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Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

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Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#131

Post by wallace_f »

24gttghh wrote: post #93
wallace_f wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states wont even allow you to collect your own rain water to drink it.

There only appears to be a single state (Colorado) where collecting rainwater is strictly regulated,[0] and in most states (31) it is not illegal/no regulation/even encouraged. A further 9 states regulate and encourage rainwater collection, and then Texas provides incentives to do so. The remaining 5 states simply have regulations around rainwater collection. [0] https://energy.gov/eere/femp/rainwater-harvesting-regu…

Thanks for the link. I had come across this link [0], where:

>Both Texas and Ohio allow the practice for potable purposes, which is frequently excluded from other states’ laws and regulations

Also there it notes most Western states disallow or regulate it.

From your link any state that says water rights are regulated, as far as I can tell means water rights exist seperately from property rights, and typically belong to the state.

Anyways it is not as bas as I had believed.

0-www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/rainwater-harvesting.aspx

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#132

Post by post_break »

ams6110 wrote: post #100
kbutler wrote: post #97

Hysterical article is hysterical? The actual laws are more reasonable: "Renewable generator systems connected to the grid without batteries are not a standby power source during an FPL outage. The system must shut down when FPL's grid shuts down in order to prevent dangerous back feed on FPL's grid. This is required to protect FPL employees who may be working on the grid." Note the "without batteries" exclusion a sim…

It sounds reasonable but the way to do this is with a device called a transfer switch. It's used on any proper installation of local power such as a home generator. When the utility power is out, the transfer switch cuts over to local power. There is no feedback to the outside power lines; the transfer switch disconnects them. Are home generators illegal also?

My gf's parents have this. They can back feed into the house by disconnecting the power lines. From what I understand the utility companies still do not like working on lines when they hear generators because some people do not isolate and can back feed into the grid somehow. At least that's what I've been told.

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#133

Post by _dingus »

yardie wrote: post #22
oconnore wrote: post #8

The article is trying so hard it's hard to tell what the actual issue is. It is dangerous to backfeed the grid -- you may kill the line worker coming to fix a blown transformer or downed line. In some places a grid connection is considered necessary by the building code. If so, you must use proper equipment.

Read the law. It is illegal to have a home not connected to the grid at all. so there is no danger about a backfeed since the 2 systems never meet. What FPL has done is require that solar installations get signed off by their electricians. And they delay, delay and delay that certification process. Meanwhile, you are paying for the cells and installation and it sits unused indefinitely. Some local power companies had…

I think you need to read the law. Nothing in the law requires you to be connected to the grid. Local laws and rules may require you to be connected to the grid to obtain a certificate of occupancy, but I have found no Florida state law requiring you to be hooked up to a power grid.

The law that is consistently referenced in these mostly conspiracy blogs is just a set of rules regarding offsetting your power consumption from a utility company with a renewable energy generator. It requires you to have a switch that they can access. The articles like this one https://boingboing.net/2017/09/18/rep-ray-rodrigues.html from Cory Doctorow, a Canadian, fundamentally misunderstand the law. They extrapolate from this sentence "Customer-owned renewable generation shall include a utility-interactive inverter, or other device certified pursuant to paragraph (4)(b) that performs the function of automatically isolating the customer-owned generation equipment from the electric grid in the event the electric grid loses power." that you have to shut off your power if the grid loses power. That's fucking nonsense and a complete misreading of that rule. All it requires if that you have a switch that the power company can use to disconnect your power generating house from the grid so that their linemen don't die when they are doing maintenance on a line.

I invite you to find anywhere in this law or any other Florida state law that says you must be connected to the power grid.

https://www.flrules.org/gateway/RuleNo.asp?ID=25-6.065

>What FPL has done is require that solar installations get signed off by their electricians.

No, what the state has done is required that if you're going to hook up to the grid to supplement your solar installation, you should do it safely. Of course FPL and the other utility companies have lobbied to benefit their bottom line, but spreading misinformation is not beneficial in the fight against them. It muddies the waters so that no one even knows what to fight against.

