291–300 of 355 posts
And over here in NL we're going to be _charged_ when returning power to the grid in 1.5 yr... I'll be running my airco to burn off those kWh's :P
> I'll be running my airco to burn off those kWh's :P As an American I welcome you to our national pastime: burning kWhs on aircon! :P
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…
Do you have a tech blog or writeup on what things you used, what parts broke down, or what kind of things needed to be fixed over time?
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> This disabused me of the notion of doing it myself, lol. The author did a very custom setup. If you want to DIY with a pre-integrated setup, you can enroll in Enphase's self installer program, and complete their online coursework: https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/manager/registration?_gl... I think EcoFlow may have a similar option.
Ooh, thanks for this. I've been considering some metalworking classes, something like this could also be really fun and enriching.
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In Quebec, I'm paying $0.069/kWh or USD $0.05/kWh (hydroelectric, so already green), so it's hard to make a case for solar.
> hydroelectric, so already green Not so fast. Zero emissions, yeah. But they have damaged the habitat for some bird species.
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I’m jealous. Where I live in California the off peak rate is $0.32/kWh and peak rates are $0.58/kWh.
Doesn’t that sort of rate make the payoff for a solar system install just a few years?
We bought ours in '10 to offset high AC use in the summer - we were paying $1000-1500 a month for 2-4 months in the summer. The first few years, our "year-end" balance was < $1K (we just paid minimum payments the rest of the year), so I figure we easily saved $2-3K/year in those early years, and after the incentives in those days, we paid ~$14K, so maybe 7 years to pay it off. Our year-end balance was more like $3K the last time, and I think we're still producing 80-90% the same power, but PGE keeps changing the plans around. At this point, I'm interested in upgrading our cells from 300W to 450W, but I'd only do that with a battery system that also stores energy so that we could go more or less entirely off-grid. But probably need a new roof first..
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There's not a shortage of skilled labor so much in US as there is a shortage of people able to go through the racketeering process of getting a contractor license, which also requires being a half-slave to someone with a license for a number of years. It's straight up mercantilist style shake-down to benefit prior entrants. It is easier in US to become an electrical engineer than it is to become a guy who adds a new…
I always found solar farm engineering intensely interesting and looked seriously into becoming an electrician as a second career as something to "retire into" once I got sick of working in tech. And like you say, it turns out it's not something you can just make a lateral move into, no matter how quickly you can learn and how hard you're willing to study. "Becoming an electrician" is a young person's game.
Where I live you can't but go figure you can become a licensed finish carpenter with a simple test.
One loophole I looked I might look into some day is moving to another state with the least requirements for a license, then getting it, then transferring it to another state, which is allowed at least here.
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> hydroelectric, so already green Not so fast. Zero emissions, yeah. But they have damaged the habitat for some bird species.
Would love to see your analysis of Thanksgiving
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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.
Turns out, I'm already on fission. What I've done is tap into an existing fission reactor. It's some distance from my house, but there's a lot of excess energy there leaking out. I put up some collectors to capture it. Was really quite cheap to do, and I don't have to pay anyone to actually run the reactor.
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> hydroelectric, so already green Not so fast. Zero emissions, yeah. But they have damaged the habitat for some bird species.
Feral cats kill 2 billion birds a year, FYI the green energy kills birds thing is a right wing talking point designed to distract and delay. All human activity kills some nominal number of birds