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Building my own solar power system

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Re: Building my own solar power system

#221

Post by SoftTalker »

KaiserPro wrote: post #90

I have a solar system in my house in london. 5kw, 13kwhr battery. I am self sufficient from end of march to october. I recently got a second hand electric car. I bought an EV plug (total fucking ripoff. its a fucking plug with a contactor, RCD and a CAN interface. no way is that worth fucking £600) It has some basic control to allow me to charge from excess solar. What is not easy to do is charge at night without dra…

If your rates can go negative you should be charging the car and house batteries at that time if possible and then selling back to the grid at peak times. Does your home assistant get real-time rate data and can it facilitate that?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#222

Post by MostlyStable »

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…

For the US, the entire user base helps subsidize rural customers. I have recently had the thought that I'm curious how this subsidy compares to the price of creating local micro-grids for rural communities. Especially in places like California where it is long distance power lines running to rural communities that have started several major fires.

I don't have the skill to do it myself, but I'd love to see an analysis of whether it would make more sense at this point to do solar/wind + batteries and backup generators for at least the smallest and most remote communities.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#223

Post by eldaisfish »

epistasis wrote: post #216
eldaisfish wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're making a big assumption here - that the demand peak coincides with the distributed generation peak. This is generally not true.

In California, the subject of my comment, it is true.

it generally isn't.

Peak demand on most electricity systems, including California's, is during the evening hours, typically between 18:00 and 21:00. This does not coincide with peak solar generation.

You can see this even as far back as 2018 via CalISO's own data. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook

Re: Building my own solar power system

#224

Post by entropicdrifter »

jorblumesea wrote: post #213
Aurornis wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s strange to me that people in rural areas pay for electricity. It makes no economic sense, at least here in the Caribbean. This comment was very confusing until I read the second sentence. Electricity prices in the Caribbean are very high, and I can only imagine that rural areas are even worse. Where I’m at in the United States a typical electric rate is around $0.10/kWh. Paying that nominal amount and avoiding…

$0.10 kwh is low for most of the US. Can I guess.... Western state or PNW?

Over here in PA I pay $0.095, so nine and a half cents, per KWh for electric supply, but then I pay that same amount for transmission, so it's functionally 19 cents per KWh, but maybe the person you're replying to isn't counting transmission fees?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#225

Post by aftbit »

BubbleRings wrote: post #200
K0balt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total cost of the system so far is about $87k, and operating cost is around 4000 a year (includes equipment amortisation, slow expansion, direct operating costs). In all, for several homes, and a farm it’s very affordable. Getting power hooked up to a single house from the utilities is about $9000, so our buildout is roughly 2x what we might have spent just to get hooked up to the grid. We do buy carefully, and a…

Thank you so much for these posts! It makes me very optimistic about the future. For the longest time we all watched from the sidelines, hoping that the desire to turn off coal-fired power plants, and research often funded by tax dollars, would get the ball moving on solar. Now that the market has its magic invisible hand on that ball, it seems clear to me we have a path out of this mess. Rant your stupid “drill baby…

Fission first! Let's build more nuclear power plants too. We know how to do it, and it's only so expensive because we got scared and stopped. Economies of scale for clean, safe, reliable baseload power.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#226

Post by epistasis »

eldaisfish wrote: post #223
epistasis wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, the subject of my comment, it is true.

it generally isn't. Peak demand on most electricity systems, including California's, is during the evening hours, typically between 18:00 and 21:00. This does not coincide with peak solar generation. You can see this even as far back as 2018 via CalISO's own data. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook

That's because residential solar is eating up the daytime peak, thus the duck curve. Residential solar is already saving the state tons of money on T&D costs.

(And becuase the Wikipedia for duck curve shows a day in October rather than a summer day where the peak is much higher, yes the annual peak does coincide with when solar is outputting a ton of power.)

Re: Building my own solar power system

#227

Post by eldaisfish »

epistasis wrote: post #226
eldaisfish wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it generally isn't. Peak demand on most electricity systems, including California's, is during the evening hours, typically between 18:00 and 21:00. This does not coincide with peak solar generation. You can see this even as far back as 2018 via CalISO's own data. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook

That's because residential solar is eating up the daytime peak, thus the duck curve. Residential solar is already saving the state tons of money on T&D costs. (And becuase the Wikipedia for duck curve shows a day in October rather than a summer day where the peak is much higher, yes the annual peak does coincide with when solar is outputting a ton of power.)

CalISO's charts disagree with you.

Gross peak demand is in the late evening, well after the solar peak. Solar noon in western California is around 13:00.

https://www.caiso.com/documents/gross-and-net-load-peaks-fac...

Re: Building my own solar power system

#228

Post by jhfdbkofdchk »

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…

reminds me of that Hunter S. Thompson quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious [solar power setup], the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”"

Re: Building my own solar power system

#229

Post by brewtide »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #224
jorblumesea wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0.10 kwh is low for most of the US. Can I guess.... Western state or PNW?

Over here in PA I pay $0.095, so nine and a half cents, per KWh for electric supply, but then I pay that same amount for transmission, so it's functionally 19 cents per KWh, but maybe the person you're replying to isn't counting transmission fees?

Similar here in Maine under CMP. Something like 12.5 cents/Kwh, but with the delivery aspect factored in it's basically 28 cents/Kwh.

I always assume when people on here are talking their 'rates', that they are usually NOT factoring in the delivery fee unless stated.

But maybe some places are just really THAT cheap.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#230

Post by gdubs »

This disabused me of the notion of doing it myself, lol. This is super impressive. Hope to one day be confident enough in electrical work. That and plumbing are the areas of home improvement that I still just would rather sub out.

But, this is such a cool article. The quotes on solar installs for some reason seem a lot higher than what you'd expect, given all the charts showing the absolute cratering of solar energy prices – but doesn't seem to work out that way when it comes to residential installations.

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