Suspect it would have been cheaper to invest money in upgrading the homelab and aircon to more efficient. Not downgrade, but rather moving to newer lith nodes etc. Tackling the usage before bigger battery system often makes sense
Building my own solar power system
231–240 of 355 posts
Re: Building my own solar power system
#232> 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…
I posted above about the price because when we've gotten quotes – and this is over a year back – they were really high! Not sure what the deal is because the graphs all show the cost of green electricity cratering; but somehow on the residential side of things here in the U.S – even in rural areas with very relaxed restrictions – it's super pricey!
Re: Building my own solar power system
#233Pretty cool. I'd love to get into solar DIY but it seems pretty daunting. I moved in to a place recently with an (apparently very old) 7kW rooftop solar system without a battery, and I called the original installer to talk about what my options are if I wanted to expand it, either adding more watts or adding a battery. The overall take-away from talking to the installer was that it wasn't worth it because my existing system uses some different, older technology, and that making any substantial improvements to it would change my "NEM" whatever that means. The way I understand it, it would move me into some other, more expensive regulatory regime. I don't know--my head was spinning after the conversation, and I was basically convinced to just ignore the system I have and not touch it.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you believe that the invisible hand of the market doesn't work
I'm not sure government incentives allow the free market to do its work, then. Why would you think it would?
government incentives help to reduce the externalities
You seem to think that two companies selling product A will rather sell 50 for $10 per unit profit than 100 for $9 per unit profit because it's easier.
I mean, it's a view, sure.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mi…
Do note that nothing in this system incentivizes behaviour that creates societies that could last, say, several hundred years.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#236I’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 analysi…
Australia has just completed 5 years of feasibility studies on this:
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/energy/programs/regional-remote-co...
and moved to the pilot phase:
https://arena.gov.au/funding/rmp/
A review of some of the feasability studies carried out in phase one:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962...
Re: Building my own solar power system
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
What should the grid operators do with all that energy that comes in at noon on a beautiful sunny day?
Pump it to the storage. Building something like https://www.energyvault.com/products/g-vault-gravity-energy-... is impossible for a home owner. But the country scale energy provider can build such thing.
Technically almost all homes have a wonderful energy storage system already -- their hot water heater tank.
One can imagine a setup where you've got a hot water tank and a mixing valve that allows you to heat your water up to some very high temperature and then mix that down to "safe" hot water for the house. Have that run in "heat from grid if below this threshold, otherwise conditionally heat with surplus energy if the water's below this temperature"
Re: Building my own solar power system
#238Wow, what a fantastic write-up—thanks for sharing this! I’m a San Jose homeowner (and PG&E sufferer) with a homelab that pulls over 1 kW, and I’ve been down the DIY solar rabbit hole for the past two weeks. Based on my research, I’m planning a roughly 9 kW Signature Solar setup: 20× 455 W Canadian Solar panels (~$173 ea) 1× GridBoss MID V2 (~$2 400) 1× FlexBoss 21 (~$2 400) 4× Eco-Worthy 48 V 100 Ah LiFePO₄ batteries…
Crazy, where I live the payback on the hardware would take ~114,000 kWh (or 13) years at 24kWh per day, $0.13/kWh).
Where you live it’s only 24,000 kWh to pay off the hardware, or just under 3 years ($0.61/kWh). I’d definitely pull the trigger.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#239Earlier 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…
That’s silly, why make it political? If anything the political encroachment came from the green crowd first, cafe standards, EV mandates and the like.
The best way forward has always been to explore all energy avenues, and that will include fossil fuels as well. At least you’ve included nuclear, but left out fission, strangely, which is the best hope of electric generation replacement we currently have.
I’m tired of this team blue for electric (except Tesla now, lol) and team red for oil. They are choices with trade offs, and are friends, not enemies.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#240I 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…
[dead]