PV energy less expensive than natural gas. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 07:17:56 am
content: My house is now fully heated with electricity from PV as it is the lowest cost option even when compared to natural gas.Solution is simple and reliable as everything is solid state no flames or water pipes just PV panels connected to DMPPT450 then directly connected to in floor resistive heat elements (concrete floor acts as large thermal mass storage large enough to deal with a few cloudy days) and small part of the PV array is diverted to SBMS120 to charge a small 5kWh LiFePO4 battery that provide all electricity for the house.Since house heating and electricity is provided 100% by solar PV house is considered a net zero energy house.Total cost of the system around 15000USD and designed to last at least 30 years thus cost amortization for the house energy (heating and electricity no transportation) is 500USD/year (15000USD/30years) so an average of 42USD/month for electricity and heating a small 65m² (700sqft) in Saskatchewan Canada (heating season here is about 7 months per year).Any one can compete with this numbers ?

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 07:50:11 am
content: That's very impressive the more so you have worked out the amortization that many seem to ignore! I would be interested to know the peak installed panel power ?You obviously also use energy saving measures as your electrical demand is below what many seem able to use, perhaps you do not have the apparently obligatory 60 inch TV in every roomHave you taken into account the reduction in efficiency over the life of the panels and battery pack ?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:31:10 am
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on November 04, 2018, 07:50:11 amAmortization cost is of course the most important factor and yes to many seem to ignore this.PV array peak installed power will be 10.14kWh (39x260W) and while I have all panels I only installed 33 at this time 8.58kW in order to test how it will perform in 30 years when panels degradation may be 15 to 20%Yes house is energy efficient thermally insulated close to passive house standards and energy usage is low most of the electricity (about 60%) is used for electric cooking.Average energy usage is around 120kWh as electricity of course it also end up 100% as heating no matter if energy is use for computers LED lights or refrigerator.Total peak energy including heating gets around 1000kWh/month in January (coldest moth here with average temperature of just -16.7C)Thermal storage 150kWh (currently just about 90kWh likely not quite sufficient for worst case scenario).Last winter was the first test but DMPPT450 was not ready so a bit lower efficiency with panels directly connected to heating elements and then I ended up needing 2x 100kWh propane tanks (small 8kg propane tanks) in January so 20% backup was needed and less than one propane tank in February so less than 10% but I do not expect any backup to be needed this year with the working DMPPT450 as this should add at least 30% extra compared to PV directly connected to fixed heating elements.The small 5kWh LiFePO4 battery pack is only needed to provide electrical energy over night as battery can be fully charged by the large PV array even in the worst overcast day as the LiFePO4 battery has priority over heating since heating has a much larger thermal storage good for many overcast days.Cost amortization for PV panels is just 2 to 3 cent/kWh for LiFePO4 around 15 to 20 cent/kWh and for thermal storage can be as low as 1 cent/kWh thus it makes sense to have a large thermal storage followed by a large PV array and a small as possible LiFePO4.My base load is very low just under 24W at night (it will likely increase a bit when heat recovery ventilation will work but it is still very insignificant for the 4.7kWh battery even after a 20% degradation that should be in 20 years as I measured a less than 1% degradation per year).

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:42:27 am
content: can you post some pictures of your PV installation ?a 260W panel is about 1 square meter, so how do you fit 39m2 of panels on a 65m2 flat ?

author: nfmax
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:48:28 am
content: Less expensive than LPG, I think you mean, not less expensive than natural gas. Much more credible!

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:50:01 am
content: Quote from: nfmax on November 04, 2018, 08:48:28 amDepends on where you live.

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 12:19:03 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 04, 2018, 07:17:56 amThat's one hell of an amazing idea, beats storing energy in a hot water cylinder any day, you just added another "must have" to my next houseVery interesting your comment about all that concrete storing enough to cope with several cloudy days, guess it must be fairly well insulated from the ground, I assume that bit was a self build ?Lots of investment there and faith in your idea, well done you so you can sit back and reap the rewardsTrouble is at my age I don't have the 30 years payback left but definitely set the cogs churning

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 12:47:07 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 04, 2018, 07:17:56 amDid you test this? My experience with floor heating is that a concrete floor cools down pretty quick (even when insulated with about 10cm of styrofoam). After a few hours it will get cold. The heat conductivity and thermal capacity of concrete are low. I'm pretty sure you'll need energy storage either as hot water or battery to keep the temperature constant. Combining PV with a solar boiler could be a good idea.QuoteHow about ventilation? My house is also well insulated but I need to have a few windows open to keep the air breathable and get the moisture out. In practise there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to insulation because a house needs to ventilated as well.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 01:25:02 pm
content: QuoteThermal solar is better than PV+heat pump boiler, from the efficiency side.A combination of both is a good system IMHO.The efficiency difference of max 20% is however not relevant when speaking about solar, as you increase the area to compensate, and you overdesign anyway.A PV+heat pump boiler has advantages over thermal solar+PV that you can use the excess energy in the summer as electricity instead of wasting it, and the installation cost is lower with one less medium to route to the roof.As usual, YMMV depending on eventual subsidies, local weather pattern and local prices.Storage of thermal energy in the thermal inertia of a concrete floor works but is limited.Say you have a 10-ton concrete floor, which can increase temperature only + 5°C. Don't burn your feet !You store less energy in that 10-ton concrete floor than a 1 m³ water storage which can increase temperature 65°C (30 to 95°C)Also, one giant drawback is that you don't control the release rate of that thermal storage.Thermal inertia works, and is a fact in most buildings, but it will not really help that much on the long run, especially if you want a tightly controlled temperature.Also, of course, the concrete floor needs to be well isolated to the sides of the building and to the ground under.Those are requirements anyway for properly energy efficient modern buildings.For the record, I have a near passive house, wood structure and concrete floors, with 10m² thermal solar + 1,3m³ water tank + a wood burner (very efficient and clean). No PV yet.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 02:56:49 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 12:47:07 pmWindows are an inefficient way to get fresh air. If you use a heat exchanger to draw in fresh air and expel stale air you can recover quite a bit of the temperature difference between the two air streams. It can also be the basis for humidity control.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 03:00:59 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 04, 2018, 02:56:49 pmIn theory. In practise these systems don't seem to work very well and need a lot of maintenance too.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 03:18:14 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 12:47:07 pmIn the US people use heat exchangers on the ventilation to recovery energy.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 03:22:34 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 03:00:59 pmYou see heat exchangers used more in hot countries with huge air con bills, than in cold countries with huge heating bills, but they work fine. Maintenance is basically just cleaning out the dirty at reasonable intervals.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 03:54:29 pm
content: Thermal storage in concrete only really makes sense if you use high temperature, water has 4 times the so specific heat and even per volume it stores more. The concrete doesn't need a container, but the water doesn't need a heat exchanger and can't crack.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 04:12:10 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 04, 2018, 03:22:34 pmAnd the reason for that is moisture. Airconditioners make the air more dry and the outside of the building is warm. In colder climates the outside is cold and the inside is warm. The warm air inside can contain a lot of moisture so every cold spot is a place where you get condensation and a nice environment for bacteria to grow and wood to rot. This is a big problem which is hard to fix!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 04:33:44 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 04:12:10 pmThe main visible problem with moisture in cold climates is water running down the inside of the windows, but if the walls lack insulation the moisture on the walls is far more troublesome, as it promotes mould growth. Heat exchangers can help with this, as the more sophisticated ones provide a centralised point for controlling the humidity of the warm air. There is no all encompassing solution, though, as drying the warm air too much can lead to a lot of damage to wood and other materials which are moisture sensitive.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 06:17:30 pm
content: QuoteNope. Works reliably, maintenance time is less than the sum of the time for opening and closing the windows every day.It's a requirement for a modern house in most climates with colder periods, where the aeration energy is huge.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 06:39:26 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 04, 2018, 06:17:30 pmThen why is everybody I have talked to complaining about these systems not working as advertised and needing lots of care and maintenance? Recently a relative of mine had a new house build and the builder advised against getting such a ventilation system due to the problems with it. Getting solar panels to reach the 'climate requirements' was a much safer option.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 07:23:55 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico onTodayat 19:39:26How many sellers today understand what they sell ...?As soon as they had some problem with one thing (they did not install correctly because they did not know how to install properly) and voila, this is something you shouldnt buy...

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 07:43:21 pm
content: QuoteWhat kind of "problems" ?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:45:21 pm
content: That sounds really great.I am guessing that the sky is clear most of the time there, year round?(fairly dry climate, even if kind of far northward)BTW, nctnico, I have an HRV (balanced) ventilation system. Its definitely worth the cost, I am sure its paid for itself many times over in savings on both AC and heat, and it improves comfort.It saves money year round.I cant think of what problems somebody would see with it, could you be a bit more specific?Something is set up wrong if they have problems, most likely. You have to open it up every few months and clean it, which takes around half an hour, I usually scrub down the filters and once every six months or so I might wash out the aluminum heat exchanger core in the basement sink. But really, washing the filters is the main thing. They catch dust and clog up if they are not cleaned. They have to be cleaned, but its a very simple procedure, just some soap and a brush.Quote from: electrodacus on November 04, 2018, 07:17:56 am

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 08:57:49 pm
content: Maybe I am not understanding what their expectations are or how they all fit together.I don't have a PV system and my HRV runs off of 115 v AC, its basically a fancy dual fan with a heat exchanger and filters. It warms up incoming air in the winter and cools it in the summer.Its laid out like an X with the two airflows basically going perpendicular to one another.Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 06:39:26 pmWhat are the 'climate requirements'?I am pretty sure they are required in new homes in Canada because the materials used in new homes now are so laden with things like formaldehyde and chemicals of various kinds that they are unhealthy without ventilation.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 09:50:53 pm
content: Wow. I did not expected so many replays in a short period of time. Not sure how I will answer all but I will try.Quote from: kripton2035 on November 04, 2018, 08:42:27 amOne 260W PV panel has about 1.65m2 so yes 39 panels will require about 65m2 but my panels are not installed on the roof but ground mount.There are two reasons to have them ground mount and that is tilt angle needed here for max gain in winter is about 65 to 70 degree and that is how they are installed and second is that is easier to clean them.Quote from: nctnico on November 04, 2018, 12:47:07 pmThis floor is designed by me completely insulated from outside no thermal bridge to ground and is fairly thick with a total of 14m³ of concrete. Heating one cubic meter of concrete by one degree Celsius requires 0.58kWh of energy so I assumed a max temperature range of 12C (18C to 30C) and thus total usable storage capacity for my concrete floor is 14m³ x 12C x 0.58kWh = 97kWhCurrently this is all I have and is good for 4 to 5 overcast days but I will need slightly more so I will need to add a 1500 liter plastic storage tank that will have a working temperature range of 20C to 55C thus 35C delta and to heat 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius you need 1.16Wh so storage capacity for that will be 1500 x 35 x 1.16 = 61kWh thus I will have a total of 158kWh that will be perfect for worst case situation based on my house requirements and my climate.As for ventilation as mention is a work in progress as I want a 24V heat recovery ventilation so I need to design and build that myself. Currently I open the windows and loss from that is not that large still a heat recovery ventilation is a worth while investment and no modern house should be without one.Quote from: f4eru on November 04, 2018, 01:25:02 pmThermal solar is more expensive than PV solar and best way for me to answer this is to link to my presentation seepage 5also see my replay above yours.Heat pumps are not cost effective when talking about PV solar heating as they have a limited life and fairly high cost's.Quote from: Marco on November 04, 2018, 03:54:29 pmThermal storage in concrete costs nothing if the house is designed to take advantage of the structural concrete that is already needed as it is my case with the 14m³ concrete floor 30 tones that is also the house foundation (insulated slab on grade).As mentioned above I will use a combination of both for a total of 158kWh of thermal storage capacity.Quote from: cdev on November 04, 2018, 08:45:21 pmIs fairly sunny here in winter but also extremely cold thus this same house may require as much as 2x more energy for heating that in a more temperate climate where is less sunny thus likely the same PV array will be needed.For photos of the system you can check mygoogle+ page

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 10:52:17 pm
content: You can buy HRV cores by themselves. The core in my unit is made of aluminum structured in a particular manner to maximize the surface area between two independent air flows that go through it perpendicular to one another. Its cube shaped.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 10:59:37 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 04, 2018, 10:52:17 pmThanks. I already got the the HRV core and is made of aluminium and even have the brushless squirrel cage fans, I just did not got around to design and build a box for them to install, as with the huge temperature deltas here it needs to be very well done.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 11:16:42 pm
content: Water will condense under the core in the winter and it will need to be conducted into a drain or outside in a way that doesn't/can't freeze shut. We have a little tube that goes down to the basement laundry sink. For me there is usually very little water but the climate where I live (East Coast US) is very mild compared to Canada where you live. The HRV keeps the house warm and even in the winter the air coming in is warm enough to not be a shock, its cool but not cold at that point, when its well below freezing outside. I mean to set up a set of sensors so I can have some numbers on its performance. I think it is definitely performing as advertised. Even in the winter nights we turn the heat way down so it only kicks in when its really really cold in the winter. I sleep better that way. The HRV keeps it warm enough in the house for that to work fine. There is enough residual heat to make the air coming in quite a bit warmer all night long. Right now its on fairly continuously at a low setting.One thing that is non standard on mine is the unit itself is upstairs, not in the basement. I wanted the air intake and exhaust to be up high, not down low. Its cleaner and picks up much less crap. Its hanging from hooks to isolate the sound.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2018, 11:26:29 pm
content: My unit has a complex controller board that manages the dampers and fan speeds. It has a expensive wall mounted controller panel - an option- that I would very much like to be able to emulate - I am pretty sure it could have multiple instances on the same loop, so emulation would likely work well.Most of the time we just are using it all the time but we change the settings for speed and duty cycle (time on vs time off) to suit the weather and time of day and whether we have windows open. The reason I would like more control is that there are only three speeds and three duty cycle settings and there is no way to tell it not to operate say when its just finished raining outside in the summer and its much more humid outside than in. It understands the need to exhaust high indoor humidity but not the desire to change the program when its just rained outside. There are a few other relatively minor things that I would like it to do that it doesnt.The controller board is made by Kanalflakt. My unit is now basically pretty old and so I have no idea what they use now. I just want to do this for myself.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:22:49 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 04, 2018, 11:16:42 pmI researched about all this in the past so I know what I need to do is just the implementation that is more challenging. I also already have the input and output holes setup with thermal sensors so I can calculate the efficiency but should be in the 60 to 80% range. Still the amount of energy stored in the air is not great and thus total saving on heating are just in the 5 to 10% range compared to not using a HRV.I also have CO2 sensor that will be used to control the amount of ventilation to keep things as efficient as possible and I will have to build my own speed controller and algorithm I'm just to busy with more urgent things at the moment and this is low priority as mentioned savings will not be that large but sufficient to worth having a HRV.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:30:00 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 12:22:49 amYou might need a more elaborate scheme that just monitoring CO2. In many circumstances it gets kinda smelly long before the CO2 rises much when you are in an enclosed space.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:36:53 am
content: With the caveat that I have an AC-running system, which likely is quite different in philosophy and layout than a DC PV powered system, also I have a conventional hydronic heating system too, the main benefit of the HRV has been cleaner air year round, so much so that its not been musty and humid indoors in a very long time.It also seems like to me that with this system I do save a lot of energy because in my experience, its extremely wasteful of energy to leave windows open in the winter.Unless the heat is on, opening a window will make the entire house chilly very quickly. Contrast that to the HRV which is a fan so it moves a lot of air, not making the house cold at all. Opening a window while the HRV is running will screw up the HRV's balancing and it may get much colder depending on what window is open. It works best when all the windows are shut.Id be interested in the different design philosophy with a PV system. I am gathering that the 150 cfm my HRV pushes is probably much more than in some zero net energy houses, hence the mustiness?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:44:10 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 05, 2018, 12:30:00 amFrom my tests CO2 is a fairly good indication. Most modern house here have a lot of bad materials like glues for carpets and badly made furniture and appliances that will constantly release a lot of nasty compounds plus some houses have leaked radon trough bad foundations and penetrations none of this apply to my house.So yes in vast majority of standard build house is just best to set a minimum air flow around one full air exchange in 3h and do not care about other indicators but for me the CO2 detection should work well (I will see when I get this implemented and adjust accordingly).I do not have guests often and 95% we are at home as we work from home thus CO2 rate will be fairly constant with slight variation between day and night.It is sad that most houses are badly designed considering how much knowledge we have today about all aspects.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:50:47 am
content: Not only do all those fake wood products emit formaldehyde in abundance, god forbid that they get more than superficially wet, do you know what happens then? (in addition to much more formaldehyde offgassing for the rest of their life-which may not be very long.)Okay here is the answer to my question, fakje wood products that have been wet - in addition to offgassing substantially more fumes, also lose structural strength leading to a potential for sudden catastrophic failures.One failure mode is 'delamination'

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 12:51:33 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 12:44:10 amThose are all valid potential issues, but I was thinking more of the smells originating from the occupants of the house - cooking, exercising, pets, bringing something into the house which turns out to be a bad decision, etc.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 01:10:14 am
content: For amortization cost, you left out the most important factor: the investment value of that $15,000. You may be a lousy investor, so this is easiest to calculate if we treat it as borrowed money. For example, if you can find a $15000 30-year loan at 5%, you'd have 360 payments (30 years) of $81/month, for a total of nearly $29000 to pay it off. The purchase value of money would likely decrease during that period, and your income will likely rise, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds. But it's more than the $42/month you quoted, with all 360 payments paid in advance.The number we haven't heard is what the average monthy costs were before this system was installed. That number minus your amortized cost is what determines how worthwhile this project is from the financial standpoint. If it's > 0, you're still looking good, since utility costs also will rise over time, barring a breakthrough in cold fusion or the like.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 01:30:39 am
content: Utility costs may rise quite a bit in the next few years because of the export of LNG.Because of the price rise in natural gas, electricity prices track natural gas prices, according to LA Times, so will likely also rise a lot. So PV makes a lot of sense, and will make even more sense in the near future.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 01:45:41 am
content: Coal is currently huge political button here in the US, never mind any logical arguments on either side. It's not nice to go there on someone else's thread. Let's leave it at utility prices historically rise over time, and the value of monetary units historically decreases over time.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 02:03:08 am
content: Quote from: Nusa on November 05, 2018, 01:10:14 amThis is a new house build in the middle of nowhere so offgrid. The temporary heating solution was small 8kg propane tanks that powered a thankless water heater that in turn circulated warm water trough pex tubing embedded in the concrete floor.The cost of one of those propane tanks was around 25 to 29CAD so about 20 to US$25 and around 12 of those where needed in coldest month and around 55 to 60 of them for the entire heating season each of those barbecue stile 8kg (2lb) propane tanks have about 100kWh of energy but the heating system was just around 80% efficient.so for a heating season I was paying about 1100 to $1200 and this was just heating it was not including the house electricity that was still provided by PV just with a much smaller PV array.Now the combined heating + electricity is just $500/year so no doubt a huge improvement considering just the heating it may be a 4x or more reduction in cost.Also the cost of the propane heater was not include (was cheap but failed after about 4 years) and the fact that I needed to transport those propane tanks thus extra transportation cost and inconvenience.For a relatively save investment the 3% or so annual interest will likely not even cover the inflation.I can give you a better way I can earn money. We drink 4liter (one gallon) of distilled water per day that up to now were purchasing at grocery store for about 2CAD 1.5USD and now since I have much more electricity I can do at home with a small distiller that uses around 3.5kWh to produce those 4 liters per day and amount of energy used is irrelevant as in winter that will still end up as heat so there is no need for extra PV panels and in summer this distiller can be outside so it will not heat up the house.Those $1.5/day mean $547.5/year in saving thus that saving alone more than pays for the entire installation and leave my heating and electricity as free plus a $47/year bonusThere are quite a few other things that can do the same for me like I will be using a electric hand dryer to save even more on on paper towel's. Will likely get more ideas over time as half of the energy is unused and the one used in winter can have first another use then end up as heat.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 02:14:53 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 04, 2018, 09:50:53 pmDid you add a lot of new floor insulation and use the pex tubing to circulate water to heaters on demand? Otherwise I don't see how to turn the slab's thermal inertia to thermal storage.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 02:29:35 am
content: Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 02:14:53 amThis house was designed and build by me not modifications to an old house. What you call thermal inertia is the same thing as thermal storage.Thermal insulation will have been needed anyway if you want an energy efficient house and up to a point adding thermal insulation will be the most cost effective thing to do.I currently no longer use the pex as I added electric heating wires (just normal silicone isolated copper wires 22 AWG to 18 AWG will work fine and they work at 30 to 33V DC no conversion just max power point from the PV array).

