More land solves the problem most solar customers have, and creates three they have never had to think about: how far the array sits from the meter, which cooperative bills you, and what the appraisal district makes of it.
On a quarter acre the array goes where it fits. On ten acres it goes where you want it. That is the part everybody talks about.
Here is the part nobody mentions. The array has to reach your electrical panel, and that run is priced by the foot: $45 for the simplest trench.
A hundred and fifty feet is $6,750. Three hundred feet is $13,500. On acreage the difference between the pretty spot and the sensible one is routinely five figures.
So we measure the run before we quote it, and we normally give you two numbers: the spot you asked about and the spot the arithmetic likes. What ground mount solar costs in Texas
Plenty of rural properties have two services — the house on one, the shop or the well on another. Interconnection is per meter, not per property, and two of the co-ops here charge their application fee that way: Tri-County $500, Wise $250.
Which meter the array ties into decides which loads it offsets. It is the first thing we sort out, and occasionally the answer is that combining services beats running a second trench.
A well pump, a shop compressor, a barn, an irrigation set. These are why we will not size your array from a table.
We are not going to print kilowatt hours for a three horsepower submersible or a twenty horsepower pivot. Duty cycle is everything, and two identical pumps do not use the same power in a year.
We read your meter history instead — every co-op will give you twelve months of it on request, and Farmers EC tells members to ask for exactly that.
That history already contains the well, the shop and the barn in the proportions you actually use them, which beats any estimate from a nameplate rating.
Daytime loads are worth more than night-time ones on most rural utilities: what you use as you generate it is worth retail, and what you export is often worth a third of that.
A pump on a timer at 2am is costing you, and moving it is cheaper than adding panels.
Out here it is usually not a retail plan you chose. It is a cooperative, and the co-op's policy is the policy — you cannot shop it. The five in our footprint pay very different things for the same exported kilowatt hour.
Wise Electric credits produced energy at its retail rate of 11.3 cents with no monthly solar fee and a one-time $250 application per meter.
Grayson-Collin nets kilowatt hour for kilowatt hour at the full retail rate, and moves you onto a rate with a $40 monthly base charge instead of $25.
United nets at retail while you stay a net consumer over the month; tip into being a net producer and the surplus is bought at wholesale with a $25 minimum bill.
Tri-County pays avoided cost, set month to month, with a monthly minimum that credits cannot offset and a $500 application per meter.
Farmers EC does not net at all — everything exported is bought at avoided cost, around six cents by the co-op's own reckoning, plus a $5 monthly charge and a $500 application.
The rule that falls out of it is simple. Where you get retail netting — Wise, Grayson-Collin, United while you are a net consumer — build to the land and your budget, because the extra production keeps its value.
Where you get avoided cost — Tri-County, Farmers — build to your own daytime use, because a unit that leaves the property is worth a fraction of one you keep.
Your bill names the company. It is the first question we ask. What each city and co-op does
Acreage here is clay, rock or sand, and which one you have is a question about your parcel rather than your county.
Blackland clay swells wet and shrinks dry and wants a foundation below the zone that moves; rock stops a driven pile early and slows the trench; loose sand gives a pile less grip. We pull the soil survey for your address before quoting a foundation.
Then there is livestock. A ground mount sits at ground level, and a cow will use anything solid as a scratching post.
Where stock have access we fence the array, and the fence is part of the design rather than an afterthought. Ground mount vs rooftop
If your land carries an open-space agricultural appraisal, an array changes something and it is not what most solar pages tell you.
Two questions get run together. Tax Code §11.27 exempts the value of the device, so the panels do not add to your appraised value.
What it does not do is protect the land under them: open-space appraisal requires land to be currently devoted principally to agricultural use, and the array footprint, access lane and equipment pad may come out of productivity appraisal to the extent they no longer are.
There is no statewide acreage threshold and no small-array exception. The rest of the tract keeps qualifying if it independently meets the use and intensity tests, and an array on ground already outside agricultural use is a different case from one on grazed pasture.
So we say the same thing to everyone: ask your appraisal district for a written determination before you install, identifying the footprint, the equipment area, the access and the remaining grazed acreage separately.
Anybody who tells you a residential array cannot affect an ag valuation is overstating it.
They will certainly try to scratch on it.
Where stock have access we fence the array as part of the design rather than adding it later.
What we do not build is the raised twelve-foot agrivoltaic structure you see in the trade press — different product, different scale, and on a residential system it costs money without earning it.
Usually, and the constraint is which meter they are on rather than the panels.
Interconnection is per meter, so if the shop is on its own service, tying into the house meter does not offset it.
We work out which meter carries which load before sizing anything.
Four hundred to six hundred square feet for a normal house, which on five acres is a rounding error.
Space is not the constraint out here; distance is.
The trench is priced by the foot and it is the largest swing on most rural quotes.
Some do and some do not, and the difference is the biggest number on your quote.
Wise credits at its retail rate with no monthly solar fee; Grayson-Collin nets kilowatt for kilowatt; United nets while you stay a net consumer.
Tri-County and Farmers EC buy at avoided cost instead, well under retail.
The equipment does not change that; the meter does.
It can affect the appraisal of the land under it, which is a different question from the exemption on the equipment. §11.27 exempts the device's value.
Open-space appraisal asks whether the land is principally in agricultural use, so the footprint, pad and access may come out while the rest of the tract keeps qualifying.
No statewide threshold.
Get a written determination first.
No salesman. No home visit to get a number.
