diy solar

diy solar

Texas grid close to edge tonight ?

Texas-Mark said:
Make it easier to get DIY solar approved.
Click to expand...
Is it really that hard to do in Texas? What's the catch?

Here in Michigan, it was pretty easy.. at least in the small town I'm located near. My only complaint is that the permit(s) cost me $400 and the inspectors came three times and spent a grand total sum of about 6 minutes here.

There I was, all proud of my work, attention to detail, accuracy, and professional work.. and those guys didn't even open a single box to look inside..

But the process wasn't difficult.. no one gave me any problems per se.

So what's up with Texas?
 
MurphyGuy said:
Is it really that hard to do in Texas? What's the catch?
Click to expand...

After the call I got, I looked into it and they had requirements that would have cost me several more grand to satisfy. Doing solar here where electric is around $0.11 kWh is not very cost effective to begin with. Keep in mind it was about 15 years ago when I first did the install and ROI of that equipment back then was going to be about 25 years. I'm just not going to spend any more money on a system that worked fine for years before that call.
 
MurphyGuy said:
A 1kW battery would run a household air conditioner for about 15 minutes. Actually, its worse than that.. A 1kW battery of the type you are talking about, doesn't even have the capacity to deliver that much energy that quickly.

The cost to implement your plan would be outrageous.
Click to expand...
MurphyGuy said:
Here in Michigan, it was pretty easy.. at least in the small town I'm located near. My only complaint is that the permit(s) cost me $400 and the inspectors came three times and spent a grand total sum of about 6 minutes here.
Click to expand...
Just the cost of your permits alone approaches the cost of my suggestion.

There is no need to run an entire air conditioner off a small shaving device, and a 1kwh lifepo4 battery can supply nearly 1c discharge rate during these grid emergency situations for an hour. 1000 watts shaved off the household load for an hour is a huge amount of energy for a device not much larger than one or two car batteries that is easily portable and installed quickly. The idea is to have large numbers of these things work in concert, controlled by the utility to shave off some peak load in trouble areas as necessary. Households with out any activity to shave (all easily monitored by the utility) or with a reduced load, could be actively injecting back into the grid instead of merely shaving their load.

I didn't specify how to implement the cost of my plan, nor the cost of the device. Honestly, it should be able to be done in volume for under $500 with slight modifications to existing products. One example of how to fund it is that you could have people capable of buying one on their own get credits back from the electric company for having one connected and controllable by the utility, that costs little upfront.

These things just require cooperation from the utilities, so there is a market to sell them in volume for cost reduction. The utilities don't give a rats as* about power outages though, or relatively low cost solutions, you know the energy executives houses are fully backed up.
 
cs1234 said:
Just the cost of your permits alone approaches the cost of my suggestion.

There is no need to run an entire air conditioner off a small shaving device, and a 1kwh lifepo4 battery can supply nearly 1c discharge rate during these grid emergency situations for an hour. 1000 watts shaved off the household load for an hour is a huge amount of energy for a device not much larger than one or two car batteries that is easily portable and installed quickly. The idea is to have large numbers of these things work in concert, controlled by the utility to shave off some peak load in trouble areas as necessary. Households with out any activity to shave (all easily monitored by the utility) or with a reduced load, could be actively injecting back into the grid instead of merely shaving their load.

I didn't specify how to implement the cost of my plan, nor the cost of the device. Honestly, it should be able to be done in volume for under $500 with slight modifications to existing products. One example of how to fund it is that you could have people capable of buying one on their own get credits back from the electric company for having one connected and controllable by the utility, that costs little upfront.

These things just require cooperation from the utilities, so there is a market to sell them in volume for cost reduction. The utilities don't give a rats as* about power outages though, or relatively low cost solutions, you know the energy executives houses are fully backed up.
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I would entirely agree that any energy a home pumps into the grid would be beneficial to the grid.

The extra stuff needed to make a portable power station "grid tie ready" would most likely raise the cost of these units significantly. Unlike off-grid inverters, grid tied stuff has to sense and shut down when the grid is down.. they also have to be capable of dealing with the various voltage spikes the grid produces.

Seems like a good idea but I suspect not practical. Imagine them using this concept with EV's and being allowed to suck 5 kW of energy from your EV whenever it was fully charged.. or some other program that allowed both EV owners and the grid operators to benefit.

Another thought, why not just take a 400 watt solar panel, glue a microinverter to it, and then plug it into the wall outlet or a 240 dryer plug? Not only would it be far cheaper to do, but it would provide a lot more than a single kilowatt hour of energy to the grid during the day.

And I think its fair to say that when your grid is stressed, its because the sun is shining making everything hot and its the air conditioners sucking up most of energy.
 
MurphyGuy said:
Is it really that hard to do in Texas? What's the catch?