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 03:08:06 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 02:29:35 amBit of semantics but I'd say storage should be able to tapped at a desired power output. Then it lets you set a thermostat while providing all the necessary power. A building's thermal inertia obviously only lets you save on heating if you want to set a thermostat.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 04:32:37 am
content: Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 03:08:06 amSince delta between ambient and floor temperature is just maybe 2C the floor works as a thermal mass storage. As it is now if I stop any sort of heating and outside temperature is -5C to -10C then there will be a 1.5 to 2C loss in internal temperature over a 24h period.Like it was overcast for the past 4 days and I started with 25.4C (4 days ago) outside temperature is around freezing few degree negative at night and maybe +1C or so max during the day and right now I have +19.9C and tomorrow should snow and be the last overcast day thus I will be fine but I will need that additional 60kWh water thermal storage to have a bit larger autonomy and a bit more constant temperature even if is hard to notice changes that are this slow like just a bit over 1C drop in 24h

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 05:35:22 am
content: As an aside, I have a « D » ventilation system.Works really well, I clean the filter with a vacuum once awhile and that is it.I would recommend it over a B system with slotted windows.It is self installed system from Easykit.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 11:35:48 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 04, 2018, 09:50:53 pmNot so fast. Depends on a lot of factors.Heat pumps have an efficiency advantage of about 3x over resistive heating !Heat pump for hot water + heating is a big plus in the times you don't get PV, and must get this energy from the grid. Then resistive heating is a huge bill at once !If you reinject the overproduced PV, the energy you consume on your resistive heating is also going to lose you the amount you auto-consume at the rate you get paid for reinjection ! That may be a huge contributor when you consume 3x more.So factoring in those 2 parameters, I think heat pump is often a huge advantage, even if it needs replacement or bigger maintenance after 15 Years.For an approximation for hot water :https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-estimate-the-kWh-of-electricity-when-I-take-a-showerQuote- Let's say you get 8 cent/kWh if you reinject PV to the grid, and have 30min of shower/day in the house (everybody combined).- let's say you pay 16 cent/kWh for electricity you consume from the grid- let's say the water heater is intelligent enough to heat and modulate the boiler only during daylight to maximize the use of the PV for hot water.- let's say you have 40 days/Year with insufficient PV output for your hot water, you have to use the grid.With Resistive, you'll miss 486€/YearWith Heat pump you'll miss 162€/YearOver 15 Years, the difference is 4860€-> that'll probably amortize the higher cost for the heat pump boiler, not sure how much those cost over a resistive boiler, somebody has a figure ?Multiply those figures by 5 to 10 for heating of the house with resistive, it gets crazyly expensive at that point.I have resistive heating from the grid, but it's only emergency use to avoid freezing the house when away for long periods and nobody lights the wood burner for days in the winter.From my experience, heating the house with thermal solar or PV+heat pump is pointless if you have a good isolation and big south-oriented windows. In that case, the direct heating through the windows bring more heat to the house than the complex heating system.This means:If you have a modern house and install solar heating, be prepared to get most of the heating energy from the grid, not from solar, be it thermal, or PV based. You basically need 90% of heat energy exactly at the times when solar is not available !I had that lesson learned as I overdimensionned my thermal solar thinking I'll get heating from it. In retrospect it gets hot water, that's it.Again : YMMV widely depending on a lot of local and individual factors

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 01:07:37 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 05, 2018, 11:35:48 amNumbers would be quite different in California. We have time out use billing and the power company will buy electricity from customers for $0.48 kWhr and customers can but that electricty back for as little as $0.12.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 01:19:50 pm
content: f4eru, you need to read the thread. The OP has already said this is an off-grid house in the middle of nowhere. The wires aren't there, the grid isn't there. If he can't use or store what his panels generate, either in battery or thermal banks, it's lost. His backup heat source is propane.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 02:41:54 pm
content: OK, sorry, I missed that.That's more critical if the grid cannot buffer, and needs really careful planning, or even an approximate model simulation for an optimal decision IMHO.From your propane heating experience, what do you feel is the relationship between solar availability and heating need in your case ?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 02:50:35 pm
content: Volcanic eruption- a big one, as happens every once in a while, randomly.What happens to PV, hydro, natural gas and other fuel prices, food availability and prices, and climate?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 03:37:32 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 04:32:37 amSo do you just wear shorts? You can get 2 1000L IBC tanks for 50 Euros here, throw on some insulation and you have 150 kWh of storage at 80 degrees Celsius which you can use with temperature control. Heated slab on the whole has never made much sense to me, you can have far superior insulation above the slab than below it and I find thermal inertia more problem than benefit.

author: 9aplus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 05:21:40 pm
content: @electrodacusNice system and great way of limited resources use.I am on sunny Adriatic but for 2-3 months in winter weneed heating to keep the house dry from sea moisture.Your cheap way of direct DC floor heating may be feasiblefor us too.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 06:08:43 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 05, 2018, 02:41:54 pmI do not use any backup source as it will not be needed that was in the past when my solar heating system was not complete now is 100% solar heating with no backup.As for the heat pump that will not be cost effective in any situation including grid as heat pump has a cost associated with it and a limited life (will require a few replacements over a 30 year period).Keep in mind my system total cost was $15K and climate is fairly harsh with average temperature for January -16.7C thus an air to air heat pump will not work and a geothermal installation will cost significantly more than my entire solar system.It is likely that even in ideal conditions a heat pump will not be cost effective in best case scenario it will just recover the investment before it needs a replacement.The electricity generated by PV is almost free at 2 cent/kWh and thermal storage even more so with as low as 1 cent/kWh thus there is no way for a heat pump to be added and have any financial advantage as they where designed to barely break even with grid prices around 20 to 30 cent/kWh in a moderate climate.Natural gas that can be as low as 3 to 5 cent/kWh is the closest competitor to direct solar PV heating and this only assuming house is already connected to natural gas line.Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 03:37:32 pmYou can not get a standard 1000L IBC tank trough a normal size door and having this outside is not feasible as even with a lot of expensive thermal insulation loss will be fairly high plus other complications with bringing the heat inside.Also the max temperature allowed with those IBC tanks is 60C so your max storage capacity for one of them is 1000L x 40C delta x 1.16 = 46.4kWhThere are special water tanks that can fit trough a normal door so I can get that inside (a fair bit more expensive) and since is narow and tall it will not use much space inside the house and have a 1500 liter capacity with about 60kWh storage capacity again +60C max temperature so I will use it in the 20C to 55C range 35C delta and that is also ideal range for the pex that I already have installed in the floor. No thermal insulation will be needed as temperature of the tank will be low and surface area very small so the loss rate will not be high enough to overheat the house and if needed little thermal insulation can correct the "loss" so that is in the acceptable range.Also an important fact is that water thermal storage while great has disadvantages compared to concrete floor as it is my case where I mentioned the capacity of the floor is 97kWh that is from +18C to +30C but when you get to +18C it dose not mean your thermal storage is empty and in a few hour your house will be below freezing if is -30C outside as is often the case here as you may need about 24kWh of energy for 24h to maintain the temperature that means another 3C temperature drop so now is +15C assuming heating is broken and you just use thermal storage.With water storage when water gets to 20C so empty is basically empty especially with a high temperature water storage and there is no extra buffer there you will just freezeWith thermal solar there is nothing to break and even if my DMPPT450 thermal controller breaks I can still directly connect the PV panels to the restive heat elements and there will be almost no difference until I can fix or replace the DMPPT450. Reliability of the heating system is very important to me because of the harsh climate here and nothing will be as reliable as direct solar PV heating on top of that it just happens that is also the most cost effective

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 06:22:51 pm
content: Impressive system.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 06:48:20 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 06:08:43 pmI'm not familiar with many heatpump systems, but one caught my eye a while back so I'll use that ...Chiltrix. At those kind of temperatures it claims >4 kW of heating power with a LWT of 35 degrees which might be sufficient for you with floor heating given the thorough insulation.Reasonably pricedas well.Still might not be economical regardless of course.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 07:33:51 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 06:48:20 pmHere is thespec for CX34As mentioned my average temperature for January is -16.7C (that is average so I typically have sunny days that are the coldest with -20C to -30C during the day and up to -40C occasionally during the night the cloudy days are typically warmer maybe -10C during the day and -15C at night)The in floor heating will not require high temperatures but at least 45C to 50C is needed to be able to push the necessary power same with low temperature thermal water storage that will be limited to +55CNow the table spec linked above is unfortunately in Fahrenheit but 122F is 50C and that requires at least +5F that is -15C outside ambient temperature and with those conditions COP is 1.74 supposedly not very likely in real world (not lab tests).Even with much better conditions COP is not much over 2 that means max heat output is around 4 to 5kW (not the case at my location in January but maybe end of February or March) and currently I get 8 to 10kW peak heat in the afternoon when is sunny so that means I will need two of this CX34 heat pumps in order to reduce my PV array size to half thus a cost of around $8000 just for the heat pump there are some other components that are needed like a heat exchangers ans some water pumps and also a much larger inverter and a much larger battery to deal with the higher load of the compressors and battery will need to be much larger as the PV array will be reduced see below.Now I estimate a minimum extra cost of $8000 for the heat pumps maybe another $2000 for heat exchangers, pipes and few water pumps then not sure at least 3000 to $4000 for a large enough inverter to deal with this heat pumps and another $2000 to $4000 to at least double or triple the battery capacity so just an insane amount of money and will not even work in January at my location.Now the savings from from those $15k PV heating system assuming this will work maybe in a milder climate will be by reducing the PV array to half and that will be around $4000 saving but heat pump and the rest of equipment will cost at least 12k to 18k sohuge amount of extra cost with no benefit making the system more complex and much less reliable.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 08:19:58 pm
content: The economics of using a PV system for heating may become much more favorable in the years ahead if the price of other fuels increases a lot as expected.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 08:57:30 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 05, 2018, 08:19:58 pmThe point I try to make is that PV heating is already the most cost effective heating source and there is no need for fuels prices to increase.This is tanks to low cost of PV panels as mentioned just 2 cent/kWh together with low cost thermal storage less than 1 cent/kWh

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 09:06:07 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 08:57:30 pmI wonder how many people have a climate where this would work?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 09:33:32 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 07:33:51 pmThat's not necessarily how'd you use it. Ideally you'd use it to heat the water storage tank and then just use any surplus electrical power to do the same. Though I'll admit, unless you need the AC in the summer it doesn't really make sense.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 09:56:05 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 05, 2018, 09:06:07 pmI will say at least 90% of the world if not more has climate where this will not just work but also be more cost effective than any other source.My location is relatively sunny (sort of average) and about as cold as it gets.Moving my house and system to many location around the world will still work as it is with some exception's in northern Europe where a slightly larger PV array will be needed but since competing energy sources like natural gas are more expensive there it will still make PV the most cost effective.For a new house build is even more so as connecting a new house to utilities like electricity and natural gas may cost as much or more than the entire solar system at least for a small house like mine.Old existing house have the problem that they are improperly insulated meaning they will need a large ground mount array and they may not have the space for such a large array and they may also have large trees or building and so no good access to sun.Finding things to do with the excess energy may even generate so profit making heating and electricity free or even profitable. For now I have at least 50% of the energy unused in an average year, with as much as 90% unused energy in summer.Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 09:33:32 pmNot sure I understand what you mean.As one unit uses 2.5kW and outputs say 5kW at a COP of 2 and the PV array provide 5kW then in order to take advantage of all available energy when is available you will need two of this units so that in a sunny afternoon you charge the thermal mass storage with a 10kW rate that is the same sate that I have now. Not using the solar energy when is available means lost energy.The current setup with direct PV heating and a 10KW PV array plus 158kWh thermal storage provide full house heating in worst case scenario. So the only reason to use a heat pump will be if it will reduce cost and so thermal mass storage capacity will need to remain the same and the only way to reduce cost is to reduce the PV array size as mentioned reducing that to half of current size so 5kW PV array instead of 10kW will save about $4000. Then assuming the heat pump can get an average COP of 2 the same amount of heat can be transferred to thermal storage but since that particular heat pump takes about 2.5kW and outputs 5kW (COP of 2) two of them will be needed to achieve 10kW heat output to be equivalent with direct PV heating and larger PV array.Result was that to add a heat pump even in a very optimistic use case will result in much higher cost not to mention PV panels will last a minimum 30 years where that heat pump may need replacement every 10 to 15 years depending on quality so even more expensive to the absurd likely it will cost 3x as much to include a heat pump and the only advantage will be needing less pace for the PV array.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 10:36:55 pm
content: Just because you are heating a water tank with the heat pump, doesn't mean you can't also throw a heating coil in it. So when you have 5 kW, you can use 2.5 kW for the heat pump and 2.5 kW for the coil ... when you have 2.5 kW you use it all for the heat pump.It could work to make the most out of your power when there is the least of it. Of course the coil can work at any power, the heat pump will need to be run off battery with a duty cycle when the solar panels can't power it ... so it causes more headaches.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2018, 11:06:27 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 05, 2018, 10:36:55 pmIt will not workout as if I reduce the PV array size in half I will need multiply that with 2 so all energy sent to heating will need to be trough a heat pump with COP of 2 else I can not reduce the PV array to half I can probably reduce the PV array to 7.5kW and then use just a single heat pump but then the economics are still as bad.In the colder winter months like January I use all the energy available from the 10kW PV array and store the excess in thermal mass storage then in cloudy days I take some of the energy from PV array the little that is available and the rest from the thermal storage.Both PV and thermal storage are so inexpensive than adding a heat pump will not make any economic sense.Heat pumps can not be cost effective when energy generation cost and energy storage cost is so low. Even with high energy costs as is the case of grid electricity of 15 to 20cent/kWh it will barely break even in best case scenario but this is a different subject.My system as it is provides all the energy needed and in order to add a $4000 heat pump plus many more thousand $ in accessory you need to be able to reduce that from the current $15k investment and as mentioned the only part that can be reduced is the PV array size and that is so cheap and has such a low cost amortization that even if heat pump is free it will not be able to be a good investment as it needs some additional equipment as mentioned in order to integrate that heat pump in to the system.Maybe you did not understood the LiFePO4 in this equation that is not used for the heating part but for providing electricity to the house and that battery is 5kWh only large enough to provide the house with energy over night as the large 10kW PV array will produce a minimum of 4kWh of energy in the worst overcast / snowy day like today and that is enough to cover the house needs that is an average of around 120kWh/month but if PV array size is to be reduced to say half then battery capacity will need to be increased about 3x to deal will prolonged overcast of 5 to 6 days and also to be able to support a larger inverter and buffer the heat pump needs thus battery capacity increase alone will cost another $4000 completely negating reducing the PV array to half. So even if heat pump and all the accessories where free it will still make no economic sense.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 07:27:29 pm
content: What do you do if there are several overcast very cold days in row?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 07:37:23 pm
content: I would parse the weather predictions several days in advance and set some variables so that energy usage was as minimal as possible to make whatever reserve I had last longer.I worry about volcanic eruptions and the potential for diminished solar power as they can cause dramatic cooling periods that can last (in large cases) as long as several years or in some cases, even longer. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the US and a pioneer in the firled of electricity wrote about the Icelandic ewruption and the extremely hard winter that followed it, ("The year without a Summer") Edvard Munch's "The Scream" depicts a red sky in northern Europe after the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa, many thousands of miles away and near the Equator.During that "volcanic winter" time there is also much less rain and less wind. Its cold and dry. Historically eruption periods have caused large scale famines all around the world.They happen randomly, so you can bet they will continue, even in the modern era. We have to be ready.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 07:44:01 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 09:56:05 pmI think your 90% figure is very optimistic. I live in Yorkshire, UK, and I think our conditions are fairly typical of huge swathes of the kind of climate which require serious heating throughout the winter. Today is typical for this time of year. Cars have been using their headlights all day today, and for the past few days, as there has been 100% dense grey cloud cover. The output from PV would be close to zero. The average output of PV systems in the summer is not too bad, but during the winter 10kW of panels (I think you said that's what you have) will give an average of about 300W. The low number of daylight hours, and the large number of completely overcast days lead to that figure. There will be some periods of a couple of kilowatts, when the sky is sufficiently clear, which is when most of that average of 300W will be produced. However many panels you put in to boost output in the good times, you'd need a way to ride over multiple weeks of essentially zero output.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 07:45:02 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 06, 2018, 07:27:29 pmThe last 5 days where like that overcast not typical as it was quite dark and last night was a bit of a snow storm with today 6th day the first with some sun. The thermal storage is designed to deal with that that is why I need a 160kWh thermal storage currently just 97kWh installed.When this long overcast stretch started I had about +25.5C and this morning there where only +18C that is a bit low but that is because I do not have quite enough thermal storage and will need to add that 61kWh soon.Temperatures outside where fairly moderate an average around -2 or -3C for the past few days but last night got colder -10C and even today it stayed at a max of -9C but since it was sunny I had a bit of heat going back in to the thermal mass plus a lot of electric cooking so now it is +21.5CThe house losses are around 20kWh (with this mild temperatures when is colder is over 30kWh but then is also normally sunny) per day so a 160kWh thermal storage will be fairly decent even the 97kWh is sort of acceptable if you want to deal with +18C a few days a year but PV array also produces something typical around 4kWh from my array in a dark overcast day (that is will multiple cloud layers and you are not able to see the sun at all).Next few days should be mainly sunny so thermal storage will get full again and 5 consecutive overcast days are not very common here this was around the worst case.But the main idea is thermal storage should be sized to deal with worst case and it is so inexpensive that is not a problem to add as much thermal storage as needed.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 08:19:35 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 06, 2018, 07:44:01 pmYou think 90% is optimistic because you happen to be in that 10%A 10kW PV array will produce at your location about half compared to my location 8MWh in a year vs around 14MWh at my location but the bad part is of course in Winter months with worst case December just 252kWh and February 439kWh that is probably already fine.Average temperature at your location is around +4.3C in DecemberLinkso assuming a target of +20C inside temperature that means just 15.7C delta.Where average temperature at my location in December is -13.3CLinkthus a delta of 33.3C so more than 2x colder thus 2x more energy for heating the same house.I get more solar in December about 700kWh so if I need to extrapolate you will need about 30 to 40% more panels assuming you move my house at your location so I should increase the PV array to 14kW or so to deal with less sun for worst case month.Still it will be the lowest cost heating option even at your location as natural gas is slightly more expensive than at my location still extremely subsidized as it is here and likely not to stay the same.So less sunny places have usually milder climate.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 08:22:16 pm
content: What do you do when a substantial number of days are overcast? Do weeks ever go by without any bright sunny days?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 08:39:15 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 06, 2018, 08:22:16 pmCheck a replay that I just made earlier the thermal storage can deal with up to a week with no sun and thermal storage is cheap. Same amount of thermal storage will work in your climate also as I'm sure you almost never see the sun in December based on the 252kWh generated in December.Check page 7 inmy presentationto see how the daily energy output from a 10kW PV array at my location looks like over a full year.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 12:48:01 am
content: My friend who used to live in Amsterdam complained that days when it was overcast would result in miniscule electricity output from PV units even if it was quite bright outside otherwise. She said this was the dark dirty secret of solar setups in Holland. In other words they seem to be very non-linear as far as ability to generate electricity. They require direct sunlight (albeit at a low angle as you point out seems to be fine) to really function as they are meant to. The sunny days still may be enough for most places.Like northern Europe, the Pacific Coast north of approximately Ft Bragg (Sonoma County) northward all through the Pacific Northwest here in the US, and British Columbia in Canada also have a *lot* of overcast days. I dont know a good source for getting the number of cloudy vs sunny days for a specific area. Need to look for one.I think the situation is more favorable where I live (East Coast of US) - probably comparable to parts of Germany and central Europe.Its not as overcast here as Holland or the UK are.One problem, we do have air pollution here, Not as much as thre used to be, but unlike California where the air was quite clean, there is always a bit of black grime thats carried by the rain, that collects on things.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 12:53:58 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 07, 2018, 12:48:01 amYour eyes have irises. PV panels don't. Until things are quite dim your eyes compensate, and things don't seem all that dim, even though the insolation can be way down from that on a bright sunny day. Once your irises are fully open, any further drop in illumination becomes very obvious.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 01:18:50 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 07, 2018, 12:48:01 amHey don't think California is pollution free. Thank you government officials from imposing strict emission controls on cars our air was nearly smog free. That is until China started building coal fired power plants. Now when we have smog days it's China's pollution that's causing it or forest fires.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 03:04:39 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 07, 2018, 12:48:01 amHere is a good resource for for solar energy generated in any place around the worldhttps://pvwatts.nrel.gov/you can even download hourly solar data for your location to have a very good ideal on what a PV array will produce.I have linked to my pdf presentation in a comment above but I think is maybe better just to post the graph in here as you will get a very good idea of what is the minimum and max solar energy production for a 10kW PV array and even if that is for my location almost any location in US if not all will have similar or better solar output and for sure milder winters. On the x axis is the day of the year like 1 is January first and 365 is last day in December while on the y axis you get the energy output in Wh and as you see there are very few days with less than 10kWh output and worse overcast snowy day's are still at least 3 to 4kWh but those are not many in a year.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 03:49:31 am
content: Interesting the swings you have from near 6,000 to 1,000 back to 6,000 in just one day. I suspect those are foggy and rainy days?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 04:01:58 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 07, 2018, 03:49:31 amWhat is interesting is that he never sees more than a few days of sustained low output. That's much more consistent than most locations.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 04:26:15 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 07, 2018, 04:01:58 amHave you looked at the winter months especially November and December ? Around day 290 there are 6 consecutive cloudy days then similar around day 320 I will consider that fairly bad and the reason I need a relatively large thermal mass storage able to deal with about a week of reduced solar output.If you look at the green doted line that represent the annual average at least 50% of the days are below meaning there are at least some clouds.You can download hourly data from pvwatts website and create the same type of graph for your location as you may have a wrong impression about how data will look like. My graph is based on data from PVwatts for my location and used a spreedsheet type application to plot that graph that represents an average type of year based on more than 30 years of recorded data so fairly accurate representation and confirmed by my measurements over the past few years as fairly accurate.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 04:49:46 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 07, 2018, 04:26:15 amFor most people in a cold climate, 6 days is not a long lull in output.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 05:27:26 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 07, 2018, 04:49:46 amIf you refer to your location then that is not a cold climate not compared to my location where difference in temperature between inside and outside is more than 2x higher thus more than 2x more energy is required assuming the exact same house.And you design the system for worst winter month in your case December where is mostly cloudy the entire month so the average energy production for that month is mostly based on cloudy days and thus you do not need much thermal storage as the solar output is fairly uniform. From that 250kWh in December from a 10kW PV array that will produce in a bad overcast day around 3.5 to 4kWh and your average for the month is 250kWh/30days = 8.33kWh thus that means i mostly cloudy maybe even every day of that months with a few cloudy breaks and likely not many if any fully clear sky days as a single day like that will produce 40 to 50kWh so you can not have that with just 250kWh for the entire month.In my case where I have more extreme days with quite a few sunny days in December along with many overcast snowy days I need more thermal mass to smooth that out to an average. So yes you need a slightly larger PV array assuming same house but not a larger thermal mass storage. Also sunny days are the coldest with overcast and cloudy days typically much milder.If I where to build this same house I have here in your part of the UK then I will need more solar panels about 40% more so 4kWp that will cost around $3.2k the same thermal mass so nothing else different thus instead of 15k it will be 18.2k investment that is still $50 bill for electricity and heating combined and while this is for a small energy efficient house it can not be lower with any other energy source including natural gas (keep in mind just about half of this bill is for heating the other half is for electricity).You can go to mygoogle+account and scroll down until you will find some videos I took last winter is a time lapse with different type of days snowy overcast and you can see the PV output for those days.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 11:06:56 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 05, 2018, 06:08:43 pmI think you are severely overestimating the thermal resistance of floor heating. Your house seems to need only a couple kW at most of heating to maintain equilibrium, across 65m2 floor heating if not buried deep in a slab of concrete can supply that down toa couple of degrees difference(see page 16). There's the edge case of pump failure, but thermal inertia has nasty edge cases as well ... if you arrive at the house when heating failed it will take much longer to warm up and worst comes to worst and you have to switch to a wood fire all that thermal inertia really becomes your enemy.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 02:05:18 pm
content: I always pondered on the feasibility of using PV for electric, vs thermal solar panels. PV is simpler, because you just have one big system, that also powers everything else. With thermal you would need some sort of liquid like glycol or something and there's just more moving parts and risk of leaks and environmental issues etc. Also don't know if you'd get ANY heat when it's overcast. With PV you still get some power output.It's my dream to one day buy a big property so I can do stuff like this and live mostly off grid. I'd do a large ground mount array, like 10-20kw maybe even more. WAY cheaper in the long run, as utility bills and costs of living keep going up. My current property is just too small to do a decent size PV array though. I did setup 400w of solar panels on my shed to experiment and get around 60w or so on a good day. It's facing west as that is all that was really viable due to shadows. But it's cool to know that even when it's overcast I still get SOME output. I have not yet my system during a sunny day. We don't really get much sun here (northern Ontario). In summer we do get more though. With big enough inverter could easily run AC.I still have work to do on my system though such as some monitoring/automation (like low voltage cut off), heated/insulated battery box, etc. For hydrogen mitigation I'll probably build a small HRV system. Eventually it will power outside lights.Oh and another thing, in an off grid setting you'd probably want wood heat too, nothing like sitting in front of a wood stove on a -40 day watching the storm outside. So even if the PV is not keeping up every day you could still start a fire in the wood stove. Me personally I'd probably also want a force air system just for circulation. In summer when the sun is out and the days are long there would be enough excess power to run a full size central AC unit. The inverter would be expensive though...

