Solar inverter with battery UPS

On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 3:43:33 PM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com w rote:

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t pays you for the power you sell to it.

utility sells and buys power to/from you. Here, as in many states, the uti lity must pay you the same rate you pay it. In fact, all they do it subtra ct the power you provide to them from the power you take from them before a dding up the bill.

uction at home, so it may not last.

r base is allowed to sell power to the grid, you need a license. Then the r eimbursement is what they call the "cost avoidance" rate, which runs slight ly less than half of what the utility charges you.

he big utilities to make the conversion. Their ratepayers foot the bill, so it costs them nothing. And the rate increase is WAY WAY less than an insta ll on their rooftop.

homes are even suitable for solar for one reason or another, things like ro of too small, bad orientation, shading by trees or other structures, reside nt density, bad geography- not enough sun, a bunch of stuff.

What does "roof too small" mean? Solar panels are only a meter or so on a side. What roof is too small for a solar panel? What does "resident densi ty" mean to solar installation? "Bad geography"???

Sounds like a load of crap to me. Yeah, my roof is not suitable if I'm not willing to part with some trees... which I'm not. That doesn't make my ro of unsuitable for solar. It means I'm not suitable for solar. Actually, I could put them on the ground. There's no law they have to be on a roof. I've seen images of people who have some kW of PV on the ground. Makes it a lot easier to remove the snow in the winter.

Rick C.

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One of my houses had hail damage once. Not on the roof, on the sides. How do you keep cricket ball sized hail from coming through the windows? What about your car? What if you are caught outside?

Sounds like a dangerous place to live.

Rick C.

I wonder how much solar panels increase the cost of roof maintanance. They have to come down and go back up to re-do a roof.

I wonder how often the panel mounts cause leaks.

And how many people fall off ladders keeping the panels clean.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Yes, it's up to code. That's how manual transfer switches are done here nowadays. Pretty slick really.

I spent the $1400 to get the work done professionally, so I can be up and running in just the time it takes to wheel the gennie outside, gas it up, connect the cable, and hit the starter. (I have it on a battery minder so it's always ready to start.)

Round here the issue is the pipes freezing. That can cause a _lot_ of damage if you're away when it happens. Not much chance of that in England, I expect.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Plus all the fauna want to kill you.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Our cabin has a valve that shuts off the water and drains the (all copper) pipes into a gravel pit. We do that when we're away.

In New Orleans many old houses have iron pipes and are up on brick pillars so the pipes are exposed to air. We used to "beeline", jump fences and crawl under houses. Those pipes freeze and break even in that mild climate.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

It doesn't matter what you use so most people use all of it.

What you generate which is metered and you get paid for half of that amount automatically *irrespective* of how it is used. You do *not* have to export any to the grid you always get paid for half of it!

The point is it gets generated by PV and then used to make hot water! The whole thing is utterly insane.

You still haven't grasped what happens in the UK. The PV subsidy is such that the PV installers add a device to divert all the PV generated electricity to the hot water immersion heater if there is no other load in the property using it. Oversize hot water heat stores are used.

This is literally what happens in most UK PV installations most of the time where the owners are not at home during the day.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

It happens. We were visiting family in Australia when Cambridge UK got down to -26C, and the cold water pipes in our roof froze solid.

We got a phone call at 2:00am Melbourne time, asking us where our stopcock was ... The neighbours had noticed a tide mark on our brick work, and had used the key we'd left them to get in.

There was a lot of water damage, and it took months to get the house back in shape. Happily, the back half was less affected and we lived there while the front half got cleaned up.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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How do you keep cricket ball sized hail from coming through the windows? What about your car? What if you are caught outside?

Funnel-web spiders, and red-back spiders put a few people in hospital every year, but haven't killed anybody since the anti-venoms were developed. The re's no anti-venom for blue-ring octopus, but if you get into an iron lung fast enough, the paralysis won't kill you and the venom gets washed out in a day two without leaving any permanent damage.

Grizzly bears probably kill as many Americans as Australia's "dangerous" wi ld-life kills Australians.

Farm animals are much more dangerous, with bees and hornets close behind, a nd domestic dogs close behind them.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

It's not only a problem in Sydney. For a while - in the 1980's - you could recognise cars from Munich by the hail dents in their roofs and bonnets.

In reality, while that kind of damage does happen, it is rare and localised.

If you are worried, insure against it. Solar panels mostly die of old age, rather than storm damage - as is true of roofs they sit on too.

If storm damage was frequently problem, roof construction would be whole lot more robust.

Most places have all kinds of low frequency hazards. It hail broke a lot of windows they'd be glazed with polycarbonate panels, rather than glass.

