151–160 of 355 posts
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Not sure if the identification by the PlantNet is the correct one, but you may check [1]Asparagus aethiopicus 1 https://www.backyardboss.net/asparagus-fern-guide/
Thank you, I think that's the one!
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Would imagine it's the initial cost of seeing all that up, and then the cost of maintenance. For me personally, where do you even start?
It grew organically so there was never a huge cost Really, except when we decided to build a building for The power plant because it was getting out of hand. It’s been a few thousand dollars a year in growth as we add batteries and panels. Also a bit of labor for installation of course, but we handle that in house.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would imagine it's the initial cost of seeing all that up, and then the cost of maintenance. For me personally, where do you even start?
It grew organically so there was never a huge cost Really, except when we decided to build a building for The power plant because it was getting out of hand. It’s been a few thousand dollars a year in growth as we add batteries and panels. Also a bit of labor for installation of course, but we handle that in house.
Also to be clear - good on you for building out rural off grid electrical. Its a fun project and satisfying no doubt (outaide of costa)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would imagine it's the initial cost of seeing all that up, and then the cost of maintenance. For me personally, where do you even start?
It grew organically so there was never a huge cost Really, except when we decided to build a building for The power plant because it was getting out of hand. It’s been a few thousand dollars a year in growth as we add batteries and panels. Also a bit of labor for installation of course, but we handle that in house.
Ahh, the accounting style of hobby projects. I’m very familiar with this because I do it, too.
Nothing ever feels expensive if you just never add it all up and value your time at $0 because it’s fun.
> I found three companies and gave them my PG&E usage for the past year (about 16,000 kwh) and got three quotes ranging from ~45 — 55k. Wow these rates are crazy. A 10kW setup costs you maybe €10.000 all-in here in the Netherlands. What's going on with these rates? Do they already include the ridiculous tarrifs? A new battery setup for a 20kWh LFP battery + 10 kW inverter + installation is €7000 now. And dropping, fa…
For comparison, my 10 kW solar install completed last week cost 24k CAD (15k EUR). That's just panels, inverters and installation. The incremental cost was likely in part due to the ~160% tariffs on solar panels imposed by the Canadian government, but not all.
Had it for a year now. Generated 7.7kWh which is worth $950. Took out natural gas, power bill for the entire year (heat pump, elec hot water) was $1000.
Snowy mountain town in a tight valley in BC.
In Texas, residential grid-tied solar can be up to 20kWh so I chose cells that got me to 19.96kWh
Then I added an 29kWh battery stacks (18kWh total) but each stack could go to 18kWh (36kWh total). Then I also used a pair of Generac inverters which lets me get two more stacks for 72kWh total.
My goal was resiliency, not sufficiency, so I use it grid-tied so I charge during the day and use at night. When there are storms coming, I flip it to "priority backup" which will prioritize charging.. even using the grid to do it if there's not enough sun.
Anyway, it's been in production since January '22 and my annual* electric bill is ~$1100. Even better, when we have an outage (occasional as we live in a heavily wooded area) if our stack is full, we have ~5 days of battery backup for the fridge, a handful of appliances, and our Starlink.. therefore we have safe food storage, safe food prep, and non-terrestrial communications.
Of course, this cost ~$80k to get there in 2021 (aka before crazy inflation)
I’ve been running a solar microgrid on my coffee farm for the last 7years. We started with a few golf cart batteries and 4 panels, these days we’re powering 4 houses, 7 cabins, water extraction, treatment, and RO processing, campus-wide fiber network and switches, path lighting, security systems, and a small server rack. We’re running 6 inverters on our primary system in a three phase configuration, 35kw of panels an…
Would love a write up or links to resources for water extraction and treatment if you’d oblige.
We have a fair bit of vertical scale in the terrain here. We extract our water from a shallow well in a natural crevasse between ridges. It is made of concrete blocks stacked in a circle, filled with gravel and pinned with heavy rebar. The above ground part is finished in a regular fashion, with the blocks filled with concrete and a concrete cap. The well is built of a circle of 12 blocks, and is about 16 feet deep- where we encountered hard bedrock. An underground stream flows over this bedrock, which we extract from.
This raw water is pumped to a 300 gallon manifold tank about 160 feet above the extraction point using a 1HP centrifugal pump. From there, it flows down to the processing facility, where it is sediment and carbon filtered before flowing into either the 2600 gallon cistern, or back up the hill a bit to a 450 gallon upper campus distribution tank. Water passing through the processing facility is filtered and chlorinated, with the exception of the upper campus water, which is only filtered.
The upper campus water flows to cabins in the upper campus, and also serves as the input water for the RO system. The RO source water is pressurised by another centrifugal pump to 70psi, and is fed through a pair of 150GPD membranes after being filtered to 1 micron and passed through another carbon block. We run a 4:1 “waste” ratio to give us good life on the membranes (typically a year). The mineral rich “brine” flows into the 2600 gallon cistern and is used in the regular water.
We warehouse the drinking water in a 500-gallon tank at the processing facility.
There is a dual distribution system for water on campus. From the cistern at the processing facility RO water and regular water flows through underground tubing to a network of 5 utility huts where it is distributed to various homes and outbuildings. Each building then passes the main water through another carbon block to catch chemicals and chlorine, and drinking water gets mineralization and carbon again at the point of use.
The underground distribution network also carries 3 phase power, HVDC for solar, separate fiber optic networks for security, control, intranet, and ISP, as well as cat6 cables for RS485 control subsystems. The tank levels, pump controls, power distribution and usage monitoring, emergency and automatic casualty control shutoffs, etc are all operated over rs485 and modbusTCP to a server. It’s a lot of off the shelf stuff and some custom stuff that i have built. Someday I need to do a write up on that lol.
Anyway, that’s the view from space.
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If the objective is to reduce the number of hours you're not self-sufficient for a given battery size, or reduce the size of your expensive batteries, even a couple hundred watts could make sense. https://www.amazon.com/NINILADY-Vertical-Generator-Controlle... is a 600-watt-peak wind generator, designed for 11m/s winds, for sale in the US for US$300, presumably much cheaper in countries that aren't descending into kl…
The issue is the payback is not worth the hate from your neighbors and capital cost. at least solar panels are quiet.
I'm in Texas and designed our own solar+battery setup in '21. I had an installer handle that bit and the interconnect though. I found the "secret" was the to leave room for expansion. In Texas, residential grid-tied solar can be up to 20kWh so I chose cells that got me to 19.96kWh Then I added an 2 9kWh battery stacks (18kWh total) but each stack could go to 18kWh (36kWh total). Then I also used a pair of Generac inv…
A more helpful comparison would be to see your electricity bill before and after.
For comparison, I’m in an area with low electricity rates and I don’t run A/C at the level of someone in a Texas climate. My annual electricity bill is barely higher than yours but I don’t have any solar at all. Absolute electricity bill numbers don’t translate well.