Way behind

[wiredwrong]

Hello everyone, its been a while since I've visited the forum. I took the plunge this last weekend and purchased 4.2Kw of solar panels. They are 305w
Jinko panels about a year old and I got 14 panels for $750.  Under $0.18 a watt. Now the fun begins. My house and shop are on 2 different meters, I want to go grid tie on the house and off grid on the shop,  I'm thinking it might be smarter to skip battery backup on the house and AC couple the the shop and house. Basically the off grid shop acts as backup to the house. Personally id like to sell the house and go off grid completely in a small cabin but my other half wont go for that. And our power requirements are far to large with a budget that's far too small to go off grid in this house right now. Its a 3800sf house with 2 central heat and air units, not to mention the 1.5 hp well pump that gets a workout daily with showers, garden, watering animals and watering fruit trees. I'll read the forums looking for hints on how to best make use of what I've got. But id like to know.... Would you take the shop off grid 1st, or start your grid tie system first. I don't use much in the shop just 240Kwh last month, more in the winter with a heat lamps for the animal's. But it has never been more than 600kwh, the house on the other hand was 3577kwh last month.

[SparWeb]

Big picture...  You have two steps:
House to be grid tied.  Garage to be off-grid or separable.

Which one goes first may be decided by what you want the electrical inspector to see when he comes to sign off your house grid tie. 
Do you want to show off the house grid-tie system, or do you want to show house grid-tie AND the in-progress work on the garage attached (sometimes) to it?
If you know what I mean...

You got a smoking deal on those panels, and if I were you I would get the maximum advantage of the grid-tying process with as many of them as you can.  They won't be enough though, to offset all your usage, just a part of it.  You use in 2 months what I use in a whole year.

[wiredwrong]

The man I got them from had nearly a 1000 panels left for sale, im hoping for an even better deal on my next trip.

[richhagen]

If they are in good shape and the ones with the MC4 connectors I see listed from them, 17 to 18 cents a Watt is an awesome deal.  If you want to grid tie, I would do that first for the reasons that Sparweb already alluded to.  Such a system is also much cheaper per Watt on a depreciation basis as the batteries currently represent a rather large portion of the ongoing expenses of such a system.  Rich

[DamonHD]

Here with my family of four and a PV system a little over 5kWp, gross electricity consumption was a little under 2000kWh for the YEAR, PV generation a little under 4000kWh for the year, and even with some storage a bit less than half our gross demand was imported from the grid.

http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity-2019.html

Under lockdown, with some good weather and the ability to match more loads to when the sun was out, self-consumption reached nearly 90%.

It's hard to match grid pricing and convenience!

Rgds

Damon

[bigrockcandymountain]

That is pretty much the best deal ever on panels.  If it was me and money was an object, (isnt it always)  I would forget buying anything until I bought as many of those cheap panels as I could ever possibly use.  And then I would buy twice that many. 

Then I would buy the inverters etc when budget allows.  You use a huge amount of power, so don't be afraid to put up lots of panels. 

[SparWeb]

The man I got them from had nearly a 1000 panels left for sale, im hoping for an even better deal on my next trip.

<evil>
You gonna share his phone number?
nudge, nudge, wink, wink...
</evil>

Just kidding.  Posting other peoples' phone numbers on the internet is not kind, of course.