In practice it's cheaper to replace glass windows if and when they get broken that it is to put in more expensive unbreakable panels that don't last as long.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

This is your misunderstanding. How is this any different from you exportin g the power to the grid and someone else is using electricity to heat water ?

Read what I wrote and try to understand the issue. The only part of any of this that might be considered odd is the fact that electricity is being us ed to make hot water. It doesn't matter what the source of the power is. Once it is electricity it is high grade power (or whatever the proper term is). The PV is not really the issue.

Try to break out of your mental rut on this issue.

And what do they do with the heat?

You still have not painted the picture. Heating water takes lots of energy . But then the water is hot and will only cool down slowly. What do they do with the hot water once it is hot. If it is the typical hot water uses, having a overly large tank doesn't take much more electricity to keep it h ot once it has been heated. If more hot water is not used just because it is available, the PV won't continue to be wasted.

So connect the dots and tell us what the hot water is used for that it wasn 't used for before installing the PV and the extra large water tank.

Rick C.

Had it happen only once to a house that I was living in. Unusually cold winter -15C overnight and a howling gale froze the cold water pipe but didn't cause any permanent damage. Hairdrier fixed it easily.

Much more exciting was one that happened in an empty unheated upstairs flat opposite to where we lived. Frost caused burst filled the rooms with water until the doors gave way. The resulting water hammer down the stairs punched out the reinforced mesh glass in the outer security door. Bits of wood and debris from the flat everywhere followed by sheet ice.

It is very unusual in the UK to get temperatures much below -10C. I can recall only a few days getting that cold every decade.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

If you are going to generate electricity using PV then it makes sense to actually have to export it to the grid if you want to get paid for it. It makes no sense whatsoever to pretend that all PV installations export

50% of what they make for administrative convenience when in reality absolutely none of them export *anything* at all!

You are the one in the mental rut.

Very little.

They use it to heat the house as low grade heat in oversize radiators or in a custom build under floor piped heating. A very green friend has done this in a rather complex re-engineering of his house.

It is fundamentally a ludicrously inefficient hot water generating scheme that is subsidised by the governments misguided FIT policy.

I wouldn't have a problem with it if people were paid for the electricity that they actually exported to the grid.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

Roof too small means that the cost of installing the panels together with the inverter will never have a sensible payback time. You pretty much need to be able to put at least 4kW peak capacity on the roof before it is going to be in the right ballpark. The roof also needs to be facing the right way and unshaded if you want decent output.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

Winter '81, IIRC. I'd just moved into my first flat, and was having difficulty getting coal supplies for my fire because the coal in the depot was frozen solid!

'81 was wonderfully extreme but seems not to be remembered as much as the '63 for some reason. '10 was also "good", especially since I'd finished reroofing my house less than

30 minutes before the first snow flurries arrived.

My families SOP has, since the early 60s, been to turn off and drain the cold water when going away skiing. Back then I remember laying a massive 1" of that newfangled insulation.

Didn't get jack frost on the inside of my bedroom window pane so frequently thereafter.

Dana utorak, 5. o?ujka 2019. u 23:48:20 UTC+1, korisnik Clifford Heath napisao je:

Maybe they bought wrong equipment.

You need something like that:

It can config what is primary power supply (solar, grid, ...) and can work in island mode with disconnected main grid.

And those pale into insignificance behind the most lethal animals: h*mo sapiens petroheadius and h*mo sapiens barearmsus

There seems to be little effect defence against those threats, in the New World at least.

You changed the topic. I was talking about your claim of insanity for usin g PV to heat water. Please reread the above in that context. I'm not talk ing about billing.

So you aren't going to discuss the issue further?

What does that mean? You are saying this is just a hot water tank that is used for domestic hot water and nothing else? In that case very little ene rgy is wasted.

Ok, that is not "very little". As you indicate, it is not the best way to utilize PV electric energy, but it works well, no? It is also better than heating with fuel oil or coal, no?

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. Your concern isn't that they are using t he energy for heating, it is because they are being subsidized. We do that in the country as well, but it is related to the installation costs, not t he energy generated. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Someday that subsidy will end.

Boy, it can be hard to get the straight facts from you!

Rick C.

4 kW is more than I use most of the time. My current bill shows three day gaps where the usage was not over 4 kW at any time. On the other hand, a 1 kW installation would provide my electricity most of the time without need ing to drive power back into the grid. You are saying this would not pay f or itself in a reasonable time? What is a "reasonable" amount of time? I' d be happy with 10 or even 15 years. A quick calculation gives about $1000 savings per year in an ideal case of no cloudy days, etc. So I can't put in 1 kW of capacity for less than $10,000? Say $7,000 to factor in cloudy days.

Rick C.