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Building my own solar power system

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Re: Building my own solar power system

#311

Post by K0balt »

rz2k wrote: post #183
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…

How has your experience been with the lithium-titanium-oxide batteries? Everything I read makes it sound like the optimal solution for safety and long life, but it doesn't seem like they have displaced other battery chemistries very much.

I’m excited to try them too… I’ll get back to you in 5 years lol.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#312

Post by K0balt »

thebiss wrote: post #170
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 is your recovery plan in the event of a hurricane? I'm not fond of high electric rates, but in addition to generation those rates amortize and distribute the cost of storm recovery. A home or business with grid-tied solar pays interconnect fees for the option to get paid back a little for excess generation, and the option to decide to switch back to 100% grid power if a storm damages the on-site panels.

All underground infrastructure or in concrete utility huts. Powerplant is concrete, no flooding issues due to excellent drainage of the area.

We can run on generator to charge the batteries for about 2 weeks on the fuel we keep. Other than that, we rebuild what isn’t broken and later buy more panels. Most of our mounts should be good to about 150mph, but trees also fly so?

Good news is we can buy panels here about $120 for a 500 watt panel.

Also we have some geographic protection from the full brunt of a storm , as we are in a mountainous eddy zone that typically sees about 30 percent of the coastal and mountaintop wind speed when a cyclone passes nearby as they frequently do.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#313

Post by K0balt »

jhfdbkofdchk wrote: post #228
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.”"

Lol. Definitely!

It’s a ratchet:

Need more power: Buy more panels, they are cheap! Need more power: Buy more panels, they are cheap! Need more power: Buy more panels, they are cheap! Need more power: Can’t buy more panels, need more batteries to stabilize the system. Thankfully , batteries are getting better and cheaper! Lots of power, so much we need to find new ways to benefit from it! Need more power: Buy more panels, they are cheap! ……

The economics of panels are basically 20 percent APR here over 20 years. Over 40 years it drops to around 10 percent for out of service life panels.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#314

Post by K0balt »

arwineap wrote: post #245
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…

Naive question, why run inverters? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run direct DC appliances? We have a building on our farm without power and it'd be ideal to be able to charge batteries and run lights at night It seems to me that we would have to upsize batteries in order to make up for the loss in converting to AC

To be clear, we are distributing power over about 600m of length, so it has to be high voltage. HVDC is very very dangerous, I would not want it in my house. Not only that, it’s hard to find things that are efficient and work on high voltage DC. Since our batteries are already 60V, our inverters already are very efficient, it’s simply not worth it. Panels are so cheap, it almost doesn’t matter how you are trying to save power, the answer is that it’s almost always cheaper just to buy more panels.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#315

Post by antisthenes »

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…

> It’s strange to me that people in rural areas pay for electricity. It makes no economic sense, at least here in the Caribbean.

When I took a vacation to Aruba, I was very disappointed to see very limited solar and EV adoption. Public transportation (buses) were running on gas, as were most personal vehicles.

It was nuts to me considering there was only 1 overcast day out of the 7 I was there, and you definitely don't need any energy for heating, ever.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#316

Post by bauruine »

hurtuvac78 wrote: post #287

The author says that the resale value to PGE is 25% of the buying price. Is there some way to get a better rate by selling CPU time instead, when the sun shines and batteries are full? Especially if you have your own server rack. I have computing needs that can wait for 12/18 hours. Would it make any sense to have those processed by distributed solar server farms between 11am and 5pm? They just take data in and send…

Mining Monero maybe.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#317

Post by beachy »

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…

That sounds like a dream gig. Do you find it satisfying running your own utility?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#318

Post by KaiserPro »

belorn wrote: post #174
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…

Would be interesting to know how London compare to Sweden. Electricity here are generally about twice to four times more expensive during the winter than during the summer, and energy consumption is about twice the amount during winter compared to summer. On average people here spend around 75% of the total energy bill during winter.

Generally people are on fixed rates that are updated yearly. Its pretty "new" to get variable rates here.

https://agilebuddy.uk/historic/agile

has some historic prices. We still use gas for heating, so there isn't so much seasonality for consumption. (there is, but not in the same way).

What does affect price is wind. you can see in december there were both record high prices and record low. The more wind we have the cheap power becomes. so in winter its generally quite cheap, but then also it can flip and become very expensive, because gas imports are expensive.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#319

Post by pjc50 »

MostlyStable wrote: post #222
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 analysi…

The Scottish island of Eigg has its own micro grid built by the residents which works like this.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#320

Post by robertlagrant »

ty6853 wrote: post #209
robertlagrant wrote: post #195

Earlier 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…

You're mischaracterising "not wanting to overpay" and "getting something you need in return for what you have in excess" as "greed".

It's a pointless conversation if you're willing to do that. You're just changing definitions before arguing them.

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