[redpoint5]

With Oregon's net metering law, there's no financial incentive to do selfish solar. You can bank up to 1 years production and true up. Excess is donated for free. Ideally you shoot for 95% of needs and pay our cheap Oregon rates for the 5% supplemental from the grid. You'd over produce in peak summer periods, and underproduce in the winter.

A backup battery is appealing, but then again backup generators are cheap and my parents already have one.

I'd consider selfish solar if there were a financial incentive or power production were more evenly distributed about the year (Hawaii).

As a minor update, the quote for my parents ground mount included panel optimizers, and I questioned why a string inverter wasn't quoted instead. He said that his company tries to be proactive about problems in panel output, and that requires them to have panel-level monitoring. Reading between the words, I believe they are distributors for the optimizer brand, and don't get any cut from selling a string inverter...

...and as I'm typing this they called back. He gave me a legal reason I need an optimizer, and that's because we were planning to trench to the house, then run through the crawlspace to the electric meter at the far end of the house since that's the least trenching and most direct route. Oregon law requires rapid shutdown at the panel if it's on your roof, or enters a habitable building at all.

I could trench around the house to the meter and avoid that legal requirement, but then it's not as direct and involves more trenching and burrowing under a 5' wide concrete pathway.