[flagged]
Ah yes...because the simple solution is always "just pack up your life, leave behind your family and friends, and relocate half way across the country".
Building my own solar power system
31–40 of 355 posts
Re: Building my own solar power system
#32And 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
What should the grid operators do with all that energy that comes in at noon on a beautiful sunny day?
Hmmm, run direct carbon capture systems?
Re: Building my own solar power system
#33This is fantastic. Looking at the absolutely massive cost differential between DIY and full-service solar installers, the DIY option looks pretty pretty tempting. My main concern was 1) actually getting through the local permitting process, and 2) what a potential purchaser would think of a DIY system when I go to sell the house. Seeing that somebody has done it is very inspiring, and if I didn't see a high chance of…
I have the advantage of living totally off grid and not planning on ever selling the place, so I can have whatever screwy setup I fancy. Well - I say “off grid” but I’ve built a grid - I now have over a km of buried SWA cable linking the three houses on our land, battery banks at each (60kWh of OPzS down at the mill, 15kWh of LiFePO4 at each of the others), and victron inverter-chargers all over the shop. Two arrays…
Yeah, we once unmounted our panels so painters could do some work on our roof. It was pretty trivial to do. The tricky part is the electrical work.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#34And 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
We've been on a dynamic contract for the last year (also in NL), it's worked out pretty well (Tibber).
Re: Building my own solar power system
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It turns out that the biggest cost of California energy is not generation, it's distribution and transmission. Highly distributed energy lessens the peak demands on the T&D system, which means that the T&D system can be smaller, which greatly reduces the fixed cost of T&D. Utility scale solar requires greatly expanding transmission lines, to the extent that lack of transmission is the biggest barrier to adding solar…
How many office parking lots would be covered in solar carports immediately if the corrupt PUC paid reasonable rates for generation? This solves the T&D problem too, as generation remains distributed. It’s the money.
Not so easy to reduce the grid load all the time, needs a big battery for every night and for multiple dark days you still need the grid a lot.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#36[flagged]
Yeah, because you don't lose anything by living in the middle of nowhere.
There are benefits to being in the bay area, too. This happens to not be one of them.
Living in "a part of the country that has basements" is no utopia either.
Also: my house, in the bay area... has a basement.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#37And 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
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.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#38Re: Building my own solar power system
#39And 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
Already happening in Flanders for those on dynamic pricing.
Re: Building my own solar power system
#40"they have come out and said what we knew all along: they only care about profits."
Not the detract from the rest of the article, but - it's a company, what did you expect?