Here in Michigan, it was pretty easy.. at least in the small town I'm located near. My only complaint is that the permit(s) cost me $400 and the inspectors came three times and spent a grand total sum of about 6 minutes here.

There I was, all proud of my work, attention to detail, accuracy, and professional work.. and those guys didn't even open a single box to look inside..

But the process wasn't difficult.. no one gave me any problems per se.

So what's up with Texas?
Click to expand...
I doubt if it's like this everywhere in Texas, but our local coop POCO claims to support adding solar except when you try to engage them it's a whole different story. Their "solar guy" wouldn't return my calls at all over the course of four to six months. They have an open ended connection fee that they plainly state in their agreement can be adjusted at any time at their discretion and without notice. I finally spoke with a local commercial electrician and he advised me to go off grid. As he put it, they will put every possible roadblock in front of you imaginable. I find I'm much happier off grid anyway so it all worked out for me.
 
MurphyGuy said:
I would entirely agree that any energy a home pumps into the grid would be beneficial to the grid.

The extra stuff needed to make a portable power station "grid tie ready" would most likely raise the cost of these units significantly. Unlike off-grid inverters, grid tied stuff has to sense and shut down when the grid is down.. they also have to be capable of dealing with the various voltage spikes the grid produces.
Click to expand...

Here is a 1000watt solar / 750 watt from battery grid tie inverter with limiter available on Amazon for $215.99 with free shipping. In bulk, with a battery, in a pretty case with dryer Y cord, and whatever wifi / powerline communication it needs for the utility to communicate with it should be doable for under $500, although even $750 to $1000 wouldn't be terrible. They could mostly be self installed if designed right. Obviously it would have to be "tested" to meet certain standards, although I think UL, the NEC and fire safety groups and the rest of the regulatory capture industry holding everybody back needs to be told to suck a nut on some things.

If we were able to get to the moon 60 years ago, I think we can develop a product using already existing off the shelf equipment to do this easy style power shaving.

MurphyGuy said:
Seems like a good idea but I suspect not practical. Imagine them using this concept with EV's and being allowed to suck 5 kW of energy from your EV whenever it was fully charged.. or some other program that allowed both EV owners and the grid operators to benefit.
Click to expand...
They pretty much already exist. They are planning to do the same thing with EVs already.. the problem with using EVs to do it, is that they are expensive, not everybody can easily plug them in every day, they are needed for work the next day, etc.. EVs are also higher output than I am advocating for, would require an expensive dedicated outlet to be put in exclusively for charging/discharging them (not all garages have 220vac outlets in them) where as most houses have a dedicated dryer outlet somewhere near a dryer.

MurphyGuy said:
Another thought, why not just take a 400 watt solar panel, glue a microinverter to it, and then plug it into the wall outlet or a 240 dryer plug? Not only would it be far cheaper to do, but it would provide a lot more than a single kilowatt hour of energy to the grid during the day.

And I think its fair to say that when your grid is stressed, its because the sun is shining making everything hot and its the air conditioners sucking up most of energy.
Click to expand...

Looking at the chart in this thread, the problem with solar panels is that they stop supplying power at a point where everybody has gotten back home and their houses are already hot as heck from the days sun. We are talking about the grid running out of power at 7-9pm at night.. house is still hot, sun is down. A small battery charged from the grid when low (remember, not everybody has the ability to do solar panels), could easily discharge into the grid at those times as needed. Also, it's much easier to hook a little battery unit up near a dryer outlet than it is to properly mount a solar panel and tie it in safely to an outdoor outlet. That arrangement likely needs to be weatherized for outdoor usage as well, remember I am talking about a device controlled by the utility if need be.

The grid is stressed by the sun shining, but existing solar panel production maps already show that the heat load is still there after the sun goes down. Solar can only really benefit the utilities when tied with some form of energy storage, whether that be batteries, some form of hydro, fuels, massive flywheels, whatever..

As much as a I love solar, batteries are a separate love altogether, they go great together, but they are each special in their own way.
 
cs1234 said:
the problem with solar panels is that they stop supplying power at a point where everybody has gotten back home and their houses are already hot as heck from the days sun. We are talking about the grid running out of power at 7-9pm at night.. house is still hot, sun is down.
Click to expand...

Automatic setback thermostats have existed for decades.
Rooftop PV customers are forced onto time of use rate schedules, but consumers are not.

Having the A/C pre-cool the houses would make a big difference.
Having a pager to shut off the A/C would avert grid collapse.

