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Internetjack posted:Yeah, power companies are *not* embracing residential grid-tie solar. They want the customers to pay to put power on the grid, to help pay for the infrastructure cost, since they have nothing else to charge them for. To be fair, the infrastructure is not an insignificant cost, and the power companies still have to plan capacities for worst case scenarios - i.e. 112 degrees at 8pm in Phoenix, everyone cooking dinner and the A/C running full blast, and the sun is down, so no solar contribution. The problem is that instead of charging like other utilities such as water, who charge a fixed base rate for your connection, the power companies have tied the grid costs to power consumption, which is really sort of stupid - it costs them the same to deliver the infrastructure to every single 200A service in the neighborhood, whether it's a two story, 2300 square foot house with two A/C's and 14 people living in it, or my single story 1650 square foot house with only me, or the next door neighbor's 1200 square foot house that's empty most of the time. The lower the consumption, the less that home owner pays for the delivery (infrastructure). They do need *some* way to equalize that infrastructure cost for solar, but the solutions they are looking at now, penalize solar users, while completely ignoring the disparity of power consumption between otherwise equal services (i.e all homes in my neighborhood, regardless of size and design, have a 200A panel).
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Jan 6, 2014 07:12
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Would be interested to read what you guys think of the Solar Liberator campaign running on Indiegogo.
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Jan 7, 2014 14:42
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vanmartin posted:Would be interested to read what you guys think of the Solar Liberator campaign running on Indiegogo. They are big on the grid-tie ability of their 500w unit, but nowhere on that page does it have any information about any sort of power-out disconnect, and they grid-tie it by simply plugging into the house electric outlets, which means there is no external disconnect. This is terrible, and could potentially kill people, and no utility in the nation will allow these to be grid-tied like this - as in, if they find out you have these things plugged in, they'll come out and yank your meter to remove you from the grid until your solar installation is properly installed and tied in with disconnects and approved by all the appropriate inspectors. The smaller portable units look kind of neat though.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:31
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The Locator posted:They are big on the grid-tie ability of their 500w unit, but nowhere on that page does it have any information about any sort of power-out disconnect, and they grid-tie it by simply plugging into the house electric outlets, which means there is no external disconnect. It reads like they are using a embedded grid-tie microinverter. They also site UL1741 compliance which should mean they shut off during utility outages, which should make them safe for grid-tie. That being said, there is no utility that would allow this product on their grid without an external disconnect. It can be argued that the external disconnect is redundant and overkill, but it ultimately doesn't matter. If the utility wants one, they get one, or you don't get to plugin legally. So, you can use a product like this, and go gorilla(unlicensed net-metering) and hope you don't get busted. As far as the tech goes, I'm really curious as to what type of charging scheme they are using for their (tiny, tiny , tiny) Lithium ion batteries. That is currently one of the big hurdles to utilizing Li-Ion in off-grid applications, is there isn't any commercially available chargers that handle charging at the "per cel"l level instead of the "per bank" level that is currently used(not the same issue as the chargers that utilize utility power for electric cars). The retail price is not that impressive for what they are offering. The battery capacities are borderline dismiss-able. And the fact that they brush past the mounting hardware is terrifying. Snow and wind love to rip panels off of roofs, it takes serious hardware with modest costs to keep the panels in place. The smaller 25 watt unit may be good for keeping a cell phone charged, but the bigger stuff is hobbyist at best, and will be easily outclassed by any existing system design at larger scales.
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Jan 8, 2014 03:12
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Appreciate the detailed responses! I'm slowly but surely starting to understand what to take into consideration when looking for a decent setup.
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Jan 8, 2014 08:41
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So when will we see publicly available 500w+ panels at say a price of $0.30-$0.40 a watt? So like, $150 for a 500w panel.
