on the edge there, the bottom. And we gave Oh, she needs some water. We'll have to give her some more water in there. She got food. You've got water. Duck. Tiana. Our barrel duck. She needs a little bit of water in there. She's dry, right? She can get out. Of course, the young won't be able to get out, but we actually have somebody that wants some ducks. So, this is a perfect opportunity. Uh, we're going to let her hatch them out. And then we're probably going to move them into a safer area. And what I've done is I've put a camera up here so we can keep an eye on her and find out how she is doing. Right. Yes. We'll get you some water right away. Well, the hose is right there. Yeah. Hose is right here. I had it yesterday. I had a incident with a rooster and we're hooked. Can you go un am I gra Yeah. No, we're just hooked. Uh I had an incident with a rooster yesterday. So, I needed uh I needed some water to uh No, there's nothing in there for you, tank. Here, you do. Yeah. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I know. That's That's Got me. Here, you take it cuz it's got a twist to it. And I'm going to spray somebody. There we go. Yeah, you have to kind of go cuz she'll I would have gone in from the other this side and just placed it down on the edge. Okay, there we go. There's the eggs. I know they're doing it out of love. Yeah. All right, we'll leave you be. Come on, Tank. Leave her alone. She's like, I think there's something I want in there, though. Okay. So, Terra's going to do the feeding further over. We're going to do the feeding over there, guys. Yeah, they'll get it. They'll understand. Come on. Oh, there you go. Go see mom. There we go. Okay. Ah, the two little ones. They're the first ones out the gate. Yep. Single file. Good job. Oh no, Astrid's going to break. [Applause] You can see their path. You go through uh the back and you can see where the animals normally go because it's just all worn down. All right, there we go. And shorty like always coming up the rear. All right, so that's it for this video. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions about the farm or about the solar itself, please leave them down in the comments section. And we hope to see you in the next video. Take care, have a wonderful week, and we'll see you then. Bye. [Music]