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 06:17:59 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 07, 2018, 11:06:56 amNot sure you understood the point I was trying to make with the floor thermal storage vs water thermal storage.The usable range for floor thermal storage is much smaller and the extreme limits that it can be used is 30C max (that is the spec for any type of floor heating) and minimum is 18C for comfort thus the 12C delta range for max usable capacity.For water storage if you say have a steel storage tank you can go from 20C up to 80C or closer to boiling point.Say your house has no floor thermal storage or very little like just minimum concrete thickness needed for floor heating and you have all the thermal storage calculated for say worst case 6 days but then you get a year where you get 8 bad days.Say both storage are 180kWh and house needs 30kWh/day (say this is for -10C out + 20C inside) (just round numbers for this example).Now if all your storage if the concrete floor and you have 180kWh at 12C delta (18C to 30C) typical ambient may be 2C lower than floor temperatureAnd water storage 180kW at 60C delta (20C to 80C).Now both will deal with those 6 days without any solar (is just for the example there is no such thing as no solar output unless at north pole).While both have 180kWh usable after that is spend the remaining energy before house will freeze inside (0C) is 60kWh about 2 days theoretical for water storage but about 270kWh before concrete floor gets to 0C freezing.There are many situations here in Canada and maybe other cold places where the heating fails and since the house has no thermal storage at all (wood frame houses) the pipes inside the house for water and or heating will just freeze in a few hours and that will be very costly and inconvenient.A house with proper thermal mass to work with solar will only lose maybe 2C in 24h if heating fails thus there are quite a few days even a week for you to fix the situation.There is nothing to fail on my heating as I have electric heating wires embedded in the floor (solid state nothing to fail) and if say the DMPPT450 fails for some reason you just remove that and connect the PV directly to the heating wires a bit less efficient but it will still work indefinitely until the DMPPT450 gets fixed or replaced.Wires can not fail as current is limited both by the PV panels that are constant current limited and the wire resistance in case of heating wire so there is nothing more reliable than direct PV heating.Sorry for getting over complicated with the answer.The short answer is that concrete floor has larger margins and best is to combine floor thermal storage with water thermal storage as I will have as then you can control the temperature much better and be able to keep the house within 1 or 2C delta at all times.Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 07, 2018, 02:05:18 pmThermal solar is not only less reliable but also more expensive with only advantage that it takes less space about 2.5x less space for same output. You will get some output from thermal solar even when overcast but if is very cold it may only cover the losses so there may not be high enough temperature to get anything usable.If I will have designed the house I have now I could have integrated all the necessary PV array in to the house structure (probably an A frame type structure to have the right angles for the panels).Using Lead Acid battery for storage is just a waste of money. There is a replay I made earlier about cost amortization and Lead Acid is just not suitable for energy storage.I have no backup heating as is not needed and adding a backup system even for 10% of the time is not cost effective. As long as you size the system for worst case PV array size and thermal storage size it will just work in any conditions and will be the most cost effective solution (Wood is not even close in therms of cost that is why I always mention natural gas as that is the one that gets close).I do not need air conditioning/cooling in summer as the house is well designed and my low energy use means I do not produce much heat inside the house. Most houses are just badly designed with large windows bad roof thermal insulation and use a lot of electricity that all ends up as heat inside the house and needs to be removed.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 06:58:45 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 07, 2018, 06:17:59 pmI did not ... but it didn't help that you used hyperbole. A quarter of the energy isn't exactly empty.QuoteQuestion remains though, do you wear shorts? 25 degrees is a little more than comfortable.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 07:06:16 pm
content: The thing with lead acid is they can be floated and don't need to be balance charged so it makes the system and electronics much simpler to setup. Currently they are also cheaper per kwh, where weight/size does not matter. I think this will change soon though as prices of lithium ion and LiFePO4 etc come down due to more popularity. TBH I still trust lead acid more from a safety point of view though. Less likely to explode if you mess up the electronics, logic etc for charging. Keep them at float voltage and they are happy and will never overcharge. Run an equalize once every couple weeks, and good to go.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 07:40:55 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 07, 2018, 06:58:45 pmUsable energy as at 20C storage you can not longer maintain ambient above 18C and in less than 24h will be less than +10C very uncomfortable then in less than another 24C permanent damage to pipes will occurWhile with with concrete floor you have much larger margins outside the usable region.Quote from: Marco on November 07, 2018, 06:58:45 pmNot sure why you think 25C is not comfortable ? I had a max of 25.5C a few days ago and it was no issue extremely comfortable. Is not the same as 25C outside temperature that is measured in shade and then the sun heats you up way more than that.An average temperature of 23C with max of 26 and min of 20 is ideal for me. Keep in mind that the fluctuation is no more than 2C per day (24h). It is not like I have 26C during the day and then 20C in the morning.Also since is floor heating is warmer closer to floor and colder closer to ceiling.Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 07, 2018, 07:06:16 pmLead Acid charging is actually more complex than Lithium and Lead Acid are completely inadequate for solar as if they are not fully charged they will suffer (degrade much faster) and adding a second energy source like a generator just to keep them charged in cloudy days adds even more to the cost.Initial cost can be the same for LiFePO4 as for a good Lead Acid as you need a lower capacity LiFePO4 to perform the same as a Lead acid because of charge discharge efficiency difference and because Lead Acid should not be deep discharged to much.As for cost is about cost amortization and not investment cost and Lead Acid is significantly more expensive in therms of cost amortization than LiFePO4 and the cost of the BMS is very insignificant typically 5% or less.LiFePO4 is at least as safe if not safer than Lead Acid. Lead Acid are only good if you never use them like in a battery for starting the car or UPS where is discharged maybe once a year and the rest of the time they spend fully charged.I will not have selected LiFePO4 for my own house if there was a lower cost solution (lower cost as in amortization cost).

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 11:05:50 pm
content: Lithium is way more complex because it has to be balance charged and charged at very specific currents etc. So in a renewable energy application you might have like 20+ cells, you need 22 leads from a balance charger that can then charge each cell individually (by cell I mean a group of cells in parallel) AND it needs to somehow also be able to track how much current is going into the load so it can make sure the right amount goes to the battery. I'm actually curious how this is done TBH, I've researched it and never found much info. I imagine it also requires a lot more wire too.With lead acid you just put all the cells in series, float them at 2.25v per cell and bob's your uncle. Of course some chargers will do things that are more fancy, if you want them charged faster, but you can get away with constant voltage 100% of the time and they will never degrade. Though equalization is a good idea once in a while. There is a reason the telcos still use strings of large lead acid batteries. They are much simpler. Price out 18650's and you cannot really beat lead acid for price either, especially if you consider your time to spot weld them together etc. Now at some point maybe they'll make lithium battery packs that you can buy but I imagine that is quite a niche thing right now so probably hard to find packs in a specific/consistent size.For something like a RC car it's not as bad because you have the discharge lead, where all the cells are in series, and then you have the balance charge lead. Both are never used at same time. So the charger only has to worry about the current going into each cell, not what is coming out.So from a design standpoint designing a system to use lead acid is much much simpler than lithium or other cell types that are more picky about current. Unless there's something I'm missing here. But based on what I've read lithium is much more complex due to not being able to just string them all in series and charge them at a constant voltage. I'm not sure about LiFePO4, those are even more niche and harder to find. Though I punched that into Amazon and there is results, but I honestly have not read up too much on that tech so not sure how complex it is to charge compared to lithium. I hear they are safer, so there is that.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 11:35:49 pm
content: Actually not so much in practice and while it is true each lithium cell needs be monitored, the rate of charge/discharge can be monitored for a 'pack'.I do regret not taking pics of a 22KW lithium setup I saw recently as it was just series cells but each one had a sense pair of wires.As for charge/discharge rates, well have a look at some of the specs on what lithium can 'really' achieve:http://en.thundersky-winston.com/product/tqkqsgbdcfy.htmlHave a squiz at some of the big cells on P2.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 11:52:04 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 07, 2018, 11:05:50 pmI'm sort of an expert in Lithium battery charging as I designed the Solar BMS here is thelink to user manualthis is an all in one solar charger + BMS + advanced energy monitor and is fairly inexpensive likely better than a Lead Acid charger + energy monitor of similar quality. Sorry if this looks like advertising it is open source so you can maybe build your own.Charging a single lithium cell of any type LiCoO2 (laptops or cellphones), NMC (mostly EV's) or LiFePO4 (best for stationary energy storage) is exactly the same as charging a capacitor in the sense that you just push current from a constant current source (PV panel as an example is a constant current limited source) and then just monitor the voltage and when it gets to the voltage limit say 3.55V for LiFePO4 just disconnect the source and done you cell is now fully charged and while discharging you just check that voltage is above 2.8V for LiFePO4 and if is below just disconnect the load. That is all that it is to LiFePO4 charging or any other type of rechargeable lithium battery much simpler than minimum 3 stage charging on Lead Acid.Any number of lithium cells in parallel are no different from a single larger capacity cell.As for cell in series that is when you need the BMS (battery management system) that will monitor each cell voltage (only the cells in series) so say 8 LiFePO4 in series will give you a nominal 24V battery pack so BMS will monitor the 8 cells in series (each cell can be made of as many parallel cells as you want but large format cells exist so you do not need to do any soldering).Then all you do is connect the most common and cost effective PV panel that is made with 60 PV cells in series and you have a very efficient charging system with minimal components.So LiFePO4 is as simple to charge as a capacitor single stage constant current (also known as bulk) charging is all that is needed.Charge current can be any value between zero and 0.3C (0.3C for long cycle life but in applications where you do not care about that it can be higher). My A123 20Ah LiFePO4 cells are spec at 5400 cycles 100% DOD (Depth of Discharge) with 1C charge and 1C discharge lab test. The large format Winston LiFePO4 cells are also rated at 5000 cycles at 80% DOD 1C charge and discharge rate so almost as good as A123 cells and for sure better than any other type of battery and much more than you will be able to use in a typical offgrid installation.My battery after 1 year of full time use has degraded a bit less than 1% thus at least 15 to 20 years of heavy duty offgrid use is expected before battery will be at 80% of original capacity.The result from recent battery test can be foundhere.A Lead Acid battery used in same condition's as my battery will needed to be 2x to 3x the capacity cost about the same or slightly more and not last more than 4 to 5 years best case scenario thus in therms of cost amortization Lead Acid batteries as as bad as it gets and I talk about the best available deep cycle Lead Acid batteries specifically designed for solar.Telcos use this batteries as UPS / bakup in case of grid failure and that use case is very different than offgrid solar as battery will see almost no use an be just in standby and almost never discharged.There is no Hydrogen gas generation as with Lead Acid so my LiFePO4 is inside the house just about 1 meter from me on the side where is nice and warm. A Lead Acid can not be inside because of the hydrogen gas generation during charging process.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 04:53:31 pm
content: Yeah helps to be an expert haha. I'll have to read your paper when I get the chance. This is probably the future of energy storage and will slowly phase out lead acid, just trying to wrap my head around how it works due to the more complex charging, having to balance charge etc while it is being discharged at same time. Don't lithiumion also have very specific charge phases? Constant current for some stages and constant voltage during different stages as well. If you can treat like a capacitor then yeah it would make it quite simpler. Though don't you still have to balance charge each one? You'd have around 13 or so cells (groups of cells in parallel) for a PV setup I imagine so you can feed a 48v inverter. If you need to constant current charge them you need to somehow be able to take the load into account too as you need to differentiate how much current going into the battery vs the load.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 05:25:28 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 08, 2018, 04:53:31 pmLiFePO4 will be fully charged with just the constant current stage as for the high energy density lithium cells you will also need constant voltage if you want to fully charge them but that will have a negative impact on cycle life. In some application like mobile electronics and even EV's the trade off of reduced cycle life for the extra capacity is worth but not in solar energy storage. Charged with just constant current to 4.2V the high energy density cells will be at around 80 to 90% of the real state of charge depending on charge rate but by doing so you double the cycle life compared to cc and cv charging to 100% and this is an advantage for stationary energy storage where energy density is not relevant. Still even so the high energy density cells are not as cost effective as LiFePO4 that are by far the winners in this category.Cell balancing is done automatically by the SBMS (based on the ISL94203) and the amount of energy needed for cell balancing is extremely low with new high quality cells.You want to say cells in series not parallel and for LiFePO4 that will be 16 cells in series for a 48V system. My SBMS only supports max 8s so max 24V battery and while two SBMS0 can be used for a 48V setup is not ideal.Constant current charging does not mean the current needs to have the same value at all times it just means current is limited and will not exceed a max value. Solar PV panels are constant current sources and assuming you have constant amount of light you will have a constant amount of current if light drops to half the current will also drop to half but it will still be constant current irrespective of the current level.All you need between a solar PV panel and a lithium cell is a switch to turn the charging off when cell got to the max charge voltage level (so it is that simple).

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 06:26:48 pm
content: Oh interesting so you literally dump as much current as you can into it as long as voltage stays below threshold? I figured you had to follow a very specific curve and not exceed a certain current during certain stages. So even if they are discharging at same time (house loads using power) the voltage is just never going to hit that threshold so you can just keep dumping current? Unless you're using less than what is going in then it will eventually reach equilibrium.And yeah was unclear when I said parallel I meant a single cell would consist of multiple cells in parallel then those groups would be in series, like a bunch of 18650's or what not.So is balance charging not all that important then? Quick look at your doc shows you are monitoring the cells but not actually balance charging?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 06:47:39 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 08, 2018, 06:26:48 pmYou can only dump as much current as it is available and that depends on amount of sunlight. The max current will not exceed about 0.3C as that is both the ideal max charge current for long life on LiFePO4 and about max of what you will want to have as ratio typically for a offgrid setup.So say for a 5kWh battery you will want to have a 1 to 1.5kW PV array ideally. If you talk about the DMPPT450 where I have a 10kW PV array that device will be able to select how many panels are transferred to battery so that charge current always stays below 0.3CI do cell balancing (The SBMS will do that) and the cell balancing is done only during charging by default is the same type of cell balancing that most commercial EV's use like Nissan Leaf or Tesla and is extremely effective as cell balancing will start as soon as there is more than 10mV delta between any two cells and then higher cells will receive slightly lower charge current than the lower cells until it is balanced within 10mV (all this and over 30 more parameters are user programmable I just mention the default behavior).SBMS will take care about all aspects with no user intervention for the life of the system.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 07:42:12 pm
content: Yes, this resistive system makes economic sense for this special off-grid applicationClever!You could build an extremely simple and very efficient MPPT by switching ON/OFF single or groups of your paralell resistors, and thus modulating the load to the optimum directly.I personally would have buried some tubes in the concrete slab for an eventual later upgrade to a water based system if ever the grid reaches your house sometime in the future.Also, one thing lacking in your SBMS hardware is overvoltage protection over the ideal diode mosfets at the input.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 07:45:41 pm
content: If you can live off grid why even connect? One of the best things about being off grid is less cost. I would love to buy a bigger property that is away from the city eventually and do the same. Bills cost too much and keep going up each year. The more self sufficient you can be, the less your cost of living is.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 01:14:52 am
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 08, 2018, 07:42:12 pmThat is how DMPPT is very efficient over 93% by selecting the number of outputs effectively selecting the number of parallel resisitve heat elements.Why Will I ever want to connect to grid as that is many times more expensive than solar PV heating ?Ideal diode mosfet is perfectly protected not sure what you want to say. That is a diode ideal or not and the pulse of energy that comes when a load is switched off will be clamped by the TVS that is connected between GND and output of the ideal diode.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 02:47:58 am
content: Yeah I am really keen to try this at my place. Maybe even going off grid. My main trouble is roof space, my roof is angled every which way.Using water as my thermal mass.... one day.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 03:10:35 am
content: Yeah my roof is my main issue too, split level house, cottage style roof. Lots of trees and other obstructions around too. There's only like one section that is viable, the rest get shadows. I measured once and I have room for around 3kw on my house so not enough to go off grid especially with the lack of daylight for most of the year, but it would be something. I think the money I would spend on that would be better off saving up for a bigger property though, then I can do a proper off grid setup there. Decent size acreage properties come up in my general area at times. There was a 16k one that I was very tempted to buy but I think I will wait till something waterfront comes up. Ideally I should wait till my mortgage is paid off before I buy a property, since that's only half the battle, still need to actually build something.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 03:55:10 am
content: Quote from: HackedFridgeMagnet on November 09, 2018, 02:47:58 amYou have the advantage of a much warmer place and if the house is well insulated or can be insulated better then maybe the roof shape is not that big of a problem. Panels do not necessarily need to face North in your case but east or west facing can generate fairly similar results. Shadow from other buildings or trees will be more problematic.Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 09, 2018, 03:10:35 amYou do not need that much land and if properly designed the house can fully integrate the PV array. I have 20 acres (8 hectares) that is absolute overkill tho this was a cheaper option than getting a much smaller 1 to 2 acres lot.Even 1/2 acres (2000m^2) is plenty for an offgird self sufficient house.If I where to design my house now I will probably try to do a sort of A frame so that all 10kW PV array can fit on the south side at a steep 60 degree angle for max output in winter.But is fine with a ground PV array as I have plenty of space and no shadow'sHere is an older photo from March 3 2018 time 13:36 (I know that as it was in the photo name) and also know that this array currently as seen made of 33x 260W panels 8580W produced that day 5.1kWh

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 09:06:20 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 09, 2018, 03:10:35 amBetter to get some experience on a small scale while you can, I only have 1Kw on a SSW face at 52 degrees elevation and latitude (handy coincidence) but that's enough to heat all my water in the summer and save oil fuel and boiler wear. We had a supermarket slogan in the UK I am fond of, "every little counts"Great picture electro, I wish .............

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 10:22:48 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 01:14:52 amThe destroying pulses don't happen switching loads, but when lightning(surge) or EMC (Burst) couple onto the long wires. Then those mosfets are unprotected, and will probably be destroyed

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 10:46:18 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 01:14:52 amOKQuote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 01:14:52 amThe solar resistive PV heating being economically preferable over PV heat pump is an edge case IMHO. It still has big constraints, like a massive PV array, huge copper cross sections outside a ground level which is a cost and thieves problem. Also the DIY nature can distort the cost comparison, but fair enough.I don't think it's advantageous at all compared to GTI + heat pump, especially if overproducing energy into the grid and thus not paying much electricity at all and using the grid as storage, removing the expensive battery. With a massive PV array, GTI would probably be economically positive for you in the summer (not considering the cost for laying the grid)A lot of things could change in the next 10 years, economics of all this, grid laying price, etc.What about future EV charging ?