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Jan 8, 2014 08:55
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Internetjack posted:It reads like they are using a embedded grid-tie microinverter. They also site UL1741 compliance which should mean they shut off during utility outages, which should make them safe for grid-tie. That being said, there is no utility that would allow this product on their grid without an external disconnect. It can be argued that the external disconnect is redundant and overkill, but it ultimately doesn't matter. If the utility wants one, they get one, or you don't get to plugin legally. So, you can use a product like this, and go gorilla(unlicensed net-metering) and hope you don't get busted. I think that all of this is very true. On the other hand, note that every single one of the engineers is Indian and think about what kind of impact that affordable retail solar could have in New Delhi. These units might struggle to compete in the West because of strict regulation and limited capacity, but they'd get snapped up in places where finding a solar electrician is difficult and expensive.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:37
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Kaal posted:I think that all of this is very true. On the other hand, note that every single one of the engineers is Indian and think about what kind of impact that affordable retail solar could have in New Delhi. These units might struggle to compete in the West because of strict regulation and limited capacity, but they'd get snapped up in places where finding a solar electrician is difficult and expensive. That is a fair point. There is a lot of growth in demand in third world countries. Africa is a huge, wide-open, wild wild west for solar right now. Traditional system design will not do well in those conditions; the need for sturdy, plug-and-play products is high. Proper battery bank maintenance is barely doable in the west; expecting it to happen in some remote village is simply not realistic. Standalone products like this, that can be used for cell phone charging, water pumping, and maybe a bit of non-maintenance battery storage to run a few LED lights at night will be successful. They will have to be physically tough though. Drop it, sand blast it, throw it in a truck of rocks and drive for a hundred miles, levels of tough. That doesn't come cheap though. $0.30 to $0.40 per watt is unlikely to happen any time soon, say next twenty years. The dust is settling from the race to the bottom on panel prices, and $1.00 per watt seems to be the safe spot. You'll see some $0.80 per watt, but it's hit or miss. Manufacturer's and dealers are not making much margin on panels these days. Really, I hate the price per watt metric though. It is highly misleading. First; Quality. There is some real poo poo at $0.70 a watt. That's fine if you want a panel to only last 5-10 years, but don't expect 20 year quality at that price. Second; Marketing. Lots of folks don't mention the cost to ship panels. Sending a dozen larger panels to another state even, costs at least a couple hundred dollars. Third: Balance of system; Panels are being sold as loss leaders in some cases so the vendor gets to advertise a fancy price per watt. Guess what though, the cabling, circuit breakers, lightning arrestors, and other nut-and-bolt items are being sold at a premium to make up for it. Fourth: Some people have no idea what they are selling or buying. Congratulations on your cheap-rear end weirdo voltage panel whose vendor offers no system design or tech support. People are buying and selling stuff that neither knows anything about. The analogy would be someone saying "This car has seven wheels! Wheels are important on a car, right?! Well this car has seven of 'em! And I bought three of the cars so I can get to work!" I seriously get phone calls that sound like that.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:26
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IOwnCalculus posted:APS is one of the two providers here and they were whining that solar users were getting the grid for free. SRP is the other and so far they haven't seen fit to gently caress solar customers over in the same way. Building permit approved by the town, and interconnect approved by APS. Installation scheduled for next Thursday, the 30th of Jan. Once that's done, it's wait for inspections, and approval to turn it on, which supposedly takes the utility 4-5 weeks, but they said the same about the interconnect approval and APS approved that in 2 weeks, so here's hoping for a mid-February turn on.
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Jan 22, 2014 17:23
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Nice. They actually had a guy in the Home Depot near me the other day while I was picking up some stuff and I talked with him for a few minutes. Turns out the house four doors down from me that has solar is also a Solar City installation. Apparently they're actually eating that tax for most of their APS-affected customers, or at least they are according to that guy. I've liked just about everything I've heard so far, so I might pull the trigger and go that route myself. You did the traditional lease, not the PPA, correct?
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Jan 22, 2014 20:17
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IOwnCalculus posted:Nice. They actually had a guy in the Home Depot near me the other day while I was picking up some stuff and I talked with him for a few minutes. Turns out the house four doors down from me that has solar is also a Solar City installation. I did a lease with down payment, which fixes the lease payment so that it doesn't have an annual increase. Short term it's worse, but somewhere around 6.5 years in is the point where I end up on the positive side vs. zero down. Given that it's a 20 year lease, and I'm stupidly conservative, it wasn't really a choice for me. The dude I talked to about the system mentioned that SC was going to do something about the tax, but he was kind of vague, and was certain that they could beat the deadline anyway, so I didn't really pursue the details on it.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:43
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The Locator posted:it costs them the same to deliver the infrastructure to every single 200A service in the neighborhood This is not strictly true - the power conditioning costs incurred will vary from home to home (depending on a lot of factors). Normally, the expense of power condition is built into the price of electricity. Homes with larger solar panels will (probably) incur larger power conditioning costs relative to the amount of electricity they're purchasing, so it makes some sense to charge them a larger fee to cover the power conditioning expenses.
