Is there a good way to make a residential system removable?

orangezero said:

If I had an independent solar/battery/inverter system already set up and wanted to connect it safely to my grid breaker box, how much would just those parts cost in Australia?

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But in answer to this cost question, it will depend of the specific requirements of the home.

But I will give our specific example which cost A$600, or about $US440 (supply and fit by licensed electrician).

We have an 11kW grid tied solar PV system. But occasionally we have grid outages and having backup is important to us.

So I had an electrician supply and fit a power inlet and "break before make" transfer switch so I could connect a generator to provide power the house. This isolates the off-grid power supply and backed up circuits from the grid.

Because my home is 3-phase power it required a 3-phase transfer switch but wired in such a way that the essential circuits being backed up could be joined on a single phase while operating on backup. No 3-phase appliance is included on the backup supply.

The cost of having a licensed electrician supply install the power inlet and the 3-phase transfer switch was A$600, or about $US440. Here such work must be done by a licensed electrician, so their time (licence, expertise etc) is the largest cost component.

Since then I have replaced the generator with an off-grid 2.2kW solar PV system, 18kWh battery + AIO inverter. Solar PV keep the batteries on float ready for backup duties, as well as runs some loads, mostly the pool pump during the day plus sundry electronics 24x7.

Because the power is supplied via a plug in power inlet, the off-grid system can be removed and just the power inlet and transfer switch left in situ - any new occupant can use the power inlet to connect their own backup power source. Not that we have any plans to move, but the off-grid system can be pulled down pretty quickly if needed. 6 panels on the garage roof and the batteries, AIO and sundry cabling, fuses/breakers etc can be pulled out pretty quickly.

We had a 4-hour grid outage last week - a massive rain event caused havoc. We were fortunate to escape the worst (lots of devastation here, a hundred thousand were evacuated) but I have friends to the south who will be without power for at least a week. Flipped the transfer switch and we were operating on backup. I may at some point replace the manual transfer switch with an automated version. I can redeploy the manual switch to the mancave where one day I'll power it via an off-grid system.

wattmatters said:

But in answer to this cost question, it will depend of the specific requirements of the home.

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Thanks for the details. (deleted the rest only to avoid long repeated repost)

wattmatters said:

But in answer to this cost question, it will depend of the specific requirements of the home.

The cost of having a licensed electrician supply install the power inlet and the 3-phase transfer switch was A$600, or about $US440. Here such work must be done by a licensed electrician, so their time (licence, expertise etc) is the largest cost component.

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Yep, it depends upon the requirements of the home as well as the community. $440 is a good price to install a transfer switch.

I personally relocated the electric meter (240 volts, single phase) and the gas meter on this house for $30 in permit fees and a couple hundred in materials. It would have cost thousands if I was paying an electrician and a plumber to do the work.

WYtreasure said:

This may not answer your question but is this basically what you're looking for?
Just to be clear, I am NOT "endorsing" the product.

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I see enough advantages in an isolated solar system I haven't been looking for this. I doubt I could do it myself and I certainly couldn't use some of the same equipment I already have for "off-grid", and that means $$$$. Most of the issues I envision can be solved by $$ or $$$$$ in some way, but I'd rather put that towards more solar panels or more battery or a larger inverter.

I could probably stop ranting online and just learn what all the actual methods are, but then again, I have a LONG way to go before I would ever sell energy back to the grid. I have an electric vehicle, house electronics, and then almost unlimited need for extra leftover energy to heat hot water and maybe, maybe, THEN consider a safe way to switch to house power or sell to grid.

I would not consider myself a typical solar user, but then again we are all on this forum

orangezero said:

I see enough advantages in an isolated solar system I haven't been looking for this...

I would not consider myself a typical solar user, but then again we are all on this forum

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I'm not nermal either. Connect to the grid, no thank you. Have you heard of "The Backhoe Effect"? It's when your numbskull neighbor sticks some metal in the underground utilities and fries everything in your house. The grid can stay there, my system is over here.

WYtreasure said:

I'm not nermal either. Connect to the grid, no thank you. Have you heard of "The Backhoe Effect"? It's when your numbskull neighbor sticks some metal in the underground utilities and fries everything in your house. The grid can stay there, my system is over here.

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There are a multitude of reasons.

A farmer near me put up a big system costing tens of thousands of dollars and at the start of their project they were supposed to get $0.XX per kwh and when it was finished and running the rate had been switched to $.xx. It was 4x less, but don't remember the numbers. The trend is towards zero... read the room people

Either these power companies are unethical (yet legal) in their practices, or the farmer is lying to me. Perhaps the farmer is angry for not reading the fine prin. I heard a similar story from another framer (also huge system) and he complained about the same thing a few years back.

I don't need to examine the fine print.

Feed in tariffs in Australia are in the US$0.03-0.06 range. Despite this, grid tied solar PV is still a very good deal here and by and large the grid is quite reliable. It gets less reliable the further away from the cities you go.