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Building my own solar power system

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Re: Building my own solar power system

#41

Post by hengheng »

9dev wrote: post #4

I'm still curious what you'd need a rack consuming 1kw for… in your garage. From the photo, it looks like lots of storage(?).

Yeah, I wondered the same.

He mentioned that he refuses downsizing for ideological reasons, and I totally get that, but there's a certain amount of rightsizing that doesn't hurt in practical operation, and still let's you keep what feels like an awesome, big, complex model train setup in your garage.

Not all rust has to spin, almost no ports have to be 10GE, and a lot can be virtualized. Consumer CPUs have much lower idle than old xeons, and having less DIMMs with the same capacity also seems to pay off.

I'd be surprised if he couldn't cut that energy usage to 10% with a clear separation between hot and cold storage, and realistic expectations of bandwidth requirements.

But hey, I'm not judging. Solar power is great, and I don't mind waste as long as he can afford it and it makes him happy. Nobody drives the car they actually need either, and that is a much bigger problem.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#42

Post by 4gotunameagain »

madaxe_again wrote: post #11
epistasis wrote: post #3

This 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…

That sounds amazing, would love to be able to check it out.

Out of curiosity, have you ever calculated the cost of the batteries over their expected lifetime ?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#43

Post by dzhiurgis »

Okay I finally did this earlier this year too and it took quite a bit less than that. Started with impulse buy of invert at an online auction end of January. Installed last panels end of April. 3 months. Quite a bit of it was waiting for third parties or just me being lazy and not ordering parts I needed. I've wanted them for years beforehand so I did some research.

For actual labor - it's about half days to install roof racks (I have shingle roof so quite a bit of time on angle grinder). Another half day to put panels on (requires 1 or more helpers), run a cable thru roof space. I've installed 12 panels on 2 facia.

My hack was hiring electrician to install inverter so I can export to grid (I'm in New Zealand).

Re: Building my own solar power system

#44

Post by apexalpha »

> 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, fast.

Assuming batteries and PV come from China, someone in California is making a lot of money or the government is straining the process with bureaucracy costing $30.000 per setup.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#45

Post by [deleted] »

alex-moon wrote: post #10

Having done some work around net zero policy I am increasingly convinced that this is the way forward, and indeed that this will be the way things are done normally maybe 10-20 years from now. The concept is called "distributed generation" and in UK each distribution network keeps an "embedded capacity register" which is basically all the distributed energy resources that are connected to the grid at distribution lev…

[deleted]

Re: Building my own solar power system

#46

Post by bdcravens »

apexalpha wrote: post #44

> 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…

Prices were high even during the Biden administration.

Markups due to subsidies are a part of it.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#47

Post by calgoo »

looofooo0 wrote: post #18
alex-moon wrote: post #10

Having done some work around net zero policy I am increasingly convinced that this is the way forward, and indeed that this will be the way things are done normally maybe 10-20 years from now. The concept is called "distributed generation" and in UK each distribution network keeps an "embedded capacity register" which is basically all the distributed energy resources that are connected to the grid at distribution lev…

Well problem in the UK is that in summer there is like a magnitude more power from PV then in winter.

I personally feel there should be more allowance for small personal wind generators in sub-urban areas. That would offset a bit at least in winter for places like the UK. Not sure what the actual laws are, but I can assume councils wont be too happy about someone putting one up on their home.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#48

Post by slavik81 »

apexalpha wrote: post #44

> 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…

For comparison, my 10 kW solar install completed last week cost 24k CAD (15k EUR). That's just panels, inverters and installation. The incremental cost was likely in part due to the ~160% tariffs on solar panels imposed by the Canadian government, but not all.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#49

Post by Dylan16807 »

donnachangstein wrote: post #38
esskay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Relocating is a simpler ask to most ordinary people than is turning their garage into a battery vault.

That's the most ridiculous claim I've seen in a while.

Giving up one foot of space along one garage wall is not a big deal. And if you're worried about physically getting the batteries into place, hiring people would still be cheaper than movers.

Also, a basement that removes cooling costs for the home lab would not make a big difference. If the 800W A/C unit runs 8 hours a day for 4 months out of the year, then it's only about 10% of the home lab power use. Since it's not needed at night it's probably even less.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#50

Post by louwrentius »

This solar installation is quite large and quite expensive.

There is a whole cottage industry of DIY 48V 15kWh batteries based on LFP prismatic cells (16x) and special battery case resulting a price of around 1500 Euro for 15 kWh.

A DIY setup is quite doable, Deye (EG4) or Victron make suitable inverters.

The continuous 1 kW power draw I find Ludicrous, probably especially as a European. I would realy rethink what is absolutely necessary. Huge data storage was my hobby but the storage server is only turned on when required, saves a lot of power.

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