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 02:16:20 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 03:55:10 amStill need room with no shadows though. Looks like you got that covered. My property is measured in feet not acres and surrounded by trees and houses. Just don't have the room. My dream to buy acreage property eventually though. I'd like at least 1/2 but probably do 10+. Would be nice to get into drones and the rules are super strict here but if I can do it on my own property I'd probably be safe.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 06:13:19 pm
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on November 09, 2018, 09:06:20 amYes any little counts but a combination of multiple energy sources will almost always be more expensive than a single source especially since that source is electricity and easily converted in any other type.Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 10:22:48 amThe DMPPT450 has an array of 16x 3kW TVS so a max theoretical capability to absorb a 48kW 1ms pulse in reality that is lower but sufficient to deal with a 450A (DMPPT450) that is all switched off at once and keep the peak voltage clamped at below 60V that is the mosfet ratings.When current is interrupted the energy stored in the long PV cables (basically an inductor) will need a place to drain and so voltage on the PV inputs will rise until something will clamp the energy that will be proportional with the total cable inductance and current that was interrupted. This increased voltage will pass trough the diodes (ideal diodes in this case ) and on the other side of the diode the voltage will be clamped even in worst case to below 60V by the array of TVS mentioned before.Lightning will induce a similar pule depending on how close it is and it will be absorbed in a similar way.I get quite a few lightning strikes in here as it is an open field with not many tall things around and while I never had any severe ones since DMPPT450 was installed I did had a serious one while SBMS120 was installed and that has a similar protection for the ideal diodes and it was no problem over many years except for a strong thunderstorm I think this summer when a close strike damaged the PV current sense amplifier but nothing else inside the SBMS was damaged. and externally an improper LED light driver failed as short triggering the short circuit protection on SBMS.Any more serious lightning protection should be done outside the DMPPT450 or SBMS on the PV input side.The short answer is that those input mosfets are protected if you look closer at the schematic (I know is not the most readable schematic).Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 10:46:18 amNot an edge case an yes as mentioned you can reduce the PV array size but it will be significantly more costly so if you have the space for the needed PV array size it is the most cost effective heating solution. If you do not have the space and you already have a natural gas connection then that is the next best option from a cost perspective.Yes DIY nature is a factor bot not as large as you may think as any sort of heating will need Labor and when making the comparison I did not included the labor on any of the other solutions.Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 10:46:18 amUsing grid as storage will be way more expensive than using thermal mass storage. I think I mentioned that thermal mass storage can have a cost amortization as low as 1 cent/kWh where grid will be at least an order of magnitude more.The LiFePO4 battery has nothing to do with PV heating that only requires inexpensive thermal storage.Personally I do not need cooling in summer as house is designed close to passive standards but DMPPT450 can also be used for cooling with peltier elements (again DIY as there is nothing of the shelf for that but very inexpensive).Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 10:46:18 amYes many things can change in time but my energy cost is paid for the next 30 years.Currently EV's are more expensive to drive than gasoline cars and if battery price will drop enough (at least about 3x from current price) then they may be cost effective and I'm sure that will happen but likely not before self driving cars that will take personal car out of the equation. I currently drive a old gasoline car and I hope self driving car's will soon become common place so that I can rent one any time I need to.I only drive in average around 6000km/year and most of that is for grocery shopping about once a week. This wasted time traveling to the city and back can be completely eliminated if I can order the food online and have that delivered by a self driving car.So in my prediction energy may become decentralized no grid or pipes thanks to very low cost solar and transportation will be the other way around and become a service instead of current wasteful car ownership.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 07:14:41 pm
content: All depends where you live if grid storage is cheaper. It is certinaly far less hassle and initial costs is next to nothing. In exchange you get reliability and it’s maitianence free.I live in California and you maybe you can tell me if grid stroarge is cost effective. I am one a Time of Use rate plan. For the plan I am on we can buy and cell kWhrs at $0.48 during peak hours which is M-F 0200-2300. We can then buy those kWhrs back at the off-peak rate for $0.12 M-F 2300-0700 and on weekends. Then we have another rate durning the day which is called partial-peak which is from 0700 to 0200 which is at $0.24. If we overproduce during peak hours and buy back during off-peak there is nearly a 450% spread or advantage we have using the grid for storage.We are not on this rate plan, but our power company offers another one with peak-day rates where customers can buy/sell kWhrs for $0.78 and buy back at $0.12 which is nearly a 700% spread. The only drawback is there is a yearly true-up. Any excess kWhrs/energy credit dollars which are not “spent” in 12 months are then given to the power company for free. The reason for this is it prevents one from using the profits from solar panels as a retirement plan. Wouldn’t you like to get a 700% return on your money?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 07:40:00 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 09, 2018, 07:14:41 pmFor electricity only (not heating) with solar you have the choice between grid connected (grid used as storage) and storage in Lithium battery and in almost all cases grid storage will win as Lithium storage will be much more expensive.When we talk about heating then storage can be done in thermal mass storage that cost as low as 1 cent/kWh so much lower than grid storage.As for what your grid incentive's in California I will need to read again your replay and do a bit of google but if I understand this correctly this is not sustainable for the grid company and it may not have been this way 3 to 5 years ago and it may not be the case in 3 to 5 years from now.If I understand you correctly you can have a zero bill for electricity while using plenty and have the grid as a free energy storage device and this makes no economic sense so it is not sustainable.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 08:58:26 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 07:40:00 pmThat's today. Today, grid modulation costs less than batteries in 99% of the case(The 1% being the parte where the grid is buffered by massive batteries already today).In 2-5 years, this ratio will have fallen to less than 50% of hte cases probablyQuote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 07:40:00 pmThe point is not storage. The point is cost of generation. Today, with a PV + heat pump, it's cheaper in 99% of the cases than resistive + PV and than grid + heat pump.In this case, you're the 1%, electrodacusQuoteI don't see any protection for the firs mosfets on the PV array. They will blow once a surge of the correct polarity will be applied. Please explain how you think this will survive a typical negative 8/20ms pulse of 4kV - 2kA on the PV1 connection.(typical values for appliances with outdoor cabling)I have acess to surge/burst testing equipment, i'll be happy to test that for you if you send me a sample.Always happy to smoke a few mosfets for improvement of stuff

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 09:17:56 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 08:58:26 pmAs mentioned grid storage is more cost effective than battery storage in almost all case no argument there and never claimed anything other than that.Can you send me an official link to where the feed in tariff for California or your particular location is shown.Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 08:58:26 pmToday PV + resitive heat elements has better cost than smaller PV array + heat pump. Check one of my earlier answers related to the heat pump where I demonstrated the issue.Heat pump can not be cost effective when input energy cost is very low.Quote from: DougSpindler on November 09, 2018, 07:14:41 pmLooking at those times07:00 to 14:00 $0.2414:00 to 23:00 $0.4823:00 to 07:00 $0.12This seems as a very bad deal for grid connected PVDepending on time of year PV array will produce for a few hours during the day in winter like it is now sunrise may be around 7:00 and sunset around 17:00 and there will be a Gaussian type curve for productionThus from 17:00 likely earlier until 23:00 you will pay a huge $0.48/kWh while it may be compensated by what you sold it is still a huge amount.From my understanding if you install an oversized array (not sure if it is permitted or there are restriction to PV array size) you can at most reduced your bill to zero. Is that correct ?If it is based on typical energy usage you will need to export quite a bit more than you can use in order to have that bill zero. Also is it truly zero or do you have some fixed cost associated with the grid connection?If all people will have a grid connected PV array or even if is a significant percentage the grid company will be bankrupt unless all this is supported by the government incentives.I do not fully understood your explanation as I never heard of anything similar anywhere in the world.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 09:32:40 pm
content: QuoteAgain, YMMV, especially with the DIY factor.A 60m² install with groundwork and free standing steel structure will cost much much much more to install profesionally than a 30m², even with a change of medium.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 09:45:42 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on November 09, 2018, 09:32:40 pmNot sure I understand what you try to say.Yes my installation is DIY thus includes just equipment cost but when you compare two systems and want to have this done by a company including labor then cost of labor may match the cost of equipment (labor cost can be extremely variable) but then the same will be the case for heat pump where labor will also match the equipment cost (just an example).So ratio being the same since heatpump version has higher equipment cost it will also have a higher total installed cost.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 10:23:22 pm
content: Here anyway, the generation cost of electricity is about 5p per unit, but the retail cost to consumers is between 10 and 17p. In other words, the actual cost of the power is less than half of the total cost of getting it to the user. A large part of the rest is in maintaining the cables, transformers and so on necessary to get the power to you. The problem which thus arises with allowing PV owners to 'use the Grid as a storage battery' is if they are getting retail rates in both directions. That simply isn't financially viable for the Grid operators, because it leaves nothing in the kitty for equipment maintenance.The end result is that in order to cover maintenance the operators have to up their charges to all consumers. Thus, the ethics of such an arrangement become extremely questionable. It means that the savings made by having PV are partly money purloined from other consumers. Plus that's only viable if PV owners are a minority. If say 90% of houses had PV, then the other 10% would have to pay maybe ten times as much for their electricity to cover the maintenance costs of the Grid.(In reality the supply companies would just shut-up shop before that stage was reached, because there would be no viable business model for them.)Some places only pay the wholesale rate for feed-in, and that is viable for the Grid operators but the PV owners then complain that it doesn't covertheircosts

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2018, 11:06:47 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on November 09, 2018, 10:23:22 pmYes that is how it works normally but the 3 to 6 cent feed in tariff actually works and the owner gets is investment back but at no profit meaning the amortization period is 25 to 30 years and that is actually just fine but owners do not understand this and waste money in Lithium storage batteries that are a significant net loss for the owner.The thing is that electricity production needed to be centralized as you can not have each house burning coal to produce is own electricity and thus it was more reasonable to produce this somewhere outside the city limits and then transport that to the user.Now that solar PV is less than coal it is clean and distributed the grid losses + infrastructure cost amortization and maintenance will not make it economical.My guess grid operators only have a few years left until some of them will no longer be profitable but this will depend on availability of low cost storage and people education on the subject (maybe).Same will be true for natural gas.While my costs are 17.5 cent/kWh for electricity and 4.2 cent/kWh for heating this is already lower than grid electricity and natural gas but it is a DIY installation and labor may double this numbers.The thing is that PV panels and storage will continue to drop so there will be a point where this DIY numbers that I get will be available to anyone (maybe almost anyone).For a new construction this is already profitable as the connection to the two utilities may be as much as the solar equipment cost.My goal was to build an off grid house that has as close to zero ongoing costs as possible and I sure got there with energy but some other cost are harder to control. Here is a short list with annual costsHouse: $2500 (paid in advanced and only considered 30 years but should last much longer)Energy (heating and electricity): $500 (paid in advance for 30 years)Internet/phone : $667 (cost can increase even more than inflation)Water / sanitation: $200 (paid in advance not quite done so is an approximation again 30 years amortization)automobile insurance: $719 (cost can increase)automobile amortization: $750 (used car and lucky almost no repairs excludes gasoline)transportation fuel cost: $480 (about 6000km/year mostly highway)There are other costs but this are related to utilities. The transportation costs are almost $2000 and I can not wait for self driving car services as that should be less (hoping way less).This is maybe a bit out of the subject of this thread but it shows where energy costs are in relation with the other spending's and for most they are much more significant.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2018, 01:23:39 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 09, 2018, 07:40:00 pmProviding a link the rate plan I am on with PG&E. Daily rates are at the bottom of page 1.https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV%20(Sch).pdfOne has to pay a daily meter fee of $0.32 or $10.00 per month. But then there's a Claimate Credit. I think a tax code is easier to understand.My wife came up with a perfect example to expain the power of Time of Use amd "energy credit dollars. Say one has an electric car which needs 12 pannels to charge. But if one sold the electricy to the power company during partial-peak hours at $0.26 and purcahsed the electricy back duing off-peak $0.12 one would need only 6 panels to charge the car.But only 3 panles would be needed if one sold the electricty to the power compnay during peak hours, $0.48, and purchased it back duing off-peak $0.12.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2018, 01:25:11 am
content: One thing I don't think has been bought up is the cost of connection to the grid and as such hasn't been factored against therealcost of a PV installation from the savings from sometimes exorbitant Powerco connection fees.Say you were to build where only HV passes your property, you'd be up for the cost of a distribution transformer plus if your were unlucky and had a lines company that only offered underground connections, further addition cost.At least at this time (here in NZ) lines companies can't levy a charge if their services pass your door unlike the water and waste water ones do.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2018, 02:37:25 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 10, 2018, 01:23:39 amI spend maybe almost half an hour on PG&E website and I was unable to find what the FIT is or how it is applied but if it is as you say and you are credited the exact same amount for exported energy as you will be charged for using energy from the grid and if you can balance the cost out all you have to pay is about $10/month ( $120 per year ) that means it allows you to use the grid as a free energy storage device.This is not sustainable and explain's the very high prices as those that do not have solar installed pay for part of your bill.Of course you made a substantial investment in PV array and grid tie inverters + labor and system connection fees that you need to amortize ideally in the period this type of program is valid.I do not think that you have any warranty that thing will not change as if any significant number of households have grid connected solar the grid will become unstable and they will need to add large storage solutions that will be costly.Based on all other FIT schemes I heard abut this seems the most unsustainable.The cost to normal consumer seems extremely high with that peak of $0.48/kWh.Moving to solar it will make sense that peak charge will be at night and during the day when is sunny energy cost should be very low.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2018, 02:47:22 am
content: When the price of electricity rises due to export of natural gas (1 or 2 more years till the capcity starts coming on line, also after signing of TTIP, or some other trade deal, CETA may qualify in Canada) At that point rates will probably rise gradually. But I really think they are very unlikely to pay people that higher rate for solar generated electricity. Because it could eventually be a real lot more.Hard to say, though. If lots of people have PV systems, demand may fall enough to offset it for them, at least in sunny areas.Just pray that none of the Icelandic or Yellowstone supervolcanoes erupt, like they do from time to time.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2018, 05:44:10 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 10, 2018, 02:47:22 amThe very low price on natural gas is thanks to the new methods of extraction "fracking" and even with that low cost I can do better with PV (just because is DIY) as Natural gas is slightly more expensive than 4.2cent/kW I pay for my heating and electricity is about the same here as I pay 17.5cent/kWh but in some places is is way higher than what I pay and it should not be as may cost is mainly because of the LiFePO4 storage. Even if a business installs this prices should not double as they will be able to get all the equipment in higher volume than I did and get some profit margins from that also.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 01:41:55 pm
content: Many claim its too expensive to get this last bit of LNG out profitably as long as they use the domestic workforce to extract it.https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/96242/shale-gas-bubble-combined.pdf

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 04:16:19 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 10, 2018, 02:37:25 amPG&E doen’t make it easy, do they. You need to read the other document which is refeenrced in the rate plan document which is called NEM 2.0. The NEM document essentially says PG&E will pay fair market rate fo the electricity based on the rate plan you are on less non-bypassable charges which is just under $0.02 kWhr. So instead of paying/crediting my account at $0.48 during peak, they pay $0.46. The non-bypassable charges are fees we pay to decommission nuclear power plants, power line loss/maintainance, etc.Not sure why peak would ever been in the middle of the night, that’s when PG&E has the lowest demand. Peak is during the day when business are open and people are running their air conditioners.PG&E doen’t limit production to solar either. If you look at the rate plan agreement it states generation can come from solar, wind, biomass and I think geothermal as well.Most of the solar companies are adding on a battery pack or two. All I can say is they are complete idiots or very bright commissioned sales people. They want me to charge the batteries during the day during peak hours. So instead of selling the electricity to PG&E at $0.45 they want me to chage the batteries. All of you should realize just how stupid that is.What I really should be doing is charging the batteries when PG&E is selling the electricity during off-peak hours for $0.12 and selling it back to PG&E during peak hours for $0.45. This way PG&E is using my home for storage and I can make a 375% profit.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 07:38:49 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 16, 2018, 01:41:55 pmThat seems like an old document you can check thehistoric price from Saskenergythat is my local supplier and you can see price right now is the lowest in the past 18 years in fact so low that is almost free if you do not consider the monthly charge and delivery charge that has steadily increased for the past few years. The peak price around 2008 was almost 3x higher than it is now so price volatility for natural gas is very high and no long therm predictions can be made.Even with this record low price my solar PV heating is still cost effective (and this is ignoring connection fees as those alone will be more than my entire solar setup even if natural gas pipe crosses my land).Quote from: DougSpindler on November 16, 2018, 04:16:19 pmAs mentioned a Tesla PowerWall II has a cost amortization around $0.55/kWh to this you add the $0.12 if you charge from grid at night so what you get out of the battery (ignoring efficiency here) will cost you $0.67/kWh and then you will sell that at a loss at $0.45 thus no profit but a substantial loss.Not to mention that as far as I know PG&E has very strange tariffs and incentives for solar compared to the rest of the world that pays way less for solar energy that you export as it should be logical if they want to stay in business at least a bit more.The thing is that $0.48/kWh is huge and most people do not have solar so they have to pay this high rates during the peak hours.So while adding a battery storage to a grid connected house is bad business it is still a big business since people do not understand the real cost (cost amortization for those batteries).

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 08:19:36 pm
content: This study examines the economic impact of natural gas export and price rises. Consensus is that natural gas and electricity prices will rise a lot due to its export - because the demand in Asia is substantial.http://www.crai.com/sites/default/files/publications/CRA_LNG_Study.pdf

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 08:30:48 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 16, 2018, 07:38:49 pmThank you for your reply. I've been trying to understand with the amortized cost for a PowerWall/battery pack is. Crazy expensive. The sales commissions on these things must be pretty good as well. As many of the solar sales "experts" are saying it's something you will want with your solar panels.Can't figure out who is the better liar. Used car sales people or people selling solar solutions for people's homes.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 09:13:56 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 16, 2018, 08:30:48 pmTesla PowerWall needs to be installed by Tesla or Tesla authorized installers the PowerWall is 5900 now + some accessories needed + installation cost is around $8500 to $16000 (not sure why the large variation) but I will use a round $10000 number for the installed PowerWallIn average people that have this installed use an average daily energy of around 3 to 5kWh (this is what the get out in an average day as they need to put in about 10% more to cover the efficiency).Warranty is 10 years and they guarantee 70% of original capacity by this time so basically a dead battery after warranty is over as battery degrades both with time so called calendar aging 1 to 2% per year and with cycle.So total energy stored over lifetime 3650 days x 5kWh = 18250kWh$10000 / 18250kWh = $0.55/kWhNot very complex calculation still people do not quite understand the cost amortization concept over the estimated life of the product. Most think something like OK I just spend $10k now on a powerwall and then I can store energy for free on the next 10 years but this is completely irrelevant.Or for solar PV panels people think they save a certain amount of $ each month because they added solar and in 5 years or so they recover the investment and from that point on energy generated is free.I do not like looking at amortization in this way but in cost per unit of energy over the expected life of the product and with solar PV panels at around $0.8/Watt and life expectancy of at least 25 to 30 years assuming you can use all the energy available at my particular location will be around 2 cent/kWh and this is a more meaningful number for me and allows me to directly compare this with other sources of energy.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 02:00:05 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 16, 2018, 09:13:56 pmVery nice explanation.Thank you.The wild car in all of this is for grid tied customers is how much will the power company charge and when? It is my understanding PG&E is the first power company to implement residential TOU billing. We have 9 different TOU rate plans to choose from. Other power companies across the US are following PG&E’s lead, Is just a few years just about all of the power companies will have TOU billing. TOU rates can greatly favor the customer or can cost a fortune..... all depends on when you used the electricity and what the power company is charging.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 02:27:57 am
content: If one lives in CA, somebody's location can make a dramatic difference in how much sun they get too. At least near the coast it does. Also as one goes northward the number of overcast days increases a lot. Also, each section of Calif. coast has a slightly different water temperature profile so the fog vs sun ratio changes noticeably at that point. This can be seen well on space imaging. Compared to farther south, the water along the pacific coast of CA usually gets colder quite fast as you go north, (except in El Nino years) North of Big Sur/Monterey the weather gets markedly foggier, at Pt. Arena the weather makes another transition to even more overcast and the overcast skies increase again north of Cape Mendocino. Also as you go inland once you crest the Coast Range the eastern slope of the mountains are sunny, with some areas even often bathed in sunshine due to being in a fog shadow. Themicro climatesvary a lot from one hill or valley to the next.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 03:43:07 am
content: In my experience, it's very easy to net a savings on a California variable rate plan since the peak times are when most people are at work.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 03:56:14 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 17, 2018, 03:43:07 amExactly - But none of the solar design experts know how to properly design a system for people on TOU. They design based on kWhr useage and don’t have a clue about how to design for a TOU customer where rates change throughout the day.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 07:47:16 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 17, 2018, 03:56:14 amDoesn't that require hoping that the schedule doesn't change for the 25 years or so a solar power system is rated to last?

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 08:16:56 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 17, 2018, 02:00:05 amI find the PG&E very expensive no matter what option you select. For example SaskPower here was charging me around 0.12CAD at any time of day that is less than night time rate at PG&E and yes there are additional taxes and connection fees but when I was rating an apartment in Regina a few years ago my bill for 200kWh/month was 50CAD so if you add everything that is 0.2CAD / kWh still way better and about the same with what I have now offgrid 0.175USD/kWhThe reason the electricity I use for heating costs me just 0.042USD is that I use a thermal mass storage device instead of Lithium battery as that is the main reason for the higher electricity cost for appliances.So when you can use the grid as an energy storage device (in any condition even if they do not pay anything for your export) a simple grid connected solar PV is very economical but adding any sort of Lithium battery storage will be a big financial loss. The thing is that some combine the large gains provided by the solar PV with the huge losses of the Lithium battery and that in some cases may make things even or less bad than when you just look at the battery alone.So for me is clear that adding a Lithium battery to a grid connected system will never be cost effective in fact it will be just an investment guaranteed to generate a significant loss.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 09:04:47 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 17, 2018, 07:47:16 pmYou are correct. TOU billing is new as are EV rates. We know PG&E will increase rates but will that be for off-peak as well as peak and partial-peak? I don’t think so. As PG&E raises peak and partial-peak rates this is a windfall for TOU coustomers who can consume most of their power at off-peak hours.The other wild card is that PG&E has so much electricity from solar during peak hours they don’t have ciustomers for it. But at the same time if solar production decreases they have to be ready to provide power. This is an experiament in progress.The only reason solar “works” in California is because the power companies have to buy the power from residential customers. Nevada was doing the same thing, but their politicians put an end to it and all of the solar companies closed shop in the state.I think we need to wait 5, 10, 20 years to see how this solar experiment is going to turn out.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 09:12:12 pm
content: Didn't Enron do this exact same thing to Californians just a few years ago?