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#134

Post by ams6110 »

post_break wrote: post #132
ams6110 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds reasonable but the way to do this is with a device called a transfer switch. It's used on any proper installation of local power such as a home generator. When the utility power is out, the transfer switch cuts over to local power. There is no feedback to the outside power lines; the transfer switch disconnects them. Are home generators illegal also?

My gf's parents have this. They can back feed into the house by disconnecting the power lines. From what I understand the utility companies still do not like working on lines when they hear generators because some people do not isolate and can back feed into the grid somehow. At least that's what I've been told.

Some people do stupid things like plugging a generator into a wall socket to feed the house without a transfer switch. I would be wary too if I were a utility worker.

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#135

Post by ortusdux »

kbutler wrote: post #126
ams6110 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds reasonable but the way to do this is with a device called a transfer switch. It's used on any proper installation of local power such as a home generator. When the utility power is out, the transfer switch cuts over to local power. There is no feedback to the outside power lines; the transfer switch disconnects them. Are home generators illegal also?

The last item in the link I provided requires: "All renewable energy systems that do not utilize a U.L. 1741 listed inverter to feed power to FPL require a manual, visual load break disconnect switch" The UL 1741 specification describes inverters that do precisely that switching function ( https://www.homepower.com/articles/solar-electricity/equipme... ) So basically, "You have to install a safe system that won't fry…

My generator backup system has this. The generator is fed into the box and routed through a breaker. This breaker will only switch on if the mains is off. In addition to safety, it just make sense to not dump your generator's energy into the grid.

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#136

Post by CamperBob2 »

ams6110 wrote: post #134
post_break wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gf's parents have this. They can back feed into the house by disconnecting the power lines. From what I understand the utility companies still do not like working on lines when they hear generators because some people do not isolate and can back feed into the grid somehow. At least that's what I've been told.

Some people do stupid things like plugging a generator into a wall socket to feed the house without a transfer switch. I would be wary too if I were a utility worker.

As an aside, I find it hard to believe those people work on lines without shorting them out. That would be like cleaning a gun without unloading it first. I'd need to see some actual statistics on electrocution hazards due to backfeed before I sign on to this particular moral panic.

Frankly, I don't think the utilities consider backfeed to be as dangerous to their workers as it is to their business models. It's not in their financial interest to compete with their own customers.

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#138

Post by sctb »

kbutler wrote: post #97

Hysterical article is hysterical? The actual laws are more reasonable: "Renewable generator systems connected to the grid without batteries are not a standby power source during an FPL outage. The system must shut down when FPL's grid shuts down in order to prevent dangerous back feed on FPL's grid. This is required to protect FPL employees who may be working on the grid." Note the "without batteries" exclusion a sim…

Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.iflscience.com/policy/illegal-power-home-solar-pa....

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#139

Post by ensignavenger »

ams6110 wrote: post #100
kbutler wrote: post #97

Hysterical article is hysterical? The actual laws are more reasonable: "Renewable generator systems connected to the grid without batteries are not a standby power source during an FPL outage. The system must shut down when FPL's grid shuts down in order to prevent dangerous back feed on FPL's grid. This is required to protect FPL employees who may be working on the grid." Note the "without batteries" exclusion a sim…

It sounds reasonable but the way to do this is with a device called a transfer switch. It's used on any proper installation of local power such as a home generator. When the utility power is out, the transfer switch cuts over to local power. There is no feedback to the outside power lines; the transfer switch disconnects them. Are home generators illegal also?

Is that the actual law/regulation, or just the FPL guideline? Also, wouldn't a transfer switch make this irrelevant, as the system is no longer 'connected to the grid'?

Re: Florida Power and Light: Regulations for home solar installations

#140

Post by Caveman_Coder »

tpxl wrote: post #43
ComputerGuru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have the back feed issue. Sooner or later, someone is going to have to do maintenance on that new grid you just created.

Disconnect the grid on both ends of the issue, fix it, then reconnect?

The problem is that utility company distribution system operators can issue clearances (ensuring a de-energized state) on their systems disconnects, but not on individual home system disconnects. Its not a tough problem to work around though, all the troublemen would have to do is to ensure the line is dead before installing their shorts and grounds, if the line wasn't dead, they'd stop work and figure out which network was backfeeding the line they were trying to work on.
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