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Crazy things you do with excess power

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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Today is the second day of good sun here in the frozen s***hole of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After the batteries were charged I was so eager to use the free excess electricity that I washed my favorite long johns days ahead of schedule.

I also put the lunch leftovers into the refrigerator steaming hot.
Heat the walk in closet with an electric heater.
 
Here you just can't live off grid from our climate

I'm a little more north than you. I'm off-grid. It's perfectly possible, but you have to design your house for it. Heating with alternatives like wood (modern wood gasification boiler) and some bio-diesel you make over summer for the generator in winter. My place runs in winter on average with 5kWh a day, and that's not sacrificing any comfort. With a 60kWh battery, I have 12 days of autonomy. I'm expanding to 100kWh this Spring. The only times I need the generator are November, December and January - when I run it once a week at most.
 
I'm a little more north than you. I'm off-grid. It's perfectly possible, but you have to design your house for it. Heating with alternatives like wood (modern wood gasification boiler) and some bio-diesel you make over summer for the generator in winter. My place runs in winter on average with 5kWh a day, and that's not sacrificing any comfort. With a 60kWh battery, I have 12 days of autonomy. I'm expanding to 100kWh this Spring. The only times I need the generator are November, December and January - when I run it once a week at most.
It's all about how many sunny days you have in winter. And designing the whole house around off-grid requirements is not accessible to many of us.
 
With the last 2 days being socked in weather, and today starting off with snow drifting down, it is the other side of SAD (solar affected disorder). My batteries are at 20% SOC and not long before needing supplementing. Gone are the exuberant use of electricity to be replaced with rationing the little left. My mood is as bleak as the weather outdoors.

My solar counselor when informed of my depressed state of condition is prescribing higher doses of lithium.
 
It's all about how many sunny days you have in winter. And designing the whole house around off-grid requirements is not accessible to many of us.
You would still get a % of power from your panels just depends on how much "excess" panels you installed. You would be in trouble however if your panels are covered in snow and you can't clear them off. Most calculations for "days of autonomy" assume zero input for all those days but if you even just cover base loads during those cloudy days you drastically increase the "days of autonomy".
 
My solar counselor when informed of my depressed state of condition is prescribing higher doses of lithium.
Higher doses of lithium is not a source of energy. It needs to be charged as well. And -you can count on that- you usually start long periods of snow with already depleted batteries from a few weeks of overcasted cloudy days.
 
Higher doses of lithium is not a source of energy. It needs to be charged as well. And -you can count on that- you usually start long periods of snow with already depleted batteries from a few weeks of overcasted cloudy days.
He’ll have sun tomorrow. NW Arkansas doesn’t get the weeks of cloudy weather like Germany. He’s just being a whiner. Pretty pathetic SAD.
 
Today is the second day of good sun here in the frozen s***hole of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After the batteries were charged I was so eager to use the free excess electricity that I washed my favorite long johns days ahead of schedule.

I also put the lunch leftovers into the refrigerator steaming hot.
Get a dehydrater and jerk off!
 
30 years ago thinking about how to use excess power I decided to produce hydrogen and burn it for cooking. I made a hydrolizer from a plastic barrel, a bucket, and some motorcycle parts. I filled a couple cheap air mattresses with hydrogen and tied them down to my fence with the idea of stacking some weights on them to force the hydrogen into my stove. It didn't work out because I couldn't get the pressure right to operate the stove but it did get the attention of my neighbors who wondered why I had floating air mattresses tied to my fence.
 

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