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 10:18:01 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 17, 2018, 09:12:12 pmNo. Enron purcahases Portland Gas Electric, PGE, not Pacific Gas and Electric, PG&E. As I recall Enron was a Ponzi scheme.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 11:05:07 pm
content: Here is aGuardian storyabout the Enron Tapes.They were extorting money out of the state which had entered into a scheme to allow them to buy and sell electricity based on peak demand. They manipulated the numbers and made a huge amount of money - and it turned out that the issues the state's ratepayers were being manipulated over were manufactured by them, i.e. fictitious.Electricity is essential for commerce. Should it be privatized? No. Cities that have maintained utilities as public often have much lower rates and more reliable service.This kind of thing is what happens when you let crooked lawmakers privatize everything.(A similar disaster occurred with public transit, with National City Lines. But thats another story.)This is just the first paragraph of the article on theCalifornia electricity crisisFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisisQuoteAnd so on.The short version is that Enron was a professional energy scam company, a company that were major insiders in Washington and the state capitals.(not by any means the only one)They were able to bilk the state's taxpayers out of a lot of money.This wasimmortalized in recordingsof their conversations.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 01:58:16 am
content: This is only the tip of the iceberg with PG&E and energy scams. You are missing one key ingrediant when it comes to the Enron scam, deregulation. In the US in the 1960s we there was a push for deregulation. Happened witht the phone company (AT&T), airlines, financial/banking and real estate. (See a pattern here? With deregulation comes major scams and swindles). Enron was able to do what they were able to do because of deregulation. Once deregulation came along PG&E could no longer profit from the sale of electricity to residential customers. They are making there money off the production and transmission of electricityAnd don’t think there aren’t scams with solar. Many PG&E customers were forced by local city politicians to buy there electricity from MCEhttps://www.mcecleanenergy.orgwhich is through PG&E. (Sounds like Enron scam all over again.). I’ve tried to find out more about MCE, but their web site is vague. I’ve tried calling them a couple of times, but people who answer the phone just smile and say thank you for calling MCE.Sure would like to understand or figure out what MCE is all about. If someone knows, please post.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 02:21:57 am
content: Just made a post onmy google+ about energy generated todayand also for the past 85 days since DMPPT450 started to be used for house heating.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 03:06:33 am
content: On the topic of energy companies ripping off customers just because they can, when I was in college (Texas A&M College Station), there's a crazy $40/month service charge for electricity. That was when solar panels and batteries were considerably more expensive than they are now. I have no idea what it's like nowadays, but if it's the same or higher, it would actually be viable to buy a bunch of Nissan Leaf battery modules and take them on campus to recharge. The grocery store is within walking distance so little to no need for refrigeration (a good quality cooler filled with ice works for that), there's no need to stay for the hottest days of the year unless you're taking summer classes, and a camping stove works nicely for cooking. Hot water is provided from the CHP plant in the area and winters are mild (rarely goes below 50F) so just keep some clothes and blankets handy. What's left are some LED lights and personal electronics, which use little power and are trivial to run from batteries.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 03:14:08 am
content: Deregulation is there in order so that all services or resources of all kinds (defined as everything you cannot drop on your foot) could be commoditized under trade agreements, taking them out of the realm of things governments can touch.Thats both deregulation and reregulation, but in forums where people do not exist and there is no democracy.Organizations like the WTO pay lip service to democracy but the fact is they all are profoundly intentionally undemocratic. They were created to limit democracy to shambolic, non-economic things, and increasingly arbitral bodies where governments only exist there to be sued by corporations.Of all service sectors, energy has been the one most subjected to ISDS arbitral bodies up until now, with governments almost always losing, so you can expect lots more.Sometimes what is happening is cryptic and basically hidden messaging.:http://www.iatp.org/blog/201602/obama-undermines-climate-efforts-in-solar-trade-disputeWhat is happening is a global second enclosure in response to the shift towards automation.Along with the loss of jobs comes loss of power, and the norms before the industrial revolution are re-asserting themselves. Except in a world without jobs, it will be much harder for people than it was under feudalism, when the elite still needed the labor of the peasantry.Second enclosure is really a good way of framing it. The powerful are all in a hidden alliance, one that is disguised as various agreements, and phony disputes, with division and conquest the goal. They are united by a shared contempt for democracy, taxation and egalitarianism of any kind. They want to lock down and sell off, and in many cases, export the resources, until they're gone. To whomever pays the most, not people who need it the most. Think gold rush or land grab. The global corporate state that is emerging wants to expropriate everything of value before people realize whats going on. So of course, they frame any attempt by humanity to assert any right of any kind via government as"indirect expropriation"What were once public services become 'services of general interest' and must be sold or a situation is 'trade distorting'. If its sold anywhere in a country or if a government is in competition with any provider of a like service it must be commercialized. This is why we cant have good healthcare and why social security is slated to become another crappy investment. They systematically barred and made impossible the entire New Deal behind the country's back. We just never got the memo.NAFTA was the first negative list FTA and many of the newer ones are based on it, but services are in many ways the most ugly in its implications. That all began Jan 1, 1995 with the WTO. WTO is opt in (we opted in in many more areas than many others) the more recent US style 'agreements' countries must opt out. (This is called 'negative list')Also 'standstill' applies in many areas locking in the autonomous level of regulation at the start. (Jan 1, 1995)Newer regulations in those areas can be challenged and rolled back to their state on that date. Also countries that are joining the WTO may have to give up services that dont comply with WTO rules (basically ones where governments help people) Unless that service sector is totally free in a country, and non-commercial, and has been since that date. Healthcare in Canada would pass that test, thanks to a smart Canadian NGO that informed their government, but most other countries, including some that pride themselves on having healthcare for all, would not.Thats to prevent the reversion of privatizations (corporations get entitlements to certainty, people get uncertainty)Services and regulation are framed as takings. So is creation or prologation (they all are supposed to eventually go away, that is the desired end state, totally privatized everything) of any new state owned monopolies. Corporations get a right to sell services that trumps any national or subfederal entity laws. Under the new system, nation states are disempowered like Ulysses, tied to the mast so the Sirens of the electorate cannot influence policy, and public services are framed as a theft of opportunity from entitled corporation.There is a ratchet so regulations can only be eliminated, and once lost they cannot be reestablished. Especially in service sectors like financial services, and energy.Of course they are hiding this because its also basically millions of jobs - all the jobs where money is currently being "wasted" on wages above global norms are on the table. If national laws stand in the way, they will be attacked in the WTO and countries may well lose, especially if they have made committments to 'open' them. Newer US style negative list agreements include everything by default that isnt excluded in advance in writing.Services, everything that cant be dropped on feet, becomes international trade and all regulations in those areas must be not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service, and no more.All those jobs, even areas like education, energy, healthcare, water, prisons, every area where any tax money is spent, becomes an internationally tradable service, if its not on the table now it soon will be, and is auctioned off to the lowest bidder (preferably in a developing country we want to prop up) therefore made irreversible and untouchable, so this ends up being hyper-regulation.Did we Americans get the memo? I never did. Different countries have varying levels of awareness. The key fact though is that its happening just as the world needs public services more, because so many jobs will be going away in the coming years, so many that the number of jobs put into play by these agreements will likely be much smaller than they had expected.Roughly 80% of all business is in services, so basically this shift is going to be like a super-NAFTA for the rest of the jobs. They have been working on it for more than 20 years and its almost done.Yes, it may throw large numbers of people, (a princeton economist estimated 26% but his estimate was returned to in another study by two people at Harvard and they concluded 40% were offshorable. (Many of these jobs will be offshored with some workers here and some overseas) But it was immediately obvious to me that a lot of their assumptions were over optimistic, as they left out entire targeted service sectors - for example, they by and large excluded the public sector, which is clearly the #1 target down perhaps to the state and municipal level.Also, what escapes the shift now will likely be on the table in two or four years, either via the WTO's "single undertaking" or in plurilateral, bilateral or regional trade agreements.But the biggest organization - is the WTO and at the bi-annual WTO Ministerial conferences, they return to the table every two years and there is pressure from the big countries like the US to put more and more on the table.Huge agreements like TISA are intended to be folded into the WTO at some point in the future (perhaps when wages have fallen far enough in the expensive countries to make it easier to create common markets similar to the one in the EU, but larger, and with movement of natural persons restricted to intra-corporate transfers by corporations, not individuals)Other countries are under a lot of pressure to be like us.These shifts are intended to eventually basically impact everybody everywhere (all around the world) especially in all quasi public service jobs, including teachers, grad students, everybody in research who gets grant money, every job that is a bit less corporate. The public job as we know it will go away, except for those who make up the governments themselves, we will see the end of the stable public job, the end of respected professions, and everybody's labor will be seen as a commodity, a standardized input, an interchangeable part in a machine, with licenses and advanced degrees all accepted everywhere in the intra-corporate transferee context, and equivalent, this will push smaller businesses out, think global chains, even in areas now thought of as private. Much like what has been done in the Middle East with the "kafala" system of corporate sponsoirship (much like indentured servitude). others will end up having to compete with global corporations that pay almost nothing that get an entitlement to win whenever public money is involved, and to do an end run around the whole 20th century as far as regulation. Countries will have to change their laws if they don't comply. Or face huge sanctions. (entities like the WTO cant reach in and change national alws directly, just sanction them things worth billions of dollars until they do)Basically, it will be a great time to be rich and wading in cash.Not so good for everybody else. People will be on their own and without money, they will be non-entities in a way that people were not under democracy in the pre-WTO era.Quote from: DougSpindler on November 18, 2018, 01:58:16 am

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 07:02:45 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 18, 2018, 03:14:08 amThat was long rant and not sure I understood what was all about.A single 250W PV panel produces as much (more) energy in an average day as any fit person can convert in to mechanical energy 2000kcal is around 2.3kWh and most of that is used to keep our body temperature at 37C (100F)That panel costs $150 and can produce energy for the next 30+ year's just needs to be exposed to sunlight.I think is fairly clear no person in any country can compete with this not even close.Up to fairly recent people had the intelligence so it could adapt (learn) fast to do different tasks. Artificial intelligence + simple automation can already replace almost any Job and the only reason there are still human jobs today has to do with the slow rate people can adopt new technologies.People should be free to do things that they enjoy as machines + low cost energy should be able to provide all our basic necessities.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 02:21:09 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 19, 2018, 07:02:45 amA 250W (or even 100W) solar panel is not very portable, hence why I have proposed the idea of making pedal generators portable and affordable in order to make them practical power supplies for portable electronics. It would not only be a big breakthrough for mobile computing but also help slow the increase in obesity a bit.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 02:40:25 pm
content: Actually, there's room for a fair amount of PV panels on top of motorhomes. It's often done by those that like to camp with no services. But it's usually only enough for maintenance charging. Generators or the main engine still have to be used for heavy loads like air conditioning.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 04:31:29 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 18, 2018, 03:14:08 amIf I recall correctly the amount of energy in a barrel of gasoline, 55 gallons is equilivnet to the wok 10 slaves could do in a year.Sounds like a promoting a deceleration of independence. What was to become the United States did that buy using force and violence. Are you proposing the same thing?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 05:07:40 pm
content: Electrodacus, we need to be aware that some corporation may have bought the rights to an energy monopoly in an area. That might translate in some brain-dead countries to their making off-grid power illegal!This is because they have sworn to 'support'tradein services inallmeasures of any kind.What is a 'measure' 'affecting trade in services' ? Almost anything!For example,this explains how that is definedwith regard to what we used to call public services.Especially if many people start doing it, under the bizarre new priorities of trade agreements, some ISDS suit wary governments might define off-grid use as evading the law in some way. I think they tried to do this in Spain.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 06:43:28 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 19, 2018, 02:21:09 pmNot sure if this was sarcasm or notMost people will not be capable to sustain a few hours at 100W so a 100W panel will produce more in an average day than a person could by using a pedal generator and the pedal generator will likely cost more than a 100W PV panel. PV panel cost amortization is around 2 cent/kWh and so a 100W panel will produce in an average day 0.5kWh same as a person after a few hours of pedal generator workout so they will produce the equivalent of 1 cent after a hard day of work.Quote from: Nusa on November 19, 2018, 02:40:25 pmNot true with Lithium maybe true with Lead Acid as those are fairly useless. Here one small motorhome that uses the SBMS60 a 12V 360Ah and 1200W of PV panels and is doing electric cooking and even air conditioning and fridgeQuote from: DougSpindler on November 19, 2018, 04:31:29 pmGasoline displaced all the horse work (99.9%) so there are way less horses today as they are not needed for transportation.How do you define independence ?99% of people work in one or more jobs not for fun but in order to pay for the basic needs like food and shelter (is that independence?).55 gallons (~208 liters) of gasoline has about 1900kWh of energy if you can use all of that. A typical passenger car will be just under 20% efficient so in that case just around 380kWh usable energy.Quote from: cdev on November 19, 2018, 05:07:40 pmI never heard of off-grid energy production to be made illegal anywhere and not sure what sort of reason's anyone can give for that.In any case this is well out of my area of expertise so I can not do a relevant comment.And yes most jobs are in trade and services as manufacturing is already fully automated (for most part) and trade and services are next with the big advances in AI over the last few years.Things will need to change in a dramatic way but I do not have any Idea how it will be done or even what will be the best solution.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 07:20:49 pm
content: I don't know if this is the best link on this story:https://www.quora.com/Has-Spain-really-banned-private-solar-panels--------------Speaking generally - Governments are very worried about many jobs going away for good. Which is the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced. Who is going to pay for everything? What are we going to do to organize this transition?Its an open question to many people but governments have already committed to capitalism, which is basically a cult of competition and evaluation. Under it, people have no intrinsic rights except ones that involve their money. Its money that buys rights to free speech, it seems now. Also, instead of rights to affordable healthcare, water and education, corporations got rights to sell all essentials without government competition, if even one entity sells that thing in a country.So, people in the UK may have to contend with sales of clean air in the future, as due to its being bottled and sold there, GATS makes it illegal for the government to help people who cant afford it, except in the least trade restrictive way.And of course the same rules apply to lots of other things too, even things people have taken for granted.(And on aspect of the plot of Terry Gilliam's dystopian movie "Brazil" I am sad to say, can never come to pass. Thats not a joke although it sounds like one.)So, they are trying to cut costs, using competition. Unfortunately in ways which will mean people will make less and pay more. Much more, but governments will be freed of moral hazard and the responsibilities of managing people. Thats why the privatization started. Governments everywhere are washing their hands of the obligations they took on in the last century to protect people from capitalism's extremes. Now they work for the corporations. Not the people. People don't realize this yet.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 08:21:52 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 19, 2018, 07:20:49 pmI think this is getting a bit off-topic, but you're still raising an interesting concern here.Yes we all know many jobs are going away progressively due to many factors including automation, technological changes, societal changes, etc.The way states are currently working to feed themselves and redistribute wealth will have to change drastically. The current trend in most countries is to lower taxes for companies (in the name of competitivity and the 'employment blackmail') and increase them for individuals. As less and less individuals will have jobs, even if we assume that the overall economy allows to support them, governments will inevitably have to raise company taxation, up to a point that may end up in a global crash.Fun days ahead.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 09:01:04 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 19, 2018, 07:20:49 pmThat is already an old story and also misinterpreted.That tax was abolishedLinkThe tax was not for off grid (true off grid) but grid connected houses that decided to store the energy instead of donating the excess to grid and also applied to PV installation of more than 10kW (twice what a average Spanish home needed to cover the energy usage)Bellow a quote from that article:QuoteQuote from: SiliconWizard on November 19, 2018, 08:21:52 pmYes states will soon need to find better way to redistribute wealth. The problem is not that there is not enough wealth is just that is badly distributed so it is not an problem that can not be fixed.The subject of this tread is PV energy as the most cost effective form of energy generation (that will continue to drop) and it is a positive thing.I also think low cost clean energy + AI taking over all jobs is also a good thing it just requires drastic changes in the way current system is setup.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 09:30:01 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on November 19, 2018, 02:40:25 pmMaybe I play too much KSP but I always thought it would be cool to have a retractable panel on a RV. When you park the RV would have legs like on cranes to add more stability, then the panels would unfold kinda like the ISS. Maybe not as big, but could have them maybe triple the size of the roof by overhanging both sides. Would double as an awning to keep the RV area shaded to sit under. You would probably generate enough to run AC, fridge etc at that point, since in summer there's lot of sun light and long days.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 09:45:29 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 19, 2018, 09:30:01 pmThat is how it is done on that DIY RV thing that I posted a video of earlier but here you can see that in the first seconds of this video. He uses my SBMS60 (older model) a 360Ah 12v LiFePO4 battery and 8x 36 cell panels around 1400W when all are fully extended or half if not extended.For the first few years when I moved offgrid all my house electricity was provided by a 720W PV array a 2.5kWh LiFePO4 battery (100Ah 24V LiFePO4) and I was using an average of 60kWh/month sufficient for my small fridge + LED lights + computers and quite a bit of electric cooking.Now since I feel like wasting energy when I use 120kWh/month (electricity only so excludes heating).

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 10:01:02 pm
content: That's actually pretty awesome.So can those big LiFePO4 battery cells actually be bought prebuilt? There was a Chinese site posted earlier but didn't see an actual way to buy. I always had the impression if you want to use lithium ion or LiFePO4 or similar tech you had to find a source of 18650s and similar cells and then tack weld them yourself. Trying to source out legit 18650's can be a challenge as the market is saturated with fakes.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 10:16:54 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 19, 2018, 10:01:02 pmLiFePO4 is usually sod as large prismatic cells so there is nothing for you to do other than connect the cells using screws on the terminals. LiFePO4 is way more cost effective (in therms of cost amortization ) for energy storage applications and also way more safer as they do not have thermal runaway.In US there are a few stores that sell those cells but in Canada is more difficult to find. The guy in the video is in Canada and he got 180Ah CALB cells that are good but Winston will be better tho you will need to import them from China or maybe US.Why will you need energy storage ? If you are grid connected and want that as grid storage then that is not economical so I do not recommend that.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 10:39:15 pm
content: Was just curious, though if I had room for an off grid array I would go off grid. Way cheaper in the long run. Just being connected to the grid costs $100/mo give or take whether or not you're using power so you'd need to be generating enough excess that you can store and sell and that's assuming you even can sell. These programs come and go all the time. Right now I don't think they have such program here. But who knows in a few months. It's very inconsistent.I don't have enough room though for off grid, but the idea of LiFePO4 cells for a UPS sounds interesting. I have a small 400w solar system for my shed but for that case a cheap Canadian Tire lead acid battery was easier to get and cheaper. Probably upgrade that to 2 or 4 golf cart batteries down the line. I need to build a heated battery box as right now in the -20's the single 80ah battery is not enough even just to keep the inverter going. Eventual goal is to have actual outside lighting. Ideally I want to try to keep the battery at 0C but I don't know how realistic that is. Of course I could put it in the house, but I want this to actually be a full off grid like setup, kinda acts as a test to see how viable it is here even with the really short days.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 10:48:08 pm
content: Yep. LiFePo cells are easy.Screw the links, and one big fuse, install a BMS and charger, give some margin on charge and discharge, done for good.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2018, 11:04:23 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 19, 2018, 10:39:15 pmThere is no need to test stuff as you can easily calculate what you can get from a certain system depending on locationPVWattsis a great tool for that and fairly accurate.Where exactly is that $100/month ? It seems extreme as when I had grid 5 to 6 years ago in Regina Saskatchewan I was using 200kWh/month in average (almost half for water distiller) and some for the incandescent lights on the common areas as it was an apartment building and for that my bill was 50CAD around half was for the actual usage 200kWh and half was taxes and fixed costs so maybe minimum was around 20CAD if I will have not used anything.It is true that incentives for solar connected PV change over time but even if they do not pay anything for excess the amount you use directly from a grid connected PV array is at a fairly low cost to you and way better than adding battery storage.An UPS type storage that is used when grid is down is only useful (still not cost effective) if you have frequent blackouts (not typical in most places).Small or large system is very relativeas mentioned I was happy with a 720W PV array for a few years. As for inverters they are a bad idea for smaller systems as for example my 720W + 2.5kWh battery system allowed me to use 60kWh/month in average but a lot of that was used directly as DC since my house is wired for 24V DC thus LED lights, computer's and fridge all work directly from DC and inverter is only used (powered ON) as needed in average 1 to 2h per day and that alone makes for a substantial saving as my inverter uses around 30W idle so my saving for keeping that off for 22h per day is 30W x 22h x 30 days = 19.8kWh/month and that is about 33% of my total usage so sure a bad idea or it will have required to increase the PV array and battery by 30% for the luxury of having the inverter always ON (no benefit).Even now that I have way more energy and I can easily leave the inverter always ON I do not do that as it makes no sense and there are no advantages.My LiFePO4 is inside the house and that is the best place for it to be as it prefers the same range of temperatures as humans so around +20C

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2018, 01:37:26 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 19, 2018, 02:21:09 pm

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2018, 01:46:10 am
content: The $100 is delivery fee and all the other fees that get tacked on. Those are all fixed and not based on usage. It's not exactly $100 I'm just rounding it, I just know it's up there. It's at least half the bill.For UPS I already have a couple hundred ah in lead acids, power does not go out that often here, but it does, so I like to protect my servers. I eventually want to do a telco style setup though, where everything is always running on inverter, and the batteries are floated. There's no switch over time that way. I've been burned a few times by the UPS not switching over fast enough during a brown out.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2018, 02:09:33 am
content: Customers are important to buy stuff too, so countries that are planning on losing a lot of employment often hope to make it up on export and often by offshoring, but to do that they feel they need trade agreements to protect their overseas investments. These agreements set up formal statuses that make it so countries have to treat firms from a subset of other countries exactly the same as they do their own, with some exceptions that work in the foreign companies favor. They actually get to have their cake and eat it too in certain areas. Things that domestic companies dont get. (Like the right to sue the government directly in a special court if the government changes any laws that hurt their bottom line after the signing of these agreements. Even things people wouldn't think would be impacted like raising their minimum wages- that is if they apply to the foreign company at all, which seems to still be in some ways, an unresolved question! This is called "ISDS" which stands for "investor-vs-state dispute settlement")How might ISDS apply to the energy industry? Lots of ways. Energy is actually among the most litigated areas in ISDS. For example, Vattenfall is a (Swedish?) energy company that sued germany for deciding to phase out nuclear power because after Chernobyl, livestock in parts of Germany had radioactive meat, enough so that there is a concern that if they had another nuclear accident, meat produced in Germany would become unsafe to eat. And Germans are big meat eaters. That was culturally unacceptable for them. So Vattenfall sued them in a private arbitral court and everything involved with the case is secret. They settled but the sum and terms are secret. Its expected that if trade agreements similarly encumber the natural gas industry, any country deciding to stop fracking would be sued and almost certainly lose. ISDS is carving in stone an extractive model that people really are uncomfortable with in this context where the environmental costs can be huge, particularly for things like water. What happens if your well water becomes unsafe to drink? People also have found that the water from fracking carries unacceptable amounts of radiation. It makes streams and rivers radioactive. What if ISDS makes it so they cant turn the fracking off.Some of all this is about jobs.To get those statuses in those other countries, ("National treatment", "Most favored nation" etc.) they have fallen into a trap of job trading, or they claim they have, some claim they have to agree to give away more jobs. (Whether the US agreed to give away lotsof jobs in the WTO services agreement is actually a subject of great dispute. Some countries (a group of developing countries led by India) claim we did, while US trade experts claim that only if the whole deal is completed, the so called 'single undertaking' would those promises of market access - allowing an unlimited number of intra-corporate transfers, instead of the quotas that limits the numbers to a fraction of its potential. (This "Mode Four" would expressly not be immigration, as its temporary, and only for economic reasons, they feel that with their low wage advantage, they can do the work for much less, pay their workers as much or more as they make at home, or even a national minimum wage in the wealthy countries, and still make a profit.) Plus developed countries could save a lot of money on education, currently they must educate their own people at tremendous cost.These provisions aren't for just anybody. They apply only to people with special skills, such as computers and related services (CRS) , or construction, or teaching, or nursing, or medicine, or engineering, they may require a degree, and if they become an entitlement, it wont be one enjoyed by individuals, it will be extended to the companies that are transacting the business for their use. Employees will be tied to their employers. They wont be able to switch jobs.Right now in the US and likely also Canada, energy related jobs pay fairly well, compared to other jobs available to people without an expensive education. But not in the Middle East. There they use the 'kafala' model. Which is more like indentured servitude.The deals would put into place a model much like the Middle Eastern kafala model in big sections of the economy, allowing dramatic shifts in labor. Public sector jobs especially, jobs that in many communities are the best and sometimes even the only jobs they have, would change towards privatization and subcontracting with international competition for those contracts. Whomever bid the cheapest would win.The energy industry would become mostly foreign subcontractors (This has been one of the big aims for a long time because it allows the big companies to shed risks like the risks from huge environmental disasters to subcontractor companies which really means pass the costs to the countries and their taxpayers.)So then the countries wont even get the jobs any more. Just the cleanup costs. But lots of insider investors likely would get huge payoffs on their investments. Despite the fact that fracking is kind of the extraction of the last natural gas and petroleum resource, a resource that by many accounts has almost run out. (There is a lot of evidence that its been vastly overstated, there clearly isnt even remotely near as much as they claim. What does exist is not worth getting out, unless wages fall a lot to get it. But at what cost? because wells could be fouled and people made ill-fracking impacts peoples health, particularly children and the unborn, and the old.Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 19, 2018, 08:21:52 pmYou are assuming that governments will have a burden they may not have of a social safety net which they are shifting to the private sector. Instead of expensive domestic services, international trade will become the method of solving cost problems. Whatever costs exist, those services are likely much cheaper in some currently isolated area of the world. E-commerce will enable jobs and hospital beds and patients, and energy, kidneys, and even "gestational carriers" (women who carry other womens babies to term in their own wombs) to be traded in spot markets like hotel rooms, prison cell space and airline tickets are today.As Ronald Reagan used to say, "The magic of the marketplace". E-commerce is the balm that heals all, according to the free trade advocates. Don't worry jobs will vanish. Ecommerce! say it a few times.. "Ecommerce". The new "better than solar" information roadways to El Dorado.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2018, 11:30:13 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 20, 2018, 01:46:10 amYes all other taxes and delivery fee can be around half the bill but I do not think that is the minimum. In my case it was 50CAD total bill and about half 25CAD where taxes and delivery + GST/PST. Maybe at a $200 bill those taxes add up close to half the bill but if energy usage is reduced it should be much less than $100. Maybe I'm wrong as there is a lot of variation.Still even at $100/month just to be connected and use no energy it is still a good idea to have grid connected storage and no battery storage.Seems like your main reason for a battery is servers but you may consider outsourcing those unless you have a good reason to have them at home.There are better quality UPS that will switch in time to to reset your servers. Most use mechanical relays and those have a few ms delay time before switching depending on design and relay quality.It also depends on your server power supply some have larger capacitors to deal with short power loss but it also depends on what the power consumption of the server is in relation with the size of the capacitors.In that case where battery is always full Lead Acid will perform better than Lithium as you will do almost no cycling and battery will always (99.9% of the time) be fully charged.Quote from: cdev on November 20, 2018, 02:09:33 amAs energy will witch from traditional sources to renewable and those are produced in automated factories is not relevant where they are produced. Solar PV panels or batteries will cost the same to produce in any country as almost no human labor will be involved.Coal and Nuclear are already more expensive than solar and natural will soon be more expensive if it is not already

