I am showing just 1800 kWh out of one rack-set of 6 panels in nine months. Working the math, that's $234 worth of electricity at the local rates, or about the price of one of those 6 panels, for a 5.4 year payout per rack, considering *only* the panel costs, but also - I don't use all I get, the system sits around in "float" quite a lot - so if I was more agressive about using all I can, I'd have a quicker effective payout.
When I started this. way back in the day, it was calculated at 30 years+, and people thought I was nuts. The thing is, electricity was cheaper then - 9c a kWh instead of the current 13c, and panels have become WAY cheaper per watt.
I'll just have to start using more power, I suppose. What a terrible situation to be in! In fact, today, I'm actually using solar power to -electrically- heat my home since I "have it to burn and it's wasted falling on the ground if I don't". Honestly, I never thought I'd see that day. Sure, I'll have to turn off the couple of 1.5kw heaters at some point this afternoon, but by then the place will be "too warm" and I won't have to start a fire or turn on a propane heater till around 9pm, which will take me to the morning again.
Makes me kinda wish the Volt had a larger battery to charge with this - It's full and no place to put more power right now, I'm just making heat with it...it's toasty in here now, and as a skinny guy, by the time I'm comfortable, most people are sweating.
I'm very happy with how this lashup is working. While I don't have any panels that move to track the sun, what I did was have some optimized for winter, and some for summer, with one rack of each sort in parallel on the same controller. Theoretically, this would exceed the controller's ratings, but actually it doesn't since one set is near-vertical and the other near-horizontal, there is actually no way both racks/controller are putting out all they can - either both are more or less half, or one is maxed out and the other doing very little.
Since we only finished this just ahead of winter, we don't have a year's worth of data yet...more to come, but there's hardly any chance that summer will be worse.