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diy solar

diy solar

Solar Production Greater Than Consumption

A quick survey.
How many months of the year does your Solar Production meet or exceed your Consumption?
Batteries count. Generators don’t count.
About 11.7 months of the year, which means we need a generator up to 10 days per year (trending closer to 5, but I'm being pessimistic). But I think most off grid systems should plan for at least some generator use, or the system is likely oversized in terms of battery capacity. The generator is just part of the system and plan.

We are off grid in midcoast Maine. Average January (coldest month) high temp is 28.8F, average low is 9.8F, mean daily average is 19.8F. A few days with highs in single digits and lows in single digit below 0 most years. Coldest in past 5 years has been -17F. For heating, we use only air-air mini split heat pumps for the living area and have not used more than 4.2 KWH in a 24-hour period to heat it this winter (910 SF usable space). Garage and entry foyer use propane-fueled in-slab radiant heat in "real" winter because it dries snow melt dramatically faster than air-air heat pumps, but plan is to install air-water heat pump for that in next two years (propane will remain for backup). Will switch to air-air heat pump as soon as we're out of snow danger (no need to heat slab to dry it) and enough sun to power air-air heat pump in garage.
 
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Northeast US. Last year production > consumption for 10 months (for year 1.59x more) with battery. Only January and December were less. In 2023, it was 9 months (for year 1.32x more), with January, November, and December less.
 
Since I just started tracking this midway through the year... All electric home... January started of with 4 days of grid thanks to the week of winter we've had.1000012199.jpg
 
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I'm in the hole dec-feb, which is fine as I'm net metered. No batteries yet but that won't change the monthly average production and consumption.

SW VA mountains. Jan avg high 42, low 23. Main house is heated by low temp heat pumps + occasional woodstove use. Also heating a 15x50 greenhouse with solar thermal storage and wood and electric resistance backup. Will probably be upgrading the greenhouse backup to a heat pump before next winter. 2 EVs. Zero fossil fuel use other than a diesel tractor.
 
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9 months on the old system.

No idea on the new. I'd assume more since I can offload heat to propane on dull days....but that seems like cheating.
 
13...:p....come on... I live in a high altitude dry desert environment AND inside a blue hole between two mountain ranges. We easily get over 330 sun filled days a year here. Theres a company thats trying to put in an 800 acre solar farm a couple miles from me but the tree huggers of all people are dogging them! I dont know... something about fires they say.
 
13...:p....come on... I live in a high altitude dry desert environment AND inside a blue hole between two mountain ranges. We easily get over 330 sun filled days a year here. Theres a company thats trying to put in an 800 acre solar farm a couple miles from me but the tree huggers of all people are dogging them! I dont know... something about fires they say.
If it's the AES Rancho Viejo project I don't think it's tree huggers. Looks more like it's NIMBYs who live in the adjacent subdivision who just don't want any development near them. There's a big difference between NIMBYism and environmentalism.
 
Personally I'd prefer productive farmland not be converted to solar. We're going to need that farmland to feed people at some point.

There are about 16 billion sqft of commercial warehouse roof area in the US, mostly clustered around urban centers where the electrical loads are. Enough for about 300 gigawatts of installed solar capacity. Most of that roof area is used for - nothing.

It would take only minor design changes in those warehouse buildings for them to be as cheap or cheaper to install PV on than utility scale ground mounts are. Not to mention the savings in electrical transmission and distribution infrastucture from placing the solar production close to the loads. But without some preplanning during building design it can get expensive to do commercial roof mounts.

So I'm ok with rural solar farms but I think we're missing the boat on a better long term solution.
 
Aiming for all year, only lived in this house for 5 months so far. Totally off grid in a new home build in Florida.
It's not always as sunny as you might think here so adding another 8kw of panels this spring.
 
Personally I'd prefer productive farmland not be converted to solar. We're going to need that farmland to feed people at some point.
There's some use of combined agric/solar, just by lifting on taller mounts. Obviously specifics will vary depending on the local climate; I've seen mention of sheep-grazing and of grapevines.

 
Zero so far, but I continue to pursue the off grid dream.
I live in rural Ohio where temperatures can dip well below zero on a snow covered clear winter night.

Friday morning was the coldest in a couple years at negative 2*
Friday was sunny so I was able to take advantage of the solar, by running 2 12,000btu mini-split units for several hours. (Saving on natural gas usage)

October was my best solar output to date, at an average of approximately 17kwh's per day.
 
northern northeast
propane
8 months exceed the grid supply. those 8 months use batteries for 6 to 11pm
still, over a year solar exceeds grid use
edit -> of note - there is the electric car which uses the majority of the electric to the house, solar and grid.
 
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