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Jan 24, 2014 00:13
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Zhentar posted:This is not strictly true - the power conditioning costs incurred will vary from home to home (depending on a lot of factors). Normally, the expense of power condition is built into the price of electricity. Homes with larger solar panels will (probably) incur larger power conditioning costs relative to the amount of electricity they're purchasing, so it makes some sense to charge them a larger fee to cover the power conditioning expenses. I specifically said 'infrastructure', i.e. the transmission and distribution lines, transformer, wires up to the house, and meter. It cost APS the exact same infrastructure cost to get the connection to my neighbor's house as to my house. If down the road my neighbor uses 4x the power I do, he is paying 4x as much for the infrastructure maintenance as I am, even though APS expense is really the same for both houses (we are after all, served off of the same transformer so share infrastructure up until that last 60' from the transformer to the meter), because of how they scale all those items on the bill based on your consumption. Now I add solar, so my portion of the infrastructure maintenance is now even lower compared to him. Now we add in your power conditioning expenses (this is not something I'm familiar with - I worked in underground utilities so I understand that stuff), and it's even further skewed in my favor, even though that cost of delivery to my door (i.e. the wires, transformers, etc.) are shared. I was actually arguing that the power companies have a valid point - they need a way to recover infrastructure costs from solar users because of all of this, but it needs to be equitable, and can't be so high that it removes all incentive for people to 'go green' as it were. Ultimately, I think that the cost of power delivery should probably be done like the 'wet' utilities do it - a base charge to be hooked up to the utility that covers the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, then usage based fee on what you actually consume. So in a neighborhood like mine, everyone pays the same 'base fee' for power delivery, just like they do for their water, since everyone has the same size panel (or water meter). That base fee is based on the size of your panel, just like the base fee for your water is determined by the size of your meter (5/8", 3/4", 1" etc.). The Locator fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 00:34
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whats it take to get on with a solar panel installation outfit and would becoming an apprentice electrician and working up to journyman be a good way to the solar field?
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Jan 24, 2014 03:10
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Doing installation for large commercial size jobs is more construction work than anything. A tool belt, the ability to work on really cold or really hot roofs, moving heavy stuff around, following basic instructions, and showing up on time, are what's required for an entry level job. It's more physical work than anything. Heavy equipment, concrete, or roofing experience is a plus. Journeyman path is going to require some classroom work, and probably solar NABCEP, and of course your electrician certification eventually. Lots of hours of skilled labor(years) working under the guidance of a senior electrician. It will probably have more residential and small scale commercial work. Check out trade schools to get started as a journeyman electrician, and then work for an electrician/firm that specializes in solar in particular.
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Jan 24, 2014 07:23
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Situation: Looking to start to build within a few months, extremely sunny location in Guam (13deg N of equator), year-round sun. Large part of the roof is basically a pyramid facing all sides, 14 degree pitch, ~1400 total sq. ft. - there's also a smaller flat roof covering a garage, ~484 sq. ft. I was initially going to do just solar hot water, but a friend of mine was trying to pitch me on the idea of doing solar electric, without a battery system as that might make it cost prohibitive for me, just a grid tie-in, as the tax credit this year is still viable. Do I only go w/ covering the south part of the pyramid, or 3-sides, +/- the flat garage roof? And would I go for 100% coverage of my expected kwh usage, or less/more?
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Jan 28, 2014 07:46
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The typical approach would be to use as much space as you want, but have separate strings of panels on each exposure. In a grid-tie system a string might consist of anywhere from 3 to 15 panels connected in series or feeding a trunk cable. With micro-inverters, it'd be a string each for east, west, south, and roof all feeding in on their own trunk cable to your utility breaker panel(through meters and disconnects possibly). With large string inverters like the SMA Sunny Boy, and Power One products, the inverters themselves often have connections for 3-4 individual series strings. Very simple either way. The overall idea is that you typically don't want panels in different exposures being in the same array. It can "confuse" the equipment is the explanation(its debatable with current tech). Separating the panels into separate strings/trunks solves this.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:04
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If I used around 20-25 kWh a day how big of a grid tie system would I need and what would be the ball park cost? Also how much do you think I would need to add if I wanted to power a LEAF on top of that (21 kWh battery) I've enjoyed reading this thread and really want to go solar since I am already getting ready to go gas free.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:48
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Dbhjed posted:If I used around 20-25 kWh a day how big of a grid tie system would I need and what would be the ball park cost? Looking at electric car charging, "Stage II" charging is 220vAC @ 30A. That's a 6.6kw peak load from the car alone. Granted, you won't often be actually drawing 6.6kw for any significant period of time, but that's the theoretical max draw.