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 01:17:07 am
content: People shouldn't count on being able to burn wood for heat because of the particulate pollution it creates, which causes many people to have trouble breathing. Its really bad for you. So a lot of communities are banning or considering banning burning wood.Similarly, burning coal puts a lot of mercury into the air, so much so that many people near where I live have measurably higher mercury levels in their hair than people who live elsewhere.It particular its dangerous to burn some kinds of coal because mercury and other pro-oxidant substances cause changes in gene expression that could cause autism in children and increased vulnerabilities to cancers in adults, because they use up glutathione, one of our body's repair mechanisms, which is a finite resource.Mercury vapor measurements in the air can be seen to spike when they are burning coal at a big power plant in Pennsylvania and the wind is blowing our way.Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.So that basically leaves natural gas which they want to sell off to Asia, and renewable energy sources so its imperative that we get moving on implementing these kinds of technologies as soon as possible, so that if we need to change any of these plans we can do it soon, rather than get trapped into an ISDS situation where we are being sued for 'reneging on a promise' to export LNG.What if the Icelandic volcano Hekla or whatever its name is erupts, as they have been saying it may. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the US (and electricity pioneer) wrote about the possibility of something like this way back in the 18th century. He also warned us (as did many of the Founders) about the dangers to democracy posed by amoral corporations.The whole natural gas chapter in TTIP thing has the stink of a big insider scam to it.Or what some economists would call a 'control fraud'.Like BCCI, and the S&L and the 2008 scam which had its roots in GATS, a fact they are still hiding.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 01:28:25 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 20, 2018, 02:09:33 amGovernments or otherwise private structures. Either way, the society will HAVE to support people not having jobs. It can't work any other way.You may be thinking that as the private sector progresses and states disappear (if they ever), nobody will actually care about people not having jobs, and just let them die, but if you think about it, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't work that way, and it doesn't have anything to do with morals even. It would be exactly like saying that to get rid of world poverty we would just have to get rid of all poor people.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 01:38:35 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 21, 2018, 01:17:07 amI don't think it a technical issue for storage it's a political issue. NIMBY'

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 02:40:56 am
content: Quote from: ahbushnell on November 21, 2018, 01:38:35 amWhy even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 04:13:27 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 20, 2018, 11:30:13 pmHaha no way I'm outsourcing that. Way cheaper to host myself (only have to pay for it once other than power draw - data centres charge you per month based on the server specs) and I can set it any physical config I want, and I have very low latency high speed access and it's more secure because I don't have to worry about setting up VPNs or ways to remotely access etc. It's all local and I can do what I want because I have physical access. It's all for hobby stuff while some does run important stuff like home automation, which I plan to redesign eventually. Harder to do that when it's in a data centre somewhere 100's of km away that I have no control over. I do have one leased server at OVH but that's for web hosting and public facing stuff. Sadly my ISP, like most, don't allow server hosting, otherwise I'd host all my web stuff at home too.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 04:17:22 am
content: People don't realize how little CPU + bandwidth the average web site uses. Even very low end hardware today is more powerful than what was considered a powerful server not so long ago. And accordingly could host a fairly large site, if its done intelligently. For almost nothing.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 06:12:04 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 21, 2018, 02:40:56 am

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 08:27:29 am
content: Quote from: ahbushnell on November 21, 2018, 01:38:35 amAs I mentioned nuclear fission is at least 2x more expensive than solar so why will you want that.Cost of nuclear fission is mostly paid in advanced over 75%, the fuel cost is almost insignificant then there is operation and maintenance making the rest. The decommissioning and waste storage is extra and can be quite a bit of extra that is never factored in the beginning or even at all.Look at the graph for US representing energy production by sources notice no new nuclear since the 1990 and only natural gas and renewable see an increase.Natural gas will peak soon and renewable will take the main spot (that is just my prediction).

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 06:45:39 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on November 21, 2018, 04:17:22 amMeanwhile data centres still charge $100+/mo for low end hardware. Though sometimes you can find a good deal. Where they rape you is ram and hard disk space. If you want more than 1GB of ram or 1TB of space you have to pay extra per month for an "upgrade". Meanwhile I can throw in 4 10TB drives in a home server and have ~18TB of redundant space (raid 10) and only pay for it once. That's why anything I can offload to a local server like test environments or production stuff that does not need to face the internet, I do so. Only the stuff that has to face the internet goes on the leased server. Local compute resources are practically free compared to online resources as you only pay once for local. I guess if you consider power then there is a small cost but it's small and I'd by paying that anyway. The mining rig uses more than everything else in the rack.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 06:55:37 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 21, 2018, 02:40:56 amThe reson we need to care about fussion is why have a 600 year supply of nuclear that's already beeen processed. The only other use for the that materail would be to enrich it and make nuclear warheads. (Which is where the fuel came from in the first place.)Then you are also not factoring in next gen nuclear, that's where the fuutre is. Frrance, United States, India, European Union Japan and Chinia as well as nearly 100 private compnaies are all working on next gen nucelar. You can't get more green than next gen nuclear.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 07:01:41 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 06:55:37 pmI was talking about fission the only available option at this time. Fusion is a different subject and as of now not a solved problem so it can not be considered until it is solved and then cost may still be to high depending on how it is solved.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 07:06:26 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 21, 2018, 07:01:41 pmFussion is an experimant in progress, but hasn't France already started buidling? And then what do we do with the 600+ year of existing nuclear fuel that came from the 150,000 or so nuclear wareheads we once had. We have the fuel, why not use it? Can't use it for anyting else.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 07:14:04 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 07:06:26 pmFrance is building the next generation of the experiments. The ITER system they are building will not even approach something that might be a viable production power plant. JET, NIF and other systems have taught scientists and engineers a lot in the last half century, and its looking like it will be possible to achieve a sustainable net positive energy output from future systems. The big continuing unknown is whether that net positive will ever be big enough to make these systems viable.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 07:20:11 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 07:06:26 pmYes there is a large tokamak being build in France started in 2005 but it will take some time before it will be completed best case end of 2025, and 2035 when operation will begin. They have a theory that only a very large tokamak cant work as up to now they put in 2x more energy than they get out in best experiments so they hope for a net gain with this large one.This reactor will be using hydrogen and deuterium so will not solve the problem of existing nuclear waste.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 07:54:26 pm
content: Two separate issues. Existing nuclear fuel which we have a 600-700 year supply. And Next Gen nuclear which is an experiment in progress and is another 20 years or more. But won’t Next Gen Nuclear be the answer? United fuel source and no long lasting nuclear waste. Completely green.Not knocking solar and wind, but best estimates are in 20-30 years solar and wind will at best be able to supply 18% of the worlds electricty. For the amount of solar panels and wind turbines which would be needed we just don’t have the production facilities or the raw material to pordouce more.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 08:26:29 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 07:54:26 pmAs mentioned nuclear fission is expensive even compared with solar prices two or 3 years ago and fusion still need to be proven as working and on top of that when working it will need to be cheaper.Not sure where you got that 18% figure but that is sure not true. As demonstrated with my own house solar can be used to day for 100% of the house energy (Heating and electricity) and also the most cost effective energy source.Hydro, wind and solar PV are all forms of solar energy and thus renewable.In Canada there is a lot of hydro generated electricity and a bit of Wind (about 6 to 7%) and almost no solar for about 65% renewable.It is hard to make prediction's especially about the futureand I may be biased, but I do not see anything that will be able to compete with Solar PV now or in the near future, and there is no problem in producing PV panels as many as needed.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 08:53:35 pm
content: Given that radiation lasts a very long time in the environment,(its turning out radioactive non-decay longer than they predicted with Chernobyl) the cost of a single nuclear meltdown could end up being astronomical.So we have to get much better at preventing them. Corporations are not the answer to things like this. There is no accountability. These are events which we cannot afford to have happen, period.Why is 'meltdown' arguably a possibility with nuclear fission plants? Look up "Loss of the ultimate heat sink" and read the request by the New England NGO that requested that we put serious energy into figuring out solutions before we build any more nuclear fission plants.In particular, the risk posed to the grid by DC pulses - EMP caused by a solar storm, by a solar flare - a coronal mass ejection - or a nuclear detonation in space - and its interruption to the grid is a serious one.We could find ourselves one morning with a global mega disaster in progress because of a Carrington class- CME. (like the one in 1859) One narrowly missed the Earth just a few years ago.Note that several meltdowns happened at Fukushima, not just one. That means the design has this fundamental flaw. An interruption in power requires backup cooling capacity to come online fairly soon. Maybe a day or two at the most, if regular pumps are not working. This is a fixable engineering problem, superficially but its not a trivial one.Quote from: electrodacus on November 21, 2018, 08:27:29 amIt could be much much much more expensive than we could ever imagine if we dont address these risks before these things happen. They happen randomly, so its just luck that it hasn't happened.We narrowly missed being hit by one in 2013.Imagine 20 nuclear meltdowns, or 50 or even more nuclear meltdowns going on around the globe at the same time. Thats what scientists say could happen if we dont figure out how to cool them all no matter what happens to the grid.Its not enough to plan to take the grid offline if we detect a solar CME heading our way, because what happens if that capability is interrupted? Recently a tsunami hit an area that was wired to the gills with tsunami detection buoys, etc. But, the system proved to not work in that instance when it was needed. Murphy struck.Its not adequate to have the entire world's safety hanging by these threads.Similarly, a single huge volcanic eruption- something which history teaches us happens every few decades - with really big ones happening every few centuries, could be similarly catastrophic for solar, wind and hydro for up to a year or two all at the same time all around the globe. The ash in the atmosphere could throw either one hemisphere or the whole planet into a dry, desiccating winter that would not end until the ash percolated out. Rivers would run dry, crops would fail. The sun would shine but only weakly and without bringing warmth.A good engineer will plan for the unexpected as well as the expected.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 11:00:22 pm
content: The cost for nuclear power does that include the cost of mining and enriching? Or is that number based on the fact we have a 600 year supply of nuclear fuel ready to go?The 18% is the number being given by the Solar Energy Society and Wind Energy Association. These are there numbers. While many people erroneously think these numbers could be much higher the society and association states the limiting factor for not being able to produce more are the raw materials, aluminum, steel, and concrete followed by funds to build new production facilities.Solar wind might work for you, but that's one data point out of nearly 8 billion.Radiation is what makes solar and wind generated electricity. I think what you mean is ionizing radiation. This lasts for a billionth of a second to billions for years. We know the cost of a single meltdown and we have several to use a data points. Also look at the amount of our planet that's uninhabitable and the number of deaths associated with nuclear power. It's less than 100 and for the last accident it was zero.@cdev Now compare that to coal/fossil fuel. How many lives have been lost to coal mining accidents. It's over 10,000 times more than nuclear. Care to guess how much ionizing radiation is released into our air from the burning of fossil fuels? It's in the millions of tons. Then how much of our planet has been permanently ruined by mining for coal? And then what about the waste from coal mining. All of that is radioactive too. And what about our oceans. Burning of fossil fuels has polluted our oceans with heavy metals like mercury.This is not to say we haven't dumped nuclear waste in our oceans, we have. Just 20 miles from San Francisco UC Berkeley dumped their nuclear waste there where it remains today in what is now a National Wildlife Refuge.Remember the first nuclear reactor on Earth was a naturally occurring one in Gabon.Can we agree we don't "perfect" solution? And by no means am I saying nuclear is the "perfect" solution, it's not and it's not without risks either. Same is true with solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, coal, natural gas, coal and every other way we generate electricity.Can we agree one solution is not going to be the answer? So if we look at wind/solar that's only going to give us 20% at best? So were are we going to get the other 80%?I hope we can agree fossil fuels and coal are the bottom of the list as being the worst. So what's left? Well with nuclear we know we have a 600 year supply of fuel. We know of all of the various ways of generation electricity nuclear has resulted in the least amount of lives lost even if we include winds and solar. Yes when there'a meltdown there are hot spots, but as we now know the environmentalist lied to us in saying after a nuclear accident the land would turn int a barren wasteland. California, Chernobyl and Fukushima have proved the environmentalist were completely wrong. There is diversity of life around Chernobyl and Fukushima is now far greater than before the accidents. Yes there are some hot spots where humans can't survive but then there are naturally occurring areas where humans can't survive either like volcanoes, sulfur springs etc.Think about it... what's the least worst solution we have for generating electricity, isn't it nuclear at the top of the list? With coal/fossil fuels at the bottom?Or do you have a better solution? Our real hope is next generation nuclear. It's clean, it's green and worst case we have a California, Chernobyl or Fukushima accident in just 20 - 30 years all of the ionizing radiation/radioactive materiel will have all decayed away.Seems to me Next Gen Nuclear is where we should be headed. But in the mean time what do we do?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 11:20:10 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 11:00:22 pmThat assumes modularized solar cells mounted on concrete footing ... that's not how you'd roll it out in the future when it gets really cheap.To go really cheap you need the PV to be delivered on a roll. So you roll it out it out on the minimally prepared terrain and stake it down, maybe pump in some expanding foam into a pocket to give it a bit of an angle.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2018, 11:27:08 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 21, 2018, 11:20:10 pmPlease send me a link to where I can buy such a product?I'm looking into buying solar now and might be exactly what I need.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 12:34:17 am
content: They're in the same place as (non Russian) commercial breeder reactors, future.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 12:35:55 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 21, 2018, 11:27:08 pmWhat will you need the PV panels for and how large of a PV array will you need ?

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 01:13:41 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 22, 2018, 12:34:17 amNot sure what the point of your reply was. When you sat futeure, do you mean next year, or the perpetual future? Is a company actually working on the product? Or is this just a pipe dream?There are thousands of people close to where I liver who lost their homes in the wild fires who could benefit from such a product. How real is the product you are talking about?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 01:54:33 pm
content: 3m has polymer barrier technology they say will last decades, people are still working on thin film solar, costs keep plummeting. There are flexible thin film solar cells right now, they are just not efficiency/cost competitive ... but their advantage is there is no real bottom on their cost, because the material use is so low.At some point traditional crystalline silicon solar costs will bottom out because of bulk material costs and all the patents for thin film technologies will run out and then it will be time for thin film to shine.PS. they also do better in low/diffuse light, which is nice if you are over-dimensioning to deal with poor sunlight conditions.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 02:46:51 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 22, 2018, 01:54:33 pmInteresting wonder if that would be better where I live. We mostly just get overcast skies here so arrays have to be sized accordingly. When I sized my shed array I went for maximum roof coverage knowing I would only get a fraction of the rated wattage. Also had to face west as there's shadows from the south. I have room for about 3kw on my house's south facing roof so that would probably be the next place I put some.Though the real challenge with solar here in Canada is finding the panels themselves, not a lot of sites to buy them from and lot of them charge too much for shipping. So thin film is going to be even harder to find, at least in large scale. Can find small ones for charging cell phones etc. I ended up buying my panels off Amazon for a bit more money than I wanted to spend but still cheaper than the ones at Canadian Tire. $600+ for 100w is just crazy.I'd probably still end up going with mono panels if I did a big off grid setup though just because they're slightly easier to get. I did end up finding a site in BC that sells 280w+ modules for decent price and has free shipping, so I'd probably order from there if ever I do a big array. Hopefully as solar gets more popular it will be easier to buy panels. I'd say more than half the sites I found didn't even have an option to buy.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 02:52:46 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 22, 2018, 01:54:33 pmI’m confused. You say they are still working on it and you say cost is plummeting. So how much do they cost today? Can you provide a link to where it can be bought today? There are thousands of people who lost their homes in California’s wildfire who need electricity today. The product sounds like th e perfect solution for them. Would you PLEASE provide a link to a the company so people can buy this product? Thank you.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 03:22:45 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 22, 2018, 02:52:46 pmJust go on Amazon and buy new old stock from Unisolar (they went bankrupt). The big current CIGS players don't sell straight to consumers (and the Chinese crap is crap).QuoteWhy? Standard photovoltaic cells have higher efficiency and their greater bulk is not yet cost limiting and for most applications not a problem. CIGS is nice if you architect it directly into roof structures, need it curved or want to put it on top of a vehicle or something ... when you can just bolt on a standard module then for the moment just bolt on a standard module.You were the one who brought up the limiting factors for PV roll-out, I simply pointed out they are not actually limiting.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 04:09:13 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 22, 2018, 03:22:45 pmBut then again they aren’t really a practical solution either. There are thousands of people who lost their homes who are living out of tents. You made me thing this might be a wonderful inexpensive solution for them. THey can’t really use hardframed solar panels as they have no way of mounting them in a Walmart parking lot. Or moving them when Walmart asks them to leave.Guess we will have to disagree as I’m seeing nothing but limitations with PV solar and this is just one more to add to the list.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 10:34:33 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 22, 2018, 04:09:13 pmThere is no doubt that PV has its useful applications. One is for illuminated street signs, since in rural areas PV and a battery may be cheaper than miles of cable. Since I don't use my van all that much (a lot of admin work is done by remote access these days) I have a 20w setup to keep the battery fresh and some onboard gadgets working.That said, the main issue with Grid-scale PV is that in high latitudes you get next to nothing over the main part of the winter. Also, price comparisons tend to be with retail electricity rates. Which will not be hard to beat with raw power since the retail prices have to cover power line maintenance, etc. Somebody has to pay for the cabling and infrastructure, so if everyone went solar there would have to be a much higher standing charge for anyone who wants a Grid connection. When you factor that in, the economics don't look so rosy. I guess if you're equatorial you might just get by with only PV and a big enough battery, but no way will that work in the UK.One idea that should be looked into a bit more is fuel cell or thermocouple generation for gas central heating. In principle this would provide electricity 'for nothing' when the heating is in use. This could complement PV since it will be available in winter. The Bloom Box is one such idea that's already in commercial use.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 11:58:14 pm
content: Solar works great for what it is, I think what more money and research needs to go into now is long term storage tech. They spend billions and billions on oil rigs and pipe lines, imagine if that budget would go towards energy storage instead. Either new battery tech, or even grid grade storage. It does not even need to be a battery, perhaps a way to convert energy into some kind of green fuel. Hydrogen comes to mind though I don't think that's viable due to power density and efficiency losses, but maybe there is something else we just have not thought of yet.In the summer months there's like almost 20 hours of daylight, what if you could have a solar array that generates everything it needs for the day in no more than 5 hours, and then store the rest in long term storage - whatever that tech may be. In the winter when you only get like 4 hours of daylight and most of it being unusable, then you would sip on the stored energy that was produced in summer. Basically this would be some kind of "elastic" storage that you can just keep dumping excess power into. Not only from solar but from the grid itself. So you have these storage systems along the grid, with solar farms in other locations, they don't even all need to be in the same place. Keep existing nuclear plants going because they're working and paid for, even keep existing natural gas plants, but in the meantime slowly start adding more solar. The entire grid could in theory run off the storage system long term if it needs to, which would make solar and wind very viable even though they are so variable.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 12:10:03 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on November 22, 2018, 11:58:14 pmYup..... It's that thing we just haven't thought of yet, what is it?We do have several methods for long term storage. Water/hydro and fossil fuels.The solar and wind energy associations have told us in 30 years we might be lucky to get 20% of our energy from solar and wind. Wher's the other 80% going to come from?Instead of wasting time and money on storage why not spend that money and thouse resources on the Next Gen nuclear? We have a universe full of fuel and there's no long lived radioactive waste. It works at all latitudes and will be able to provide power day and night without any wind. It's the greenest way to produce electricty we know.Doesn't that make the most sense?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 12:29:45 am
content: IMHO nuclear fission is problematic because of the waste and the risk of loss of the ultimate heat sink, thermal melt down and uncontrolled release of radioactive materials into the environment on a massive scale.So, its not 'next generation' anything.And obviously both coal and natural gas come with substantial problems as well in the form of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.Research we pursue should focus on non-fossil fuel and non-fission directions, such as improving the efficiency of solar calls and solving the problems of nuclear fission so we can generate large amounts of power on demand without risks of nuclear accidents, which should be a wake up call for all of us. Nuclear fission power plants create large quantities of nuclear waste as well as carry a risk of increasing nuclear weapons proliferation.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 12:41:06 am
content: Nuclear is kind of a compromise between renewable and fossil fuel, so it would be nice to replace fossil fuel with nuclear for the time being, but it should not be the ultimate end all solution.Now if we can figure out what to do with the waste (some of the barriers may be political) then it would not be AS bad but the risk is of course there while it's operating.Now if we can convert the waste back into a usable product by using PV/wind energy somehow, maybe that would be a form of "storage". I don't know much about nuclear but I recall something about being able to bombard uranium with electrons to "recharge" it? Is that the case?

