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diy solar

Crazy things you do with excess power

I just talked with a friend who is a sugar maker. (Makes maple syrup)
He was up all night last night collecting sap and transferring it to storage tanks so the collection tanks would not overflow. He has over 9,000 gallons of sap. Next he will concentrate the sap by running it through a reverse osmosis machine. Next, the concentrated sap will go into a pan and be boiled down to syrup. Then it will be canned. The RO machine and the boiling process require a huge amount of energy. Solar is probably not a practical option but if you have the excess power? Putting ice in the microwave is not very practical either :)
I have lots of maples, and have made syrup in the past. I'd love to concentrate it with RO and cook it down. It's just getting it out of the trees is a pain.
 
Living within your means can be odd when the weather changes your means. One of the hard things to do if you are a creature of habit is to be careful with usage one day and than run out and splurge the next. Bipolar solar user. I wonder if there is counseling available?
 
I run an extremely inefficient portable A/C in the garage when I'm not even in there it goes against everything I was taught as a child
 
This is bat**** crazy- I sell extra power to my power company. This month they are paying me .079 to sell, .137 to buy.
Be happy: here in Germany they sell the KWh for 47cents and buy your solar KWh for 7 cents, end even that is not sure, most will just get nothing for their export, unless you go through a painful beaurocratic maze.

P.S. and on the top of it, you must pay
-a fixed Subscription Fee,
-a Network Fee,
-a Metering Fee,
-a Renewable Energy Levy
-a Network stabilization Levy
-an Electric Power Tax
-and -obviously- on everything + 19% VAT.
 
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Natural gas prices are rising parabolically here.

I have a late 90's set of Maytag Dependable Care washer and natural gas dryer. A few months back on a whim I looked at FB Marketplace to see if I could find a matching vintage electric version of the dryer and found the exact model 10 minutes away in immaculate condition for $200. Added another vent stack and ran a 30A circuit from the loads panel. I've got both the gas and electric dryers hooked up, can use both or either depending on time of day and weather.

Next project is to remove the 40 gallon gas water heater and replace it with a gas tankless pre-fed by a new 50-gallon electric that will be a pre-heater. I'll use Insteon and some logic, in conjunction with an output relay from either a MPPT or an XW to divert some excess power to the "pre" heater. If no diversion is available I've still got the gas as backup. In researching this I've discovered that not all gas tankless units can work with a hot input; it has to be compatible with a circulation pump to support that. I've also considered doing two electric tanks, a small one full time powered and a larger one for abundance opportunities. Pretty much anything to reduce the consumption of gas is worth it at this point.
 
I have a "no paper no permit" 3kwp thing. Legal but allowed to feed only 600W to the net.
Before having a battery i dumped the excess into the warm water boiler. I did automate that, has been running for 2 years now.
 
Be happy: here in Germany they sell the KWh for 47cents and buy your solar KWh for 7 cents, end even that is not sure, most will just get nothing for their export, unless you go through a painful beaurocratic maze.
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I'm very happy about it- they didn't make me jump through hoops to get interconnected.

There terrible about the roadblocks. Never been to Germany but I always pictured it as a forward thinking country - maybe not
 
That is -under our latitudes and maritime climate- an utopy.
I frequently have two-three weeks in sequence without any relevant solar contribution: The inverter won't even start.

That's why I said earlier in this thread - the days my batteries are full before lunchtime, I feel grateful and content.

My batteries are full and its running most of my household loads. Including the hot water cylinder 24/7. I couldn't care less about not using potential solar production.
 
That's why I said earlier in this thread - the days my batteries are full before lunchtime, I feel grateful and content.

My batteries are full and its running most of my household loads. Including the hot water cylinder 24/7. I couldn't care less about not using potential solar production.
Your batteries can bridge three weeks of overcasted weather?
 
Your batteries can bridge three weeks of overcasted weather?

They're big enough to cover 5 or 6 days easily. Which is more than enough to cover 95% of the usual weather patterns where I live in New Zealand. It's going to be different for everybody.

My point is I'm content when the batteries are full and the solar has rammed down just to cover household loads for the rest of the day. I don't worry about losing potential solar production. I'm grateful to have full batteries.
 
I am going to buy multiple conexes/shipping containers, insulate the crap out of them, and throw a mini split on each. Climatized storage. No hotter than 70 degrees F and no colder than 50 F (freeze mode). Should require the most power in the summer.
 
I am going to buy multiple conexes/shipping containers, insulate the crap out of them, and throw a mini split on each. Climatized storage. No hotter than 70 degrees F and no colder than 50 F (freeze mode). Should require the most power in the summer.
Why 70?
 
Be happy: here in Germany they sell the KWh for 47cents and buy your solar KWh for 7 cents, end even that is not sure, most will just get nothing for their export, unless you go through a painful beaurocratic maze.

P.S. and on the top of it, you must pay
-a fixed Subscription Fee,
-a Network Fee,
-a Metering Fee,
-a Renewable Energy Levy
-a Network stabilization Levy
-an Electric Power Tax
-and -obviously- on everything + 19% VAT.
It's pretty similar here in Australia with a few exceptions.

i. Getting a feed-in tariff is not difficult but the buy/sell ratio is pretty much the same as yours. The typical sell rate here is ~US$ 0.03-0.06/kWh.

ii. Our "VAT" equivalent is 10%.

iii. All the extras you mention are built into the daily service fee and also the tariff, so the general customer doesn't really have transparency on those but they are all costs the retailer pays to the distributor, market operator and government and so get built into the retail price. None of the extra costs are added to the feed-in tariff, only to the import tariffs, which is primarily why there is such a big buy/sell price difference.

iv. But by far the biggest difference is the lower cost per kWh generated (~US$0.025/kWh over 15 years).
Grid-tied solar PV system professionally installed only cost ~US$ 0.5-0.6/W. When combined with our good solar irradiance it means the lifetime cost per generated kWh is pretty low. If your generation only costs 2.5c/kWh, then getting 3-6c/kW for excess exported to the grid is still OK. Far better to use it to replace a 20-50c/kWh import tariff instead, but if you cannot, then exporting excess still has some value.

All that means is households here only need replace a modest proportion (anything > 25-30%) of their imported energy needs with solar PV for it to make financial sense, even if they get very little for exported energy. That's usually pretty easy, more so if the home is occupied during the day. Water heating is low hanging fruit, while daytime space heating/cooling with heat pumps is next.
 
I am going to buy multiple conexes/shipping containers, insulate the crap out of them, and throw a mini split on each. Climatized storage. No hotter than 70 degrees F and no colder than 50 F (freeze mode). Should require the most power in the summer.
What is that in metric units?
;)

Anyhow you ought to buy a huge tarpaulin and install it over the containers to shade them. That is at least as efficient as the insulation.
 
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