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Jan 29, 2014 11:56
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MrYenko posted:Looking at electric car charging, "Stage II" charging is 220vAC @ 30A. That's a 6.6kw peak load from the car alone. Granted, you won't often be actually drawing 6.6kw for any significant period of time, but that's the theoretical max draw. I just want to replace the power it consumes durning charging. I want to stay on the grid since I use most my power at night anyway. But replacing my normal usage would be great. I would still go over in the summer months by running the ac. But for 9 out of 12 months a near zero bill would rock.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:03
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If you are like most people, you'd be charging the Leaf when the sun isn't up, so sizing your solar array for that doesn't make much sense. Unless of course you are a vampire and drive at night and charge during the day, in which case, carry on. Edit: Beat by the subject matter owner.  Edit2: Depending on how your local utility works, a 100% offset can be extremely expensive to achieve due to diminishing returns at some point in how the credits are given and paid back to you. In my case, the peak 'savings' happened at around a 65% offset, and as the offset approached 100%, the difference between the solar array costs and the energy savings decreased significantly. Research it - get solar reps to come out and run the numbers for you, they have everything plugged into programs that will instantly calculate everything based on your local utility rates etc., and they can re-size a system and recalculate in 30 seconds or less to figure out the 'sweet spot' for you. The Locator fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jan 29, 2014 |
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Jan 29, 2014 16:04
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Dbhjed posted:If I used around 20-25 kWh a day how big of a grid tie system would I need and what would be the ball park cost? 20-25kwh per day would require roughly a 5kw to 8kw array for full offset, depending on where you live. Maybe as low as 4kw if you are in a really sunny location. Regarding the Leaf, the question to answer is: how much do you discharge the battery on an average daily basis? If its 25%, then you have to add 5kwh to the daily household number and add another 1kw to 2kw panels to the array. You *could* build a battery based system to do all of this, but you probably won't like the price tag. Plus you have to take care of your batteries, and they need to be replaced every so many years. The advantages of that approach would be night-time charging and autonomy during utility outages. A pure grid-tie system is really the correct answer. Shoot for a modest offset of the whole house's energy consumption(the car is really just another load). Much more cost effective. No batteries means no maintenance, but also no autonomy during utility outages of course.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:42
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Install yesterday went good, except one of the dudes took a shortcut on my front sidewalk and broke my flag light, and they left some scuff marks on the wall in the garage. They were all "We'll go down to Home Depot and grab a new one for you." Haha.. jokes on them, decent low voltage LED lights to illuminate a flag can't be bought at Home Depot. Today the supervisor called (and then emailed confirmation) for me to just go ahead and get a replacement and email a copy of the receipt for reimbursement. I'd prefer they had just gotten the light and replaced it, but overall no real complaints with how they handled it, and I'm happy they didn't try to cover it up. Another call today was to schedule the city inspection for next Tuesday, so that's pretty fast. Once that's complete, the city inspector notifies APS, and then I just wait for APS to come out and pop in a meter, and give the OK to turn it on. Edit: Update 2/4, inspection passed. Just waiting on the utility company for the meter and approval to switch it on now! The Locator fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 05:58
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The Locator posted:To be fair, the infrastructure is not an insignificant cost, and the power companies still have to plan capacities for worst case scenarios - i.e. 112 degrees at 8pm in Phoenix, everyone cooking dinner and the A/C running full blast, and the sun is down, so no solar contribution. Grid penetration by solar and wind has been an incredibly hot topic in our industry and unfortunately the answer is increasingly complex. There's a reason why there hasn't been a consensus on it and why the fight continues. Some utility companies see PV and wind as unfairly distributing transmission costs to other customers. Some utilities see PV and wind helping in strengthening transmission infrastructure. There's been numerous studies looking at particular case scenarios that have tried to analyze the impacts and they end up only focusing on one particular area, which is a very small piece of a large puzzle. I'm sure there are studies being done in Germany since that has the largest penetration of PV. If I remember correctly, at some point last year 35% of the power being generated on one day came from solar PV. I think the most it's ever been in California was 7%; I can't seem to find that number right now.
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Feb 5, 2014 04:11
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The Locator posted:Edit: Update 2/4, inspection passed. Just waiting on the utility company for the meter and approval to switch it on now! Totally missed this post until now. Did they get you turned on yet?