(Totally voluntary, of course. Those who decline would simply get a pager controlled disconnect installed under their utility meter.)
 
looks like demand is coming in below forecast, 76 mw vs 79mw forecast
ercot was probably sweating bullets
a lot of folks must have raised their thermostats
 
EastTexCowboy said:
I doubt if it's like this everywhere in Texas, but our local coop POCO claims to support adding solar except when you try to engage them it's a whole different story. Their "solar guy" wouldn't return my calls at all over the course of four to six months. They have an open ended connection fee that they plainly state in their agreement can be adjusted at any time at their discretion and without notice. I finally spoke with a local commercial electrician and he advised me to go off grid. As he put it, they will put every possible roadblock in front of you imaginable. I find I'm much happier off grid anyway so it all worked out for me.
Click to expand...
So the Texas republicans are trying to control your power? Or is there some other facet to this?
 
Hedges said:
Automatic setback thermostats have existed for decades.
Rooftop PV customers are forced onto time of use rate schedules, but consumers are not.

Having the A/C pre-cool the houses would make a big difference.
Having a pager to shut off the A/C would avert grid collapse.

(Totally voluntary, of course. Those who decline would simply get a pager controlled disconnect installed under their utility meter.)
Click to expand...
:LOL:

I was trying to suggest a solution that avoided inconveniencing people. People don't like to be inconvenienced. Even the slightest hint of inconvenience shuts down almost all discussion instantly. A device they can purchase that helps the grid ( and environment if we greenwash it right), gets them a credit on their electric bill and requires no sacrifice of convenience? Winner, winner!
 
EastTexCowboy said:
No, this is all about profit margins and control by a regional coop. The state hasn't shown any interest in controlling our power. Unlike some blue states.
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I can only speak for my own state of Michigan, which is currently rather blue(ish). There are no problems here with power or control that I would complain about.

Our rates are higher than some states.... and if we don't like it, we can install solar easily enough. Like I said, I didn't have any issues back in 2017 when I installed our DIY system of 12kW.

I've heard that some states are really easy and some are a real pain. We currently have 25kWh of off-grid capacity but we don't use it unless the grid goes down. Being out in the rural countryside, we can be without grid for a week at a time if big storms roll through.

I'm currently building a barn and will most likely slap another 5 to 6 kW worth of panels on it, and when I do, I might just install a big 100 to 200 kWh battery bank and get rid of my POCO meter all together. Battery prices are really falling fast...
 
What does a meter cost you?
It is a very reliable source of power, and backed by an experienced crew.
Inexpensive compared to generator, unless it has high fixed cost.
 
Hedges said:
What does a meter cost you?
It is a very reliable source of power, and backed by an experienced crew.
Inexpensive compared to generator, unless it has high fixed cost.
Click to expand...
It varies a lot depending on where you are.

My grid costs compared with my own production costs:

Code: 
Grid Energy Costs:
Daily                     $2.06/day
Peak                      $0.61/kWh
Shoulder                  $0.46/kWh
Off-Peak                  $0.33/kWh
Feed-in credit            $0.12/kWh (excess to consumption)

Grid-tied PV
Cost per kWh of PV:      ~$0.06/kWh (15 years)

Off-grid PV/battery
Cost per kWh of PV:      ~$0.03/kWh (15 years)
Cost per kWh of battery: ~$0.13/kWh (3000 cycles)

I sure won't be cutting off the grid but minimising the energy we draw from the grid by generating and consuming our own energy is way better financially.
 
Hedges said:
What does a meter cost you?
It is a very reliable source of power, and backed by an experienced crew.
Inexpensive compared to generator, unless it has high fixed cost.
Click to expand...

$8.50 a month when we don't suck any power back from the grid.

When we do suck back power, I think I get charged something like $0.02 per kilowatt/hr.. I forget what the charge is called.

I probably wouldn't disconnect from the grid, but it would be nice to setup to do just that if I wanted.

Using the generator to charge the batteries until the sun shines again costs almost nothing.. 4 hours of generator run time and bats are almost fully charged. On natural gas, we don't even see the bill change.
 
MurphyGuy said:
I can only speak for my own state of Michigan, which is currently rather blue(ish). There are no problems here with power or control that I would complain about.
Click to expand...

Funny how people have different views. This was just posted on another forum I frequent.

"We are at it again......
At least the powerless company is. Last night about 10pm a thunder storm went through and to no ones surprise the power went down. Here we go again. Last time it was 8 days. This time who knows. Along with our roads here in Michigan our power companies are the worst in the country."
 
I was without power for a week during the icestorm here in Texas. My literal next door neighbor, 20' away from my house, had power the whole time. All because the green box that powers my house took my half of the street out, but it split at my house and the rest of the street had power.

So yeah, people can have different views on the power company, even on the same street. :poop:
 
House across from us is on a totally different power company because we're right at the split point. Their lines come from down the road, ours come from up the road. But the houses down the road on our side of the road are the same as us. They also have a different street name and house numbering (ours is 3 digits, theirs is 5 digits). Kinda weird in places ?
 
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