Residential Solar System (cost, pool, installing)

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I think you need to loosen you tin foil hat. It cutting off circulation.

A lot has changed like the whole raft of antitrust laws.

I think you should look into it. The us patent system is all messed up and rife with shelved patents.

How far back are you going? Patents only last 17 years. They're also public record. It there was some hot battery design that someone came up with, patented and then canned. It would be there to be dug up. Once the patent expires, its fair game.

Also, the Chinese, who've gone big into solar development, and are deep in the red on it, wouldn't play that game. If they found battery designs that would let them leverage their solar development, they do it in a second, despite any US patents that might be in place.

I too spend about $700/yr on electricity (or did anyway). I got a 5 kw system for $21k before rebates, $6.5k after rebates (most was from local energy provider). With those numbers my payback time is a bit less than 10 yrs, after that it's free energy. And for the whole 10 yrs before payback, virtually all my energy consumption is from "clean" energy.

Cheers.

I agree and I have a few dozen. The system has recently gotten itself into a mess by screwing around with software patents...a huge error. But aside from that the system is pretty straight forward.

You can still have wars over a patent...and it is reasonably difficult to really establish a clean patent.

But suppression? Nah. Old Wife's Tale.

I would point out there actually has been a lot of progress on batteries. But there still is a long way to go.

The big need is for industrial strength and size batteries and we still are not there though there has been some significant progress recently. I also hold some hope for the use of nano structures to build ultra capacitors.

But no there is far too much value in a great battery for anyone to successfully suppress it.

I am primarily on a battery system , Most of my lighting is 6 or 12 volt DC.
I use solar, and wind, and city power, and generator, to supplement.
I bought my solar panels a little at a time as I could afford them, or as special deals came up.
The beauty of solar is that they don't all have to match to contribute.
Some panels do .5 amps some 2.0 amps some 3.o amps and some 10. amps. and a few in between.
Some panels are new some are at least 40 years old .
If you by a grid link system , when the power goes down yours does too. It's not allowed to stay on. some one could get hurt .
If you build your own system with batteries and no link, you may never notice the city power going down.
Or like me I have both but they are not interconnected.
No synchronous inverter involved.
My heavy appliances are on the city and the rest on my own system.
I have welders heavy grinders, and large air compressors .
I can't run them on generators, because motors take 3-4 times the rated running amperage to start up. No job is worth jeopardizing both tools.

Where do you live? I know of no program(s) in Las Vegas that subsidize solar to the tune of $15K. If we had that sort of program here, I would very likely go for it. That is significantly more cost-effective than the last time I looked at solar a few years ago. ($25-35K to save $700 per year.)

Austin, TX. $12K was rebate from local municipal utility company. $3K was federal rebate. At the time the utility rebate was $2.50/W (March 2012). Since then the rebate has dropped to $1.25/W, though install costs have also dropped (mine was originally $4.26/W).

We're still looking at $20-30K to save $700/year. Still not worth it. Maybe someday.