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Feb 21, 2014 08:11
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IOwnCalculus posted:Totally missed this post until now. Did they get you turned on yet? Nope, still waiting. According to Solar City, they (APS) typically take about 4 weeks of foot dragging before scheduling the final inspection and giving it their blessing. The final city inspection was on the 4th, and as of today, I have not been contacted to schedule the inspection. Sort of annoying, but pretty normal I guess.
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Feb 22, 2014 01:53
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Yay! Got home from work today, and there was a door hanger on my front door from APS. quote:We were here today to install your new meters: You may now operate your system Took long enough, but they never called to schedule an inspection like they said, they just came buy and popped in the meter and left the door hanger. Now I just have to wait for some sunlight, as I've turned everything on. Sadly, the moon and stars aren't enough to turn on the inverter. 
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Mar 13, 2014 05:19
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The Locator posted:Yay! You're staring at the meter anyways, though, aren't you?
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Mar 13, 2014 10:59
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MrYenko posted:You're staring at the meter anyways, though, aren't you? Heh, no. I did go out and look at it about 45 minutes ago, when the system said it was making all of 235 watts of power. The meter indicated that I was still using power from the grid of course. Now, at 7:45am, I went out and it's making 450'ish watts, and the meter indicates I'm sending power to the grid, even with both computers (Desktop and work laptop) on and 3 monitors running and my home office lights on. Woo! Will be interesting to see where it peaks today, as it should be a perfect day. High temp right around 80 degrees, and no overcast expected. E: So much for no overcast. Peak at 10am 3794 watts, but some light overcast has moved in, so it's up and down now. Up to 5.3kWh on the day though. E2: Day ended up being mostly overcast, so not the great day I expected. The Inverter shows a peak output of 5928w, and it hit that sometime between 10am and Noon, so the array is apparently putting out what it's rated for (6kw). Because of the overcast though, the day looked like this (Cut off the end, sun still hitting the east array, but it's down to 1400'ish watts now): 
The Locator fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 15:49
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Nice details. I looked back in the thread and see you are in Phoenix. 24kwh off a 6kw array in your location for this time of year on a partially overcast day is very nice, a good 4x factor there. It'll be neat to see if/when you hit 6x or higher this summer. Keep track of the temperatures too, so we can observe production on cooler days vs hotter days when all else is similar.
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Mar 14, 2014 01:41
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Internetjack posted:Nice details. I looked back in the thread and see you are in Phoenix. 31.88 kWh today. Was a low-mid 80's day, not a cloud in the sky. 119.93 kWh over 4 days, 2 of them cloudy. The one thing that's really odd to me, is that on that first overcast day, it hit 5928 watts on the output side as the high. That is still the lifetime high output, and every time I've checked it since (yesterday and today around 11a-2p, which I expect is 'peakish' times) it's been below 5000 watts. Just seems weird to me, as I figured it would beat that first day's peak output on a cloudless day.
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Mar 17, 2014 07:11
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The 5900+ watts on a 6k array is actually pretty impressive. Usually, harvest at 85% of the array's rating is considered normal. That 15% is accounted for by atmospheric conditions, non-perfect angle of the panels, (slight) wire loss, inverter inefficiency, etc. Warm summertime temps in the 90s and 100s can derate the production by another 10% as well. Total daily harvest goes up in the summer because of the clear weather, but peaks go down. Typically, the highest peak will be on unusually cold spring and autumn days(assuming the angle is somewhat optimized those times of the year), or in the wintertime if you an array with an adjustable angle(I know your case does not...).
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Mar 17, 2014 14:47
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My family is looking to move to a smaller house in the next month or so, which will let us pay off the mortgage as soon as our current house sells. We've long dreamed of installing solar, so I finally looked up what our actual energy use is. About 260kWH/month average, with a peak of 350 in December. Having an energy budget would surely help us reign that in. The clothes drier comes to mind. Now I realize we don't know what our use will be in the new house, but since we're bringing over all the appliances, and the new place uses the exact same kind of heat (with less space to need to heat up), I reckon it'll be the same or less. We live in the mountains in Northern New Mexico. We get a lot of sun. Here's a chart of cloud cover for 2012:  Could you give me a rough idea about what our options and costs might be, so that I can pretend like I have some idea what the hell I'm talking about when we call up a local guy this summer? Thanks! cruft fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 17, 2014 |
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Mar 17, 2014 19:21
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Internetjack posted:The 5900+ watts on a 6k array is actually pretty impressive. Usually, harvest at 85% of the array's rating is considered normal. That 15% is accounted for by atmospheric conditions, non-perfect angle of the panels, (slight) wire loss, inverter inefficiency, etc. That seems about where I'm at, I've seen my peak production of 7k on a 8.25k array.
