I'm in Ohio. I like to do surplus / liquidation sales as a side gig. I'll buy a small lot of stuff here and resell it over time. Well, I found a pretty massive lot of solar panels for sale (3 megawatts!) and was giving serious thought to buying them and reselling them over time, turning my side gig into a full blown part time job as it would require renting a warehouse and everything. Well, the gears kept turning and I finally thought - what if I bought land and installed the panels and sold the power? Even ignoring the fact that it's solar power, it looks like wholesale electricity sells for about $.05/kwh around here and you get an effective 4.26 hours per day of sunlight. My math shows:
3 mw x 1,000 mw/kw x 4.26 hrs/day = 12,780 kwh/day x $.05/kwh = $639/day x 365 = $233,235.00/year
Now, the panels are probably going to set me back about $400,000+ after shipping and handling. I've found a 15 acre site about 1 mile from a substation with high tension lines on it with an asking price of $150,000. Beyond that I start to get a little hazy. Engineering, permits, installation costs - how do I research that? There's an Ohio Power Siting Board that reviews appropriateness for power generation facilities but it doesn't appear to apply to a project this small. (It applies to wind above 5mw and everything above 50mw.)
Who do I sell the power to, and how do I reach those people? Is it as simple as telling AEP, I'd like to connect my solar panels to your grid, here's some wires? (I assume not!)
This is all obviously very preliminary. I'm just intrigued and would love to find out if anyone has input.