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 03:50:06 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 23, 2018, 12:29:45 amYou are mixing up current nuclear technology, fission which uses heavy elements with Next Gen nuclear which is fusion and lighter elements. There is NO long lasting radioactive waste. Two completely different technologies.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 09:23:51 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 03:50:06 amThat's not quite right. By the time the fusion plant is decommissioned much of the plant itself will be fairly radioactive. This is not on the same scale, in either size or intensity, as the amount of nuclear waste produced by current fission reactors, but fission reactors only account for a very small proportion of human energy production (a fair bit of electricity production, but a very small part of overall energy production). If fusion scaled to be the dominant form of human energy production the total amount of pretty long lifetime radioactive junk would be substantial.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 09:31:39 am
content: Greens are opposed to fusion spending because they say it's been under development for 40 years with no result. (which is not quite true, but..)They're also against thorium even though it's been shown to work.At the same time they push wind energy like crazy in spite of it having been under development since Roman times and never been found very satisfactory in over 2000 years.They claim that energy storagewillsolve the intermittency problems of wind and solar. As if it were a done deal. Yet, Grid-scale energy storage hasn't been developed yet. Somehow they think it's OK to base projections on as-yet uninvented tech if it's one of theirownpet projects. But, not for someone else's.World spending on renewables is in the region of half a trillion USD a year. If you add other CC measures that comes to 1.5 trillion.For this, we've achieved the amazing result of a fraction of a percent (or somewhat over 1% depending who you ask) of world energy from renewables.Theone-offcost to build ITER will be about 0.02 trillion. And, that's the most expensive of the fusion projects.Once fusion or thorium is perfected, getting the majority of world energy from that source is a perfectly realistic goal.-I think we can see where funding is more likely to bring results."If fusion scaled to be the dominant form of human energy production the total amount of pretty long lifetime radioactive junk would be substantial."Depends what you build your reactor out of. Aluminium is problematic in this respect as it's 'activated' by neutrons. Choice of the right materials will minimise this issue though. Most of the neutron activation is not long lasting, anyway.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 02:05:29 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on November 23, 2018, 09:31:39 amThe technology to adapt demand to supply has become very affordable within the last decade. What's missing is a standard to tie it all together. Something like Ohmconnect, but even more flexible.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 06:23:35 pm
content: I just read about Ohmconnect, web site is vague, but this article explains it much better.https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/home/ohm-connect-legit/From what I understand you have to trip the circuit breakers to your home, and sit in the dark not using any electricity to benefit from Ohmconnect. Or let me put this another way... If frist world-citizens are willing to trade the reliability of having electricity for the unreliability of third-world countries Ohmconnect is for you. But be prepared to not use electricit5y when you want to. Not sure how that stores electricity, sound more like a carbon cap and trade to me.Surprised no one has offered a suggestion on what we should do with the 600 year supply of enriched Uranium we have. Isn’t it only good for two things? Nuclear bombs or nuclear power? Wouldn’t it be better to use it for nuclear power than bombs? What do you suggest we do with the stuff?There appears to be some confusing about NextGen Nuclear. For some reason people keep saying their is long lived highly radioactive waste. Not true. There is NO long lived radioactive waste. NONE! Picture the worst Chernobyl or Fukushima scale nuclear accident. In less than one generation of human life all of the radiation will have decayed away.Can we look at the factts and scale for a moment? Remember E=MC^2. The amount of electricity which can be generated in one NexGen Nuclear plant would take 20,000 acres of solar panels or 60,000 acres and 2800 wind turbines. (20,000 acres is 31.25 square miles)As “we” consume more and more electricty how are we going to produce it? Thinking we can do it all from solar and wind is silly.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 06:30:59 pm
content: Doug,Assuming you mean fusion, I am very sorry, you are right in that I was assuming you were talking about various rehashes of fission. My mistake.I support research into fusion energy. So we likely agree on this. And I take back what I said about it not being next generation.Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 03:50:06 am

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 07:24:04 pm
content: cdev thanks just wanted to make sure we were talking about the same thing. I've found a lot of people are very poorly informed about nuclear energy and how ecologically dangerous it is I was one of those people. But then I realized the people who were "preaching" to me just how dangerous nuclear energy is were also the ones who were opposed to logging and forest management. It took me years to find out I was being duped by under-educated people who had an agenda of spreading false and inaccurate information to scare people. (It worked on me.)But then I took a physics class and learned about nuclear physics and the health risks associated with sub-atomic particles. At the same time California had another fossil fuel spill in Southern California.) Turned out to be the third worst fossil fuel spill in human history. How was it found? Nuclear or ionizing radiation levels were accidentally found to be much higher than normal background radiation levels.It was then I learned just how much nuclear material/ionizing radiation is in fossil fuels including coal. What those poorly educated environmentalists weren't telling people was how much radioactive materiel/ionizing radiation was being released into our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels/coal. It's millions of tons every year and the dummies who are so afraid of radioactive nuclear contamination from nuclear power plants couldn't seem to care about coal/fossil fuel radioactive material. Silly isn't it.Hope we agree we need to do something. Wind/solar are okay, but are unreliable. There is no one perfect solution so don't we need to go with the least worst? Hopefully coal in at the absolute bottom of the list by now. Followed by fossil fuels. (We will probably always use fossil fuel as it's so energy dense.) So that leave nuclear, current gen with our 600 years supply of fuel and NextGen which we have a universe of fuel to use but we still need to perfect.I'm with you, we need NextGen nuclear, but then we need to do something with the 600 year supply of fuel we have.Have you looked much at Thorium reactors? I have. It looked promising 50-60 years but time has passed we know a lot more. China had plans to have a Thorium reactor up and running next year or in 2020. The Chinese, just like the Americans 50 years earlier ran into technological issues which could not be solved, or could not be solved affordably. (The American reactor everyone talks about was a small experimental reactor which worked beautifully. The issue was scaling it up to something that would be commercial size. We found with the technology at the time it could not be done.)Appears the Chinese have given up on Thorium too. Over the past 8 years they couldn't solve the same list of technological issues we had 50 years ago. It is my understanding earlier this year the Chinese have quietly discontinued funding and all research work has stopped.Appears you have come to the same conclusion I have.... NextGen Nuclear with the technology we have is our "best" (least worst) solution.Still not sure what to do with the 600 year supply of nuclear fuel we already have.Quote from: cdev on November 23, 2018, 06:30:59 pm

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 08:29:59 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 06:23:35 pmYou don't have to switch off altogether. Just reducing usage is the goal. Besides, if the savings in the article is correct, that's enough to pay for several kWh worth of batteries in just the first year, when just 1 or 2 will easily run a lot of electronics.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 08:54:23 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 23, 2018, 08:29:59 pmNot accorind to a women who has it and wrote an article about it in PennyWise. She siad was having a dinner party with 40 people and the power went out leaving her and her guets in the dark.Didn't you see the cost for batteries? It's $0.60 kHr. Once of most expensive sournces for electricy.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 09:16:29 pm
content: Great, I much prefer agreeing with people than disagreeing.Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 07:24:04 pmOne of the things I worry about is the way they do cost benefit analyses now, is not going to work much longer because its based on lost wages of work. Because of how its structured, old people, poor people and children's lives are worth much less. So that means that whatever profit generated becomes infinitely larger than it should be in the balancing game, of deciding environmental issues. Basically the system is rigged so that profit is weighed much higher than it should be in relation to people's costs and lives. It completely disregards investments people make in their lives, homes and education, and only looks at employers costs.And imagine how this will work out in the future if the predictions come true and few people need to work.That will mean lives will be worthless in the systems eyes so basically it will become okay to pollute with devastating effects as long as its profitable.Because even modest profits will be weighted higher in cost-benefit analyses than the non-incomes of the majority of people. Their lives will be weighted as worthless in the calculations. This is basically what people run into now when the injured or killed person is particularly, old, young or unemployed. (or a subrogation agreement is in effect, basically assigning any compensation to a health insurance company first)The effect is that lawyers usually advise the injured or their survivors that they cant take the case.Another problem is the value which would be destroyed by a nuclear accident would not be insured - Homeowners might have huge losses, but the costs would not be compensated by insurers.QuoteYes, this is true, but mutation brings with it a host of problems for future generations!

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 12:14:56 am
content: Quote from: cdev on November 23, 2018, 09:16:29 pmAgree or not, I like to have civil intelligent discussions with one another.Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 07:24:04 pmOne of the things I worry about is the way they do cost benefit analyses now, is not going to work much longer because its based on lost wages of work. Because of how its structured, old people, poor people and children's lives are worth much less. So that means that whatever profit generated becomes infinitely larger than it should be in the balancing game, of deciding environmental issues. Basically the system is rigged so that profit is weighed much higher than it should be in relation to people's costs and lives. It completely disregards investments people make in their lives, homes and education, and only looks at employers costs.And imagine how this will work out in the future if the predictions come true and few people need to work.That will mean lives will be worthless in the systems eyes so basically it will become okay to pollute with devastating effects as long as its profitable.Because even modest profits will be weighted higher in cost-benefit analyses than the non-incomes of the majority of people. Their lives will be weighted as worthless in the calculations. This is basically what people run into now when the injured or killed person is particularly, old, young or unemployed. (or a subrogation agreement is in effect, basically assigning any compensation to a health insurance company first)The effect is that lawyers usually advise the injured or their survivors that they cant take the case.Another problem is the value which would be destroyed by a nuclear accident would not be insured - Homeowners might have huge losses, but the costs would not be compensated by insurers.QuoteYes, this is true, but mutation brings with it a host of problems for future generations!Not sure if you are aware but we are not seeing mutations at Chenobyl, Fukushima, California (worst US nuclear accident) or in the Pacific Islands where the atomic bombs were tested.The worst US accident was a Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Californa which involved a sodium reactor. Accidents don't happen but the way they are dealt can be tragic. What we did in the US is shameful.... We kept the accident a secret then the land near the accident was turned into a housing development.The crazy thing is this is just 10 miles away from where the thrid worst fossil fuel spill/leak occurned in Aliso Canyon.) Southern California.) Fossil fuel contain several radioactive isotopes. So people living in this area are living with a double dose nuclear radiation accident.https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-simi-valley-nuclear-disaster-20180220-story.html

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 12:18:01 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 23, 2018, 08:54:23 pmHow much (little) do you really need to run essential electronics (home LAN) and LED lighting? I can easily run my home network, including a workstation PC (biggest power use in the setup thanks to its age, although not too bad if run at peak efficiency), for a few hours from $200 worth (a pair) of Nissan Leaf modules. Running just the core router, modem, and one AP, that can easily stretch to days.Perhaps the better approach to matching demand to supply is to set a baseline of, for example, 100W or so below which there's much less incentive to further reduce demand? That's enough to run a lot of essential electronics and LED lighting.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 12:26:27 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 12:18:01 amYou nned to think globally, not locally. What about your neighbors, can they do the same? And what about all of the stores and businesses you depend on to live. And then essential services like hospitals, police etc. If you were in a hospital being operated on would you mind if the power were cut? I know I would like to happen to me.Why not develope Next Gen Nuclear so everyone can have electricy?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 12:44:13 am
content: It may have already been done. Even if so, it would be understandable why the world has been skeptical. Look at the source.https://phys.org/news/2010-05-nkorea-success-nuclear-fusion.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/12/north-korea-creates-nuclear-fusion-claimNonetheless, something strong enough to register on seismographs happened in the area on that day. (Kim Il Sung's birthday)And radioisotopes monitored nearby showed a spike.So, although its highly improbable, the story may be true.Its remotely possible that something did happen. When this story came out, eight years ago, people brushed it off. Now, that they have successfully tested a larger fusion device, the picture is a little bit different. I think the world should ask them to put their cards on the table.If indeed they have solved the power generation puzzle, they would have a right to be proud of their achievement. As I said, although its highly improbable, its not impossible.Look at it this way, necessity is the mother of invention. They are a power starved nation, isolated by the rest of the world. However, they do have rich deposits of many minerals, far more than many other countries of similar size.-----North Korea claims nuclear fusion breakthroughQuote

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 12:56:09 am
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 24, 2018, 12:26:27 amI was thinking of just residential, which accounts for 38% or so of all electricity use. Things are going to be much different with commercial and industrial, but in California, the residential variable rate plans charge more during working hours specifically to encourage saving when businesses are in operation. Something has to be done about those who are too lazy to turn off/back the HVAC when they're away from home.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 04:39:28 am
content: Thank you for sharing, didn’t know this. To quote Karl Sagan, “Extrodarnary claims, need extrodanary proof”.I think we have the extraordinary proof, North Korea is still in the dark and a poor country. If North Korea has figured out nuclear fusion they would now be the richest country in the world. Just think of the billions of dollars they could earn from licensing the technology. Thing is they are still poor and still in the dark at night.The world powers have have radiation detectors around the word and in space which would easily be able to identify the radioactive element signature of an event like this. Maybe all of the dectors were not functioning on that day or North Korea was mis-translated.Quote from: cdev on November 24, 2018, 12:44:13 am

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 05:28:42 am
content: Not sure why I did not get any new notifications but it seems most of the discussion was about nuclear generated energy with is not and will probably never be less than solar.It just seems people overlook the fact that my house is powered today by solar including all heating not just electricity and it is cost competitive even if is a DIY type install not work considered is also a low scale installation so no special volume discounts.I want to give here an example of cost amortization strictly for the PV panel. My 260W panels costed $150 each (that is USD was about 200CAD) but you can get this anywhere maybe at even a better price in Europe this panels will be $100Just one of this 260W panels will produce between best case 1.5kWh/day (clear sunny day) and absolute worst case 75Wh/day (worse overcast day) but in an average year at my location set at 60 degree tilt this one panel will produce 338kWhSo assuming you are able to use all energy from this panel for 30 years then you have a total of 338kWh x 30 years x0.9 (for degradation) = 9126kWh$150 / 9126kWh = $0.016So 1.6 cent/kWhNow you may ask why is my heating energy costing 4.2 cent/kWh in therms of cost amortization and that is because some other stuff are needed like ground mount for PV then cables for transport and as heating elements and a bit of thermal mass storage and also not all energy is used in average I barely use a bit more than half the energy available in a year from the PV panels as winter is long here about 7 months heating season and then I may use almost all available energy but in summer months I barely use 10% of the energy as I have no use for it at this time.Still even at 4.2cent / kWh is the lowest cost energy source for heating even when compared to second next that is natural gas most people use to heat their houses.I do not see how anything can ever compete with solar PV and this will continue to drop in price.There where also some discussions about thin film solar as potential to get cheaper than traditional silicon solar cells but they did not and likely they will never be able to. There is a reason all those thin solar panel manufacturers are bankrupt and that is because they can not compete with crystalline silicon panels.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 01:22:17 pm
content: Friend you are thinking locally when you need to be thinking globally. In your energy consumption you are leaving out the electricity needed to produce the solar panels, process the food you eat, produce the materials to build your house and to power all of the services you use such as hospitals, street lights, roads you drive on, and the Internet we are using to communicate.What might work for you would not work for me and I suspect most of us. I think you will find many people are happy paying the power company a few dollars a day to power their refrigator to keep food safe to eat and for lighting at night.With the Solar and Wind associations saying AT BEST solar and wind in 30 years wiki provide the world with 20% of the electricty “we” need, where is the other 80% going to come from?Think globally, not locally when you answer the question.We have well over 600 years of nucler fuel already processed and read to use.Now if North Korea is telling the truth we have NextGen Nuclear which is the greenest way of producing electricty. If they are not telling the truth, then it might be a while.While you might be self-sufficient with you energy needs at home, what about your nearly 8 billion neighbors? What are they to do?Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 05:28:42 am

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 01:28:02 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 05:28:42 amGet a few used servers and mine cryptocurrency when surplus power is available. (Or even during the winter as well since the heat produced can then be put to good use.)

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 02:39:47 pm
content: A setup which works for off grid living is nice and all, but that won't allow a community to charge electric cars or run industry.We need an electrical distribution network and we're going to pay for it one way or another.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 02:44:12 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 12:56:09 amPeak rates are in the evening in CA. During the day solar is taking a scoop out of the demand. But when people come home at the end of the day the demand goes up and the sun goes down.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-sdge-timeofuse-20180612-story.htmlOn-peak, 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.: 47 cents per kilowatt-hourOff-peak, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight: 22 cents per kilowatt-hourSuper Off-peak, midnight to 6 a.m.: 16 cents per kilowatt-hour

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 02:54:10 pm
content: Quote from: ahbushnell on November 24, 2018, 02:44:12 pmAnd I thought PG&E was bad, you have it worse. Out peak is from 2pm - 9 pm M-F and 3-7 on weekends. Summer it’s $0.45 and $0.32 in Winter. We get to sell that back to PG&E for $0.43 in the summer. Our Off-peak is $).12 summer or winter.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 04:54:42 pm
content: Having lived in San Diego for a few years, I can say that A/C is not essential. A Delta fan that uses 30W or so is plenty for the hottest days. Along with a lower powered fan set in the window at night to store the "coolness" for the next day.But in climates where A/C is required, thermal storage can peak shift that for far less than the cost of batteries. And also make it easier to cool only where it's actually necessary to cool.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 05:34:13 pm
content: What’s the point of the video? Title of the video is misleading, it’s NOT an air conditionar, the air is not being conditioned at all.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 06:27:01 pm
content: It does work well to cool the room during peak times while only using a few tens of watts to run the pump and fan. The ice is regenerated during off peak times.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 06:34:21 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 24, 2018, 01:22:17 pmI do think globally. Have you read my paper? check page 3http://electrodacus.com/DMPPT450/dmppt-presentation-v01.pdfbut just in case I also attached a screenshot of page 3 belowYou can see there residential energy usage based on International Energy Agency based on 2016 data.Notice that anywhere in the world space heating plus water heating represent the largest portion of residential energy usage currently done with natural gas in most countries.Those can be provided by DMPPT450 at around 4.2 cent/kWh no matter how large or even inefficient the house is or where it is.The rest made of residential appliances, lighting and cooking represent a much lower slice of the total energy needs and that is usually provided by the electrical grid maybe cooking is also done with natural gas in some places.In any case that is more expensive mostly due to use of LiFePO4 for energy storage but where heating is combined with electricity as in my case cost amortization is around 17.5 cent/kWh and average compared to grid in rest of the world just cleaner.I paid for energy needed to produce solar PV panels when I purchased the panels. The price of PV panels includes everything and that is raw materials, labor and energy (fairly small percentage of the total cost) and of course profit for manufacturer and seller. So yes you can easily use solar PV energy from a single panel to produce hundred or thousand more PV panels there is no need for other sources.Quote from: Marco on November 24, 2018, 02:39:47 pmYou do not need grid for any of those reasons. Solar energy is beamed wireless all around the globe is just intermittent as the earth rotates also variable with season and whether that is where energy storage is needed. My solution was to use thermal storage (very inexpensive) for heating or cooling and then use a small Lithium battery for the other stuff needed in a modern house.As for EV they have their own battery so they should be charged directly from solar not from another battery storage. (because of high battery amortization cost an EV is not cost effective compared to ICE at this time but it should be the case in the near future as battery performance improve while price will go down).Industry can be offgrid as well there is no special demand for that. Luckily the grid infrastructure already exists in developed countries else grid will have no chase today.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 07:00:34 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 06:34:21 pmThat's exactly the sort of design I advocate.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:12:37 pm
content: You say you think Globaly, yet in your presentation you keep referring to “my house”. What about my house? And all of the other houses in the world?Looks to me like you are thinking locally and acting locally.Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 06:34:21 pm

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:47:54 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 06:34:21 pmEven assuming I insulated my home to the standards of yours it doesn't increase the size of my backyard (insulating to that standard for a retrofit entails costs a multiple of what it costs for a new home too). So yeah, I'm kinda dependent on the grid.QuoteLets say you have a daily commute consuming 50kWh, that doubles your worst case monthly power consumption, but without the ability to use the thermal storage to cross gaps ... so if over-dimensioning the array is the only solution that means it will have to be quite large indeed.QuoteMost large factories are currently designed to run 24/7 excluding maintenance and emergencies. Cutting that down to a third or so and shutting them off during especially dim days is not really an option. They also don't generally have sufficient space around them for solar panels. Nations have trillions dollars worth of capital invested in those industries, they will run 24/7 for the foreseeable future.Ultimately the cost of powering that industry and the infrastructure and maintenance costs which that entails will be paid by the population regardless. Going off grid might allow you to avoid some of those costs, but it's ultimately just gaming the system, not an alternative open to the entire population.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 09:06:50 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 24, 2018, 08:47:54 pmYou must live quite far from work - over 100 miles one way - for a daily commute to use 50kWh round trip.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 09:16:39 pm
content: Quote from: DougSpindler on November 24, 2018, 08:12:37 pmMy house is there for reference and no different in that context from any other house in Canada or Germany in therms of ratio between energy used for heating and other uses.I think there is plenty of variation there with global average and a few different countries Australia, Germany, Canada, UK, US.Quote from: Marco on November 24, 2018, 08:47:54 pmYes if your house is inefficient it may need a fairly large PV array depending on location also and how cold it is there but that will not change the fact that unit of energy for solar is lower than for natural gas. A house insulated to my house standard will only need panels that will fit on the house so assuming there are no large buildings around or large trees to shade the panels there is no need for extra space other than the house footprint.QuoteMy worst case monthly consumption is in January and is around 1000kWh (Heating + electricity) so around 33kWh/day average. Thermal storage capacity is 160kWh for my house and LiFePO4 battery storage just 5kWh as thermal storage has a cost amortization at least 20x lower than LiFePO4 around 1 cent/kWh for thermal storage vs around 20 cent/kWh for best LiFePO4 and Lithium battery will never get close to thermal storage in therms of cost.Average US driver will drive 20000km/year that is an average of 55km/day that will require an average of around 14kWh/day. I drive way less than thatThe PV array is sized to deal with the worst case month (January in my case) so since in summer I do not need heating around 90% of the energy will remain unused. If you need to add a backup of any type it will cost more than just to size the PV array to cover worst case month.QuoteIt depends on how much of the factory input is related to energy not all will have benefits form lower energy cost worth considering but some industries where energy is a huge part of the cost will benefit from significantly lower energy cost and may be a good idea even if they reduce production to daytime.Still residential has a huge impact on energy usage even higher than industry and the other large part is transportation.How do I or anyone else game the system by going off grid ?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 10:02:33 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 09:16:39 pmLots of elderly and kids in there. A family with a combined 200+ km combined daily commute isn't exactly rare.QuotePart of the per kWh price consumers pay goes towards maintenance of infrastructure to keep the society you still benefit from running.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 10:06:42 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 24, 2018, 10:02:33 pmThose off grid do not put any load on the grid, and in the case of rural areas going off grid, the maintenance cost per customer still on the grid would actually go down.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 10:43:30 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 04:54:42 pmDepends on where you live. If can afford to live near the water it's nice. But the temperature range grows as you move inland. August and September is normally when it get's hot.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 10:48:57 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 09:16:39 pmIt's all two story houses with gable roofs here, the roof area to floor sucks especially with a window in the roof. You'd fit less than a fifth of the house floor space in solar panels on the roof.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 10:52:35 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on November 24, 2018, 10:02:33 pmThat 55km/day average was for US and for Netherlands is less about 37km/day. This is for a car so if a family only has one car then that car in average is driven that distance not each member of that family.In most places energy is provided by a private companies, so part of that price you pay for electricity will be profit. Not sure what benefit the society has form this ?Quote from: ahbushnell on November 24, 2018, 10:43:30 pmIf you seen the pie charts I listed above you will notice that AC has very little impact on total house energy usage compared to heating even in hot places like Australia.A hot day may be +35C outside (for a few hours not average for the day) and you will want +25C inside that is just a 10C max delta much less for the entire day so little energy is needed then on top of that cooling is done with a heat pump with at least a COP of 3 so another 3x reduction in energy needed.Now for delta in temperature between inside and outside is much higher 20 to 30C and that is average over the entire day not just a few hours a day while heating is usually done with natural gas 80 to 90% efficiency so is clear why cooling needs so much less energy than heating.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:12:30 pm
content: I think a good next device to work on is a compressor VFD optimized for solar heating and cooling. Using a heat pump instead of resistive elements can cut down on the number of solar panels required by a factor of 3 or more - a very worthwhile savings. It would also pave the way for lower cost, open standard A/C energy saving both on and off grid.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:25:34 pm
content: There are some thought provoking stats on theIEA sitefor global energy sources. Unfortunately most of it is paywalled, but the linked page shows the relative amounts provided by each resource class.OK, you say, where's the wind and solar?Well, it's in that thin red line, at around 1.1 percent of total.This might be a surprise for people who rely on press releases from RenewableUK or the like for their information. You have to realise though, that those press releases are designed to sell a product (Cue 'Doop' song..) and they inflate the success of the product, typically by massging the data. Such as by as including other renewables like as hydro or biomass (or even nuclear) and then claiming that theoverallsuccess of renewables is a reason to fund wind turbines.No, it isn't.When you consider that we've been installing wind and solar capacity for upwards of 20 years (although to be fair the bulk of the installations have been in the last ten) then you have to ask yourself, how long would it take to reach the magic '100% renewables' this way? I hope no-one in here needs a calculator to work that out. (Hint, it's about as long as you'd have to wait between the Romans leaving Britain, and William the Conqueror arriving..)It's self-evident that biomass is a more productive route, however biomass is also environmentally destructive, on a scale far worse than fossil fuel. Not a good idea.So, if we want to replace fossil fuels with something else, and do so on an even remotely sensible timescale, this is NOT the way to go about it. We need to look at other ideas instead. Fusion and thorium are the obvious candidates, though we shouldn't overlook any promising idea. The one thing we need to stop doing, is mindlessly flogging the dead horse.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:27:33 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 11:12:30 pmA very worthwhile saving of what? Most people are constrained for space, so a big saving in space is a very valuable thing. However, if you have lots of space the savings on solar panels probably won't pay for the heat pumps (you'll probably need more than one during the life of the solar panels).