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Mar 17, 2014 20:06
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cruft posted:About 260kWH/month average, with a peak of 350 in December. 260 kwh per month averages 8,700 watt hours per day. For a household using utility power, that is incredibly low. The national average is around 25 kwh per day. Good job! In northern New Mexico it'd take an array of about 2,500 watts total to go for a 100% offset. That'd be about 10 large 250 watt panels, measuring about 66" x 39" each. Assuming you want a grid-tie system, no battery bank, the costs of materials would roughly be: 2,500 watts of panels for around $2,500 micro or string grid-tie inverters about $2,500 - $3,000 Simple roof or ground mount about $1,200 Cabling, monitor, nuts and bolts, shipping/freight about $1,500 I'm not listing any install labor, connection/permitting fees, infrastructure(concrete, conduit, etc); nor do I really know anything about how leasing plans work. Other folks in the thread can probably answer those questions better than I. Things to do: Talk with your utility company to see what type of net-metering plan they offer. Is it a plan that lets you build up a credit of energy in the summer and then use up during winter for a net balance of zero each year? Is it some kind of actual refund check program? What will they require for permitting and inspections? Consider replacing any old appliances for modern energy star rated alternatives. Ask if the utility company offers a free or inexpensive energy evaluation of the house, where they review windows, weather stripping, insulation, etc. Upgrades there alone can save large amounts of energy and long term costs as well.
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Mar 18, 2014 02:08
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Okay, cool. Thanks. How the crap do people use so much electricity? I can't even imagine how we could triple our use. Surely it's not just air conditioners?
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Mar 19, 2014 02:42
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cruft posted:Okay, cool. Thanks. I used about 900kwh in the winter and used 2500kwh last August so most of it could be AC usage. That hot month cost me a $700 electric bill.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:04
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cruft posted:air conditioners? DINGDINGDING!!! WE HAVE A WINNER! Air conditioners use a ton of power; instantaneously and over time. AC for a 1500 sqft home, running 10+ hours a day can easily rack up 15-25 kwh in a day. The other big ticket items are anything that produces heat. Stoves, water heaters, clothes dryers, furnaces. Those and AC can easily account for 80% of most electric bills. Heck, a 1500 watt hair dryer ran for 20 minutes uses half a kwh alone. Poor insulation, old windows, old appliances are modest black holes as well.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:14
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cruft posted:Okay, cool. Thanks. Heating or cooling, I imagine it depends on where you live, and how big your house is and how much insulation? Also water heating, cooking, laundry, etc. My house is 1650 square feet (plus garage), about 8 years old and well insulated. It's all electric, so electric water heating, A/C, heating in the winter, cooking, laundry washer/dryer. In 2013 my low usage was 607 kWh in March, and my high was 1980 kWh in July. I don't change my routine much at all, so that 1370 kWh difference is pretty much all in the A/C (although I use less on water heating in the summer I'm sure, as the loving shallow pipes and above ground storage tanks in my area deliver 98-100 degree water right out of the spigot where the pipe comes into the house). The week of March 6th this year (last full week before they swapped the meter for my solar turn on) I was running 14-16 kWh per day. That's without any A/C or heating, just lights, cooking, refrigerator and entertainment (TV, stereo, computer). I don't really know how I'd lower my bills much more, as I'm already using CFL and LED lighting everywhere except the bathroom (stupid designer light fixtures). I could take shorter showers I suppose, and not keep 3 monitors running on the computer all the time, but I'm at the point in my life where when it's too warm or too cold, I'm turning on the A/C and being comfortable. I'll pay the bill. I have no idea how anyone could get usage down in the range you posted, except by living in a tiny well-insulated shack and never running any sort of climate control and using candles at night and not ever doing laundry at home or something. Good for you though in managing it, your numbers are amazingly small.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:17
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The Locator posted:I have no idea how anyone could get usage down in the range you posted, except by living in a tiny well-insulated shack and never running any sort of climate control and using candles at night and not ever doing laundry at home or something. Good for you though in managing it, your numbers are amazingly small. It can also involve living in a moderate climate and heating with wood or gas.
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Mar 19, 2014 20:13
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