[quote=AN]You don’t have to get a PV system that put you into the negative. You can get a system big enough to cover your Tier 3&4 usage. I had a Pentair Intelliflo and for most of the year, I have it on speed 2 running for 8 hours a day during the winter/spring/fall and 12 hours a day for summer. I only turn it on speed 4 for a few hours to turn on the heater. It heated my entire pool in ~4-5 hours (on the first day, 2-3 hours on subsequent days) and it last the whole day . My electricity bill without solar PV with those settings were around $150-450/month (depending on how often I use the pool heater and turning the pump on to 4. After solar, my electricity bill were around $5-90/month with similar usage.[/quote]
AN, we’re having solar contractors come out this week to give us some bids. We have a very old-school pool pump plus a second pump for the pool vacuum which, I believe, are costing us a lot of money. We would have followed OCR’s recommendation to just change that out before getting solar panels — and plan to do that eventually — but we also LOVE air conditioning, so the solar panels are pretty much a must for us.
We use very little gas, even in the winter, because we like it very, very cold, but the summer electric bills are killing us!
I was wondering if your bill, especially the one closer to $450, included any air conditioning or if it’s just the pool pump (or gas?) that runs it up so high. Also, what size solar system do you have? Anything you wish you had done differently now that you’ve had your system for awhile?