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:32:50 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 11:12:30 pmI discussed this earlier in this tread and a heat pump will not be cost effective compared with a larger PV array. PV panels are so inexpensive that a heat pump can not be economical for heating and direct resistive heating is more cost effective.In a cold environment like mine an air heat exchange will not be capable even of COP of 2 in cold days (ground loop is out of the question as it is way to expensive).You should imagine the extreme case where electricity is almost free (as with 1 to 1.6cent/kWh for PV panel amortization is almost there) so in that case any additional device added that is not free will increase the cost amortization.And a heat pump especially a high power one needed for heating is way to expensive to be considered.I took all this possibilities including heat pump in to consideration and got to my system as the most cost effective solution as that was my primary goal.Quote from: coppice on November 24, 2018, 11:27:33 pmYes if space is an issue and extra cost increase is acceptable it may make sense but then it may compete with natural gas. So if the house already has a natural gas connection and heating system it will not be cost effective when you add the heatpump to the setup. The discussion was about about a heatpump that works directly on DC from PV panels so that has again some extra cost associated.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:38:49 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 11:32:50 pmYou keep saying this, but it only works for a small proportion of people. Most people have use for, and can easily afford, far more solar panels than they have space for.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:45:34 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 24, 2018, 11:38:49 pmI talk about the cost amortization only. My PV heating solution is just slightly less expensive than natural gas most people use for heating and so adding a heat pump will make PV solar heating more expensive than natural gas at this point in time.So if you have less space then just use the amount of PV panels you can fit to significantly reduce the other energy source you use like natural gas.For example I live in a very cold climate (as cold as it gets) and the 10kW PV array covers all my energy needs but if I where to reduce the PV array to half this size so 5kW then it will still covers 80% of my heating so is not a linear reduction since many winter months are milder so the 5kW PV array can cover those.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:50:53 pm
content: Then what about solar A/C and refrigeration? I can see a dedicated freezer being very well suited for no additional cost thermal storage - pretty much just add some logic to keep the compressor on when there's surplus power.I can see cryptocurrency mining using used servers being worthwhile when the servers themselves are often available for next to nothing. Either to make some profit from otherwise unused surplus power or as heating that subsidizes its own cost. The implementation can be very simple and mostly software - just an ESP8266 to send WOL signals to automatically start the servers and then modulate the CPU frequency (through daemons running on the servers) as well as tell them to shut down when they should not be operating.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 11:58:02 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 24, 2018, 11:50:53 pmSufficient solar panels to keep a/c running throughout the hot weather seems an excellent use for them. An a/c costs the most to run when the most PV energy is available, and low PV output when the weather is bad is of little consequence. Its a perfect sidestepping of the problems of inconsistent output and the need for storage. Until our plans changed, I was going to use this strategy for the house we built in the tropics.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 12:14:17 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 24, 2018, 11:45:34 pmFor a completely new house. Even if I didn't have a pathetic roof area for solar panels, I'd have to have the garden redone to bury thermal storage.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 12:24:01 am
content: Quote from: Marco on November 25, 2018, 12:14:17 amYou are talking about seasonal heat storage (months) and that is not cost effective at all what I have implemented and it is cost effective is short therm thermal storage (days) and is inside the house nothing to do with the garden.A new house can have both thermal storage and PV array needed for all energy needs already build in no need for extra space just the house footprint.Quote from: coppice on November 24, 2018, 11:58:02 pmI do not care much about cooling either AC and especially refrigeration as both of them use very small amount of energy compared to space heating and water heating.My small fridge uses an average of 0.3kWh/day and a full size new fridge will use around 1kWh/day so no significant amount of energy.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 12:29:18 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 25, 2018, 12:24:01 amI think you said you have 10kW capacity from your solar panels. To cool our house requires more than 10kW. I don't consider than a small amount of energy. Paying for that much grid power throughout the hot hours would be rather expensive, while solar panels running near peak output during the hottest part of the day will amortise their cost quite quickly.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 12:48:57 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 25, 2018, 12:29:18 amWhat do you mean by "To cool our house requires more than 10kW" ? Energy will be something like 10kWh, the 10kW refers to installed power and a 10kW PV array can produce in excess of 60 to 70kWh of energy in a sunny summer day.At my location highest average temperature is in July +18.8C and my house as is well insulated and has good amount of thermal mass is not requiring any space cooling.You are likely in UK so if I take London as an example the highest average temperature is almost exactly the same for July +18.7C so a well designed house will need no cooling.Data from herehttps://en.climate-data.org/north-america/canada/saskatchewan/regina-373/https://en.climate-data.org/europe/united-kingdom/england/london-1/

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 12:58:25 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 25, 2018, 12:24:01 amI said "I'd", this is about my situation. The house has a raised concrete foundation which isn't thick enough to store appreciable energy even if I didn't prefer being able to set a thermostat. If I want thermal storage for days, I'd still have to bury it or sacrifice space outdoor ... which is rather precious.Not that it matters, because as I said ... gable roof with roof window equals not a whole lot of PV.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:01:02 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 25, 2018, 12:48:57 amThe house I was referring to is in the tropics. Its not the one I am living in at the moment. To keep enough air conditioning running to cool that house in the middle of the day would require more than 10kW. Modern houses in the tropics have interesting issues compared to houses in the cold. You double or triple glaze a house in a cold place. Do that in the tropics, and the greenhouse effect greatly warms the house. There are some coated glass options to reduce the greenhouse effect. but the predicted improvements didn't seem that great. For that reason we only single glazed the house, using mildly tinted glass. If you want a nice open feeling house with large amounts of window, its hard to achieve good thermal insulation.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:23:14 am
content: Quote from: Marco on November 25, 2018, 12:58:25 am"raised concrete foundation" not sure how that is implemented exactly. As id do you have a basement or is just a perimeter foundation ? Is there any thermal insulation on the perimeter? if not that can be added and should have a fairly significant saving no matter what the energy source for heating is.Even panels installed on the walls (assuming there is no significant shadow) will have a a fair amount of solar energy generation in winter months when sun is low in the sky.Quote from: coppice on November 25, 2018, 01:01:02 amTropics is such a large area with variate climate.The way you are presenting the case sounds like energy or resources usage are not relevant to you.In any case even if you want to waste resources solar PV will provide the best (most cost effective) source of energy.An extreme case may be trying to heat or cool a house with no walls or windows just a roof

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:25:50 am
content: Quote from: coppice on November 25, 2018, 01:01:02 amAs long as you don't mind pissing off the neighbours, won't the reflective window films be substantially better than simple tinting? Still cheap, unlike the spectrally selective films which go for upwards of 100$ a m2.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:39:06 am
content: Quote from: electrodacus on November 25, 2018, 01:23:14 amConcrete joists with thin concrete webbingresting on a wall surrounding the house, suspended on piles.QuoteCrawlspace, yes there is insulation but that's neither here nor there.QuoteWell there's another problem in densely populated areas ... intrusive government and commissions. You'd never get permission for that.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:55:33 am
content: Quote from: Marco on November 25, 2018, 01:39:06 amFairly bad construction method for a cold climateQuote from: Marco on November 25, 2018, 01:39:06 amThis is about aesthetics and they like all buildings to look the same. Maybe they will change this in the future or even make this mandatoryas in some places new buildings requires PV panels.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 02:52:59 am
content: Dis they succeed at generating power from hydrogen via some kind of controlled nuclear fusion?We don't know.These references were from a 2015 article by Jeffrey Lewis on 38north which I saved a copy of several years ago.https://www.38north.org/2015/04/jlewis042815/(Do we know now? No, we still don't know.)He is an expert on nuclear arms proliferation and he thinks the likelihood that they did do a nuclear test (not discover how to pursue controlled nuclear fusion) is "less likely than not".QuoteHowever, as was pointed out, the fact that they are still an energy starved country is arguably evidence that they, like us, still have not solved this problem to the degree necessary to actually utilize it as needed to solve our energy problems.But as one can see, from the article below, something of seismological significance did happen on May 12, 2010 at the NK test site, underneath the infamous Mt. Mantap, and radiological evidence supporting a theory along those lines also exists, although its ambiguous enough that the people who reported it are unsure of its implications.Also, a number of other unrelated events occurred close enough to possibly confound readings taken during that time period. I suggest people read the original materials and come to your own conclusions as to what they mean as you all likely are as well or perhaps even better informed than I as to what they might mean.Here are Jeffrey Lewis's references.He also runs the web site "Arms Control Wonk" - he's a well respected voice on the problem of nuclear arms proliferation.Lars-Erik De Geer, “Radionuclide Evidence for Low-Yield Nuclear Testing in North Koreain April/May 2010,” Science & Global Security 20, no. 1 (2012): 1-29; Lars-Erik De Geer,“ Reinforced Evidence of a Low-Yield Nuclear Test in North Korea on 11 May 2010,” Journalof Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry (August 2013).Christopher M. Wright, “Low-Yield Nuclear Testing by North Korea in May 2010:Assessing the Evidence with Atmospheric Transport Models and Xenon ActivityCalculations,” Science & Global Security 21, no. 1 (2013): 3-52. Another paper, by Wotawa,confirmed De Geer’s original two explosion scenario, but this scenario is no longer seriouslyconsidered by anyone, including De Geer himself. See: Gerhard Wotawa, “MeteorologicalAnalysis of the Detection of Xenon and Barium/Lanthanum Isotopes in May 2010 in EasternAsia,” Journal of Radiological and Nuclear Chemistry296, no. 1 (2013): 339–347.Sakari Ihantola, Harri Toivonen and Mikael Moring, “140La/140Ba Ratio Dating of aNuclear Release,” Journal of Radiological and Nuclear Chemistry 298 (2013): 1283–1291.Matthias Zahringer and Gerald Kirchner, “Nuclide Ratios and Source Identification fromHigh-Resolution Gamma-Ray Spectra with Bayesian Decision Methods,” NuclearInstruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers,Detectors and Associated Equipment 594 (2008): 400-406.T.W. Bowyer et al., “Potential Impact of Releases from a New Molybdenum-99Production Facility on Regional Measurements of Airborne Xenon Isotopes,” Journal ofEnvironmental Radioactivity 129 (2014): 43-47.David P. Schaff, Won-Young Kim, and Paul G. Richards, “Seismological Constraints onProposed Low-Yield Nuclear Testing in Particular Regions and Time Periods in the Past,with Comments on ‘Radionuclide Evidence for Low-Yield Nuclear Testing in North Korea inApril/May 2010’ by Lars Erik De Geer,” Science and Global Security,20, no. 2-3 (2012): 155-171.Also attached is an additional story from Seismological Research Letters

author: MadScientist
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 am
content: While I applaud electrodacus , I think his cost justifications are quite frankly nonsense(1) taking 30 year time spans , might be ok for major capital projects , like a dam etc , it’s nonsense for a domestic project , you may not even be living in that house in 10 years time(2) you ignore the additional costs of building your house to very high insulation standards(3) youre assuming a completely fault free , no decay , 30 year period of no maintenance , no repair or replacement cost , this is unrealistic , even with just PV panels , control systems will fail , certainly the battery pack will need replacing , and I suspect even thermal cycling of your panels in that climate will lead to issues. I suspect there is very little data to sustain a hypothesis that you will have no ongoing costs(4) you take no account of the looses associated with a wasting asset such as this project(5) your house looks small, scaling systems to larger dwellings is not linear(6) you ignore the cost of your Labour , others cannot , nor have you factored in the lost income from applying your Labour elsewhere(7)you ignore the cost of financing the very considerable upfront capital costs and if such funding was t financed , you ignore the opportunity costs of such capital invested in essentially a non productive process.I see this all the time in domestic micro generation , most adherents are exponents of the tech and self justify the processes largely by engaging in “ min-maxing “ ie selectively picking costs to suit your biasesAt the end of the day , it’s a “ hobby “project justified on hobby economicsMy house is in Ireland , it’s insulation is a balance between cost of energy and the cost of insulation , during the summer months , I typically need no heating from May to September , yet the weather is never warm enough to need AC . In the winter time , we heat the house by wood burning stove for about €150 ( excluding my labour in splitting the firewood ) we carry a small amount of Heating oil as a backupMy electricity bill ( a combination of day and night tariffs ) is €80 a month , and this includes over night water heating in summer and charging a LEAF , which does a 140km round trip commute every working day.I have no desire to live “ off-grid” and I find it’s exponents are in fact “ selfish “ , because you can only live “ off grid “ with either access to wealth , ( comparatively ) or rely on taxes ( from others largely “ on the grid” ) from society providing you with roads in the wilderness , access to hospitals , education and a stable social society.Hence faced with a choice of expending significant capital to simply achieve slightly less then a grid supplied energy cost , which requires a fraction of the upfront cost to access , I know what I and most people will choose.In my memory, in this country , I remember many households “ living off the grid “ , with no “ grid” electricity , no proper sewerage , or running water , it wasn’t given such , a cute name then , it was called poverty .So let’s leave the contrived economic justifications out of it and just say , it’s a hobby project , and celebrate your technical achievementsDave

author: MadScientist
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 09:11:17 am
content: By the way , TOUB pricing is the greatest scam perpetrated on domestic consumers , because their energy consumption is largely time inflexible and without significant forward pricing visibility cannot take advantage of lower but unpredictable pricing . It should be resisted by every domestic customerThe rant by one contributor against GATS was fascinating, if completely hypothetical. Future gazing and the predications based on it , is a terribly inexact “ science” , we usually fail to see new developments ( precisely because they are new ) and we usually get future societal responses very wrongFor an example , look on you tube for a channel 4 series called “ the mighty micro “ produced in the 70s and future gazing about the technology developments and the effect on society up to 2000-2010, ie 30 -40 years aheadIt’s ammusing , now that this is hindsight for us to see what the estimated professor narratng the series was right and wrong sbout and what he ultimately failed to see at all.( remember the paperless offIce !! , anyone )

author: GeorgeOfTheJungle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 10:11:47 am
content: Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amAt least for me, that ^^^ doesn't add up... look:20[days/month]*140*18[kWh/100km]/100 = 504 kWh/month plus, say, 350 (*) kWh for heating: 500+350= 850 kWh => 80[€]/850 = 0.094 €/kWhI have next to me my last month's electricity bill: it's 140€ for 776 kWh -> 0.18 €/kWh.I can't have night tariffs, because most of the time I work at home, so I need it to be cool (A/C) in summer and hot in winter (more A/C)during the day, and with night tariffs the price per kWh goes over the roof during the day.(*) That's too little for heating.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:42:01 pm
content: Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amDodging taxes (legal or not) is a completely separate topic.Quote from: GeorgeOfTheJungle on November 25, 2018, 10:11:47 amIf the off peak price is way lower than the fixed price, thermal storage would be very well worth investing in. As an extreme case, some parts of Texas once offered a plan with free electricity at night and one DIYer ended up buying old but working central A/C condensers to freeze water in trash cans for cooling during the day.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 09:45:47 pm
content: Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amI appreciate your comments and this is what I was looking for when I posted this tread.30 year is the expected life of the system so it makes complete sense to use that period. I have no plans to ever sell but even if I did it has nothing to do with amortisation period as the one that purchase the house will also pay for the remaining life of the system 20 years in this example.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amHouse has nothing to do with the cost amortization in $ / unit of energy ant it will scale the same for any type of house. reducing the house thermal insulation to half will double the energy requirement and the reducing the thermal insulation to half for my house will not save $15k to allow me to double the investment in more solar PV and thermal storage. But also doubling the thermal insulation from what it is now it will cost more than half the solar installation $7.5K so the thermal installation is optimum for the cost of energy needed for heating no more no less.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amYes I correctly assume no fault over 30 years period or any repair or maintenance. Control system that I designed will not fail as it is designed for 30+ years operation there are no electrolytic capacitors that have a finite life in my devices just ceramic capacitors where used. Yes as I mentioned LiFePO4 battery should last around 20 years (based on 0.9% degradation over the last year of operation) and battery was just 2k out of the total $15K so even if you add another $1K for the remaining 10 years price will not charge much and this is not the part related to heating. If you can accept 70% of original capacity for the LiFePO4 then it will last 30 years.My oldest PV panels are around 8 years and they look and perform exactly as when they where new (there may be some small degradation but is hard to measure as it is very small).There are PV panels way older than 30 years still in operation.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amNot sure I get this point. maybe you can give a bit more details.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amThe larger the house the more efficient so yes scaling is not linear but this small house is the worst case.As a small house has higher ratio between outside surface area compared to floor area.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amYes I mentioned several times the labor is not included in the cost but not much labor is needed. In my case the labor is huge as I needed to design the entire system from ground up but someone that will copy my open source design will not have much work to do. Any other heating system will require work and my comparison was not including labor for the other heating systems.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amIf you look at inflation over this period you will realize there is no better investment than this. Look at the historic energy prices for the last 10 to 30 year and you will see what happened over time.Quote from: MadScientist on November 25, 2018, 08:55:26 amWhen I say off grid it means just no connection to electricity grid I of course need to pay all taxes related to roads and other infrastructure as anyone else.If I needed a connection to grid + natural gas the upfront cost will have been higher than my $15k solar install so for a new house plus of course the monthly energy costs after the connection that over 30 year will have been very significant and I had no control over energy price increase.How much was your wood burning stove cost and how long until it needs replacement as that will also get added to amortization cost.While there where a few hours of labor to installed the PV array, cables and heating elements there is no ongoing labor as with wood. How many hours in a winter you spend on wood fire related tasks ?Wood is more expensive than natural gas by far and PV heating has slightly better cost than current price of natural gas.Say Leaf uses 0.25kWh/km x 140km x 20 days = 700kWh/month. So what is your grid electricity cost ?, as just for the Leaf alone that €80 seems very low.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 07:20:50 am
content: Today was overcast and fog all day still the 8.5kW array produced just slightly less than 4kWh enough to do all the electric cooking and provide about 20% of heating the rest from thermal mass.

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 08:43:19 pm
content: That's bloody good to get almost 50% insolation in that murk (UK English for fog, also known as clag)

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 08:57:27 pm
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on December 01, 2018, 08:43:19 pmIt can be very bright and glaring in fog. It can also be dark and gloomy. Fog varies a lot, just as white and dark clouds do.

author: electrodacus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 09:26:23 pm
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on December 01, 2018, 08:43:19 pmQuote from: coppice on December 01, 2018, 08:57:27 pmThis PV array can produce over 40kWh in a sunny day so the 4kWh I produced is a bit less than 10% of that not 50%It was really gloomy as is not just fog but also completely overcast and today was the same this being the 4th day almost exactly the same and extremely unusual for this location.The white snow on the ground helps with reflections especially at this steep angles my PV panels are installed.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 02, 2018, 02:15:29 am
content: That's definitely a nice setup. Wish I had that much property. It is my dream to buy some acreage property, ideally in an unorganized township with low property taxes. Cut down on energy costs (basically free) and taxes and that's basically a good chunk of living costs gone right there.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 02, 2018, 03:42:26 am
content: People in North America wont be able to afford the grid if we sell off our LNG to Asian countries for five times what people pay here "until its gone". But lots of people here will get rich.

author: DougSpindler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 02, 2018, 03:59:45 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on December 02, 2018, 03:42:26 amThat’s what “we”/American’s are good at. We do the same with our food, seeking our beef to Mexico and rice/soybeans to V+China. The people in America who pick the food can’t afford to buy it.

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 02, 2018, 07:19:39 pm
content: Quote from: electrodacus on December 01, 2018, 09:26:23 pmOoops!! Missed the H in my mind somehow....sorry, thought it was a bit too good to be true