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Building my own solar power system

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Re: Building my own solar power system

#201

Post by dbetteridge »

apexalpha wrote: post #44

> 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…

Similarly in Australia I recently paid about $10k AUD (after subsidies) for 13kw of panels and a 10kw inverter.

New subsidies this year for batteries mean I can get a 15kwh battery installed for around 2-3k AUD

Re: Building my own solar power system

#202

Post by sgt »

roflyear wrote: post #181
K0balt wrote: post #144

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…

What's your farm? How can someone reach out to buy small amounts of coffee from you, say 2-3 70kg bags?

Where will the drop be?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#203

Post by jandrese »

bdcravens wrote: post #46
apexalpha wrote: post #44

> 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…

Prices were high even during the Biden administration. Markups due to subsidies are a part of it.

Costs are also high for solar installers in the US. It is a relatively dangerous job (on par with roofers) which makes health insurance premiums unaffordable. The permitting process is also quite onerous in a great many localities, involving multiple parties (your installer, the HOA, the city, the county, the power company) and multiple inspections. US installers also tend to provide generous warranty plans, 15 years parts and labor is typical, and have to make sure they have the capital to honor them. This is especially a problem as some solar hardware manufacturers have had some serious quality control issues, especially on the inverters, and have resulted in quite a lot more warranty work than was initially expected.

The other issue was just plain pent-up demand. Installers could charge what they wanted because there weren't enough of them to go around, even as everybody and their dog started their own installer business. Many of those businesses were poorly run and have since gone under, leaving the homeowners high and dry when the inverter craps out and they're told by every other installer that they will not work on someone else's install and also told by the inverter manufacturer that if they attempt to replace the hardware themselves it will result in their warranty being voided.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#205

Post by alabastervlog »

BrtByte wrote: post #77
sneak wrote: post #7

It’s a true shame that the public utility commission is so corrupt that we lose the obvious economies of scale from grid-scale installations of same in favor of expensive rent seeking by a state-sanctioned monopoly. I also have 60kWh of batteries in my kitchen, but for the average person who doesn’t want to deal with this stuff, having to admin part of the power grid is a tragic waste. If the PUC and power company we…

The fact that so many people are turning their homes into mini power plants is less a triumph of individualism and more a symptom of a broken system

Yeah nothing about home install solar + battery soundly beating utility power prices even paying retail rates for equipment and labor for years on end, as prices on the equipment falls year after year, while utility power prices keep going up makes any fucking sense.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#206

Post by ComputerGuru »

Evidlo wrote: post #185
nullpoint420 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m jealous. Where I live in California the off peak rate is $0.32/kWh and peak rates are $0.58/kWh.

$0.08/kWh here for central Illinois

Taxes and supply charges are what take it from cheap to expensive in Illinois.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#208

Post by rmu09 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #22
tralarpa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should the grid operators do with all that energy that comes in at noon on a beautiful sunny day?

Heat up molten salt, or shipping containers full of sand. It’s a surprisingly high density and cheap way to store an awful lot of energy. Don’t have sand batteries here yet, but they’re on my todo for deep storage of excess energy, which I currently just dump as heat into the air.

I don't know. Salt (NaCl) is corrosive. Specific heat capacity is not that high (about 1/5th of water per weight). Suppose you have cubic meter of molten salt at 800°C in a dewar, how do you get the heat out again?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#209

Post by ty6853 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #195
komali2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greed is a Bad attribute in basically every ethical system and religion throughout history. Capitalism, on the contrary, rewards it. The best way to be under capitalism is greedy (sneakily so, if necessary). So yes, it is uniquely new to have a value system that rewards greed.

It doesn't reward greed, it rewards value. You could just as well say national borders reward invasions.

No, greed is a necessary component. Because under capitalism both parties don't execute the trade, rationally at least, unless both are greedily better off.

Without greed it goes from a positive sum system to a destructive system because you no longer have the parties being better off from the transaction. From a cursory standpoint that might be ok (the economy won't implode if some small fraction does this like a minority of commercial activity being charity functions) but you basically lose most the information conveyed in prices and cost causing complete loss of productive allocation and it is an economic implosion.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#210

Post by GratiaTerra »

I installed a similar EG4 inverter and battery system and had a similar experience. The big problem I ran into was that EG4 inverters are NOT compatible with my state's power grid (Hawaii) but because I had so much power, it turned out I never needed to connect to the power grid but I am loosing out on selling power. (Check with your local power company before buying!).

Another problem I had was that a week after installing, one of the TIGO units burned up and started a fire that burned a hole in a solar panel. I only noticed the problem when I saw that one of the solar arrays wasn't putting out power. Replacing the defective unit solved the problem.

Also, I had assumed I would need a generator to power through consecutive days of dark clouds but I instead opted for Ford's Pro Charger Station which has a feature that allows you to power the house; no need for a generator. However, its been over a year and not once have I needed this.

My big takeaway is this: having energy abundance is the good life when you have all electric appliances. My EV (a Ford Lightning Truck), hot tub, AC, water heaters etc have been running over a year with no problems and zero costs